Asset management for the long term

A diminishing pipeline, imminent patent expiries, and global recession are all contributing to the financial pressures facing life science businesses today. Consolidation through mergers and acquisitions is providing some cost efficiency, and CFOs are examining every aspect of the business to identify savings opportunities to further trim budgets in the longer term. As a response to these pressures, asset management in the R&D environment has emerged as an opportunity to achieve productivity gains. Effective asset management programmes not only control costs, they also emphasise innovation by minimising the amount of effort scientists spend on administrative tasks, allowing them to focus on research. The pioneering asset management programme providers are moving toward quantitative measures of capacity and output in the lab, enabling companies to use data to optimise capital and operating expenditures.

“Effective asset management programs not only control costs, they also emphasize innovation”
-Mike Benevento

As a first step in improving asset management, service providers offer pharmaceutical and biotech companies accuracy and control over basic inventory activities.  Keeping track of tens of thousands of instruments across multiple labs can be daunting, especially when managed manually and often with different operating systems.  A robust IT system tracking the location and ownership of instruments offers many advantages and, when properly managed, provides access to inventory records on-demand and always up to date.        

Many asset management programs also include a multi-vendor service component, of which a common element is managed services, or a single contact that coordinates all instrument service needs.   This simplifies administration, shifting the burden away from scientists and technical staff, releasing them for more valuable research work.  Additionally, consolidating servicing activity usually reveals inconsistencies in pricing and opportunities to adjust service levels, generating cost savings without sacrificing quality.  

In addition to managed services, some programmes offer on-site service support, a model in which a dedicated team of engineers responds to service requests. When properly staffed and executed, such programmes can reduce issue resolution from days to hours, whilst also generating cost efficiencies. The vast volume and variation in the installed base of equipment at R&D sites make these programmes difficult to execute, but the payoff is huge when managed effectively.

It is important to recognise that only so much can be achieved via consolidation, before service delivery or quality is compromised. Investment must be made to maintain an instrument in a condition to produce a reliable and repeatable result. While savings are desirable, companies should resist the temptation to maximise short-term gains to such an extent that availability and reliability of instruments is jeopardised.   

Many early adopters have now progressed from the 'quick wins' of securing multi-vendor maintenance contracts, to demanding a deeper understanding of their asset utilisation. Merging inventory and maintenance data with insight into utilisation and deployment of instruments is the next frontier of opportunity for achieving the optimal balance of creativity and productivity in the R&D lab.

Looking ahead, innovation in asset management must move beyond simply managing and maintaining the asset base more efficiently, to reliably generating measurements that can be used to adjust the capacity and workflow of the R&D facility to match the current and anticipated demand. Asset management offerings will need to report not only where instruments are, but how and when they are being used, to provide data that can be analysed to reveal oppourtunities for reducing the asset base to match the workload.    

Growing M&A activity has highlighted the poor understanding most companies have of their total asset base and even worse lack of assessment of the equipment utilisation in their labs. A solution that provides a true programme measure will deliver the critical information required to redeploy or liquidate unnecessary equipment, offsetting capital expenditures for new equipment and operating costs such as bench space, power consumption, reagents, and maintenance costs.

The depth of asset visibility that market-leading asset management service providers can deliver through inventory-taking, asset management, and ultimately asset optimisation could revolutionise the way companies conduct their business. When making decisions about how to implement and optimise such programmes, companies must keep the long term in mind.

Biography

Mike Benevento leads the Services organisation for GE Healthcare's Life Sciences business - providing maintenance and validation support for GE instruments, as well as multi-vendor support / asset management services.  His extensive background in the pharmaceutical industry includes serving as an industry specialist at PricewaterhouseCooper. Since joining GE, Mike has served in leadership roles in six-sigma, operations management and marketing.