Inventory Enterprise is designed to manage materials across the organization?#710;¥æ”†rom reagents used in research, test compounds in plate formats, and reference standards in manufacturing. In a recent development, the application framework has been expanded with the addition of Freezer Management and workflows for Biological Sample handling.

Inventory Enterprise has always supported an infinitely hierarchical location tree. Mapping your organization into this model is straightforward. One example is to create a structure of Company > Site > Building > Lab > Bench. This model is flexible and extensible and works well for many organizations.

Figure 1: A common freezer layout that is used in the laboratory.

Working with freezers and racks often requires more fine-grained control over where to store a sample. This is because racks and freezers are often set up as an mxn grid. Locations, therefore, must be accessed and displayed with an understanding of this grid structure.

Inventory Enterprise has revamped its GUI interface for managing freezers and racks. Users can define a freezer or rack of arbitrary dimensions and can control how the individual positions are named. Figure 1 shows a common freezer layout. Figure 2 shows how this layout is created within Inventory Enterprise.

Figure 2: Inventory Enterprise can create a layout that matches the lab freezer.

Each of the freezer levels maps to a level in the tree view and each of those expands in the top right hand view to a grid of locations. Using this layout, the user can quickly drill down to the level of interest and, at a glance, see what is stored there. This grid view is used where appropriate to enhance inventory workflows.

Moving samples into freezer locations is simple. When creating a new sample, the user can choose which rack to use. The user is then presented with a graphical representation of the location and the desired position is then selected with a click. When creating multiple samples, the user can select multiple locations to fill as well as the starting position within those locations. Inventory Enterprise then places them appropriately.

In order to minimize the time a freezer door is open and to aid in identification of frosted samples, Inventory Enterprise offers a way to print maps of freezer locations. Figure 3 shows an example of this type of reporting. When it is time to remove or add samples to a freezer, it is a convenient way to know exactly where to go before opening the freezer door.

Workflows surrounding biological samples can be complex in that scientists requesting a sample typically must follow a paper-based form or email. In most cases, some work also has to happen on behalf of the sample management in order to fulfill the requests. For example, there may or may not be enough sample on hand; samples may need to be combined or aliquots made; and the genealogy of a particular vial may need to be known. All of these workflows are supported by Inventory Enterprise, including submitting requests (with desired delivery date and location), approving requests for fulfillment, and a set of tools to help fulfill the requests quickly while minimizing freeze/thaw cycles and door open time.

By having the workflow as an integrated part of the system, the system automatically updates the contents and locations of the samples as the work progresses. For instance, once a request is fulfilled, the source containers are appropriately depleted, returned to store, and the new sample is dispensed and recorded. By having an integrated workflow, there is no need to key this information into the system, and this ultimately makes for higher user compliance and higher data reliability.

In the example below, a request has been filed, and a simple click reveals all of the potential source material samples, including their locations and quantities.

Figure 3: Freezer maps can be printed out to aid in identification of samples and to reduce the length of time the door is open.

Inventory Enterprise is a single solution for a variety of scientific disciplines, managing materials across a variety of disciplines. Currently large pharmaceutical companies have the system in production managing reference standards in manufacturing/GMP environments, managing chemical reagents, handling compound management and plate data, and, as in this case, storing and managing their biological samples while providing a powerful workflow tool.