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Welcome to our monthly update of ideas and suggestions to help your lab cope with today's challenging economic environment. |
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This Month's News and Ideas
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Investing to Save
Modern laboratories are under stress to reduce expenses. Every line item is a candidate for reduction, no matter how small or how important. Still, there are many ways that laboratories can reduce costs, if they know where to look. The problem is not identifying the solution, but getting approval for the change, especially if the changes aren't "free."
We have encountered this situation many times over the last 20 years. Labs may have an old instrument, an old method, labor-intensive laboratory procedures, or some combination of all of these. These are all process problems that can be fixed, but often they are not. Why? The specific reasons vary, but in many situations, lab supervisors have not been trained to recognize that these process improvements are an investment. The "fix" is considered another expense, and an increase in expenses will not be approved in a cost-cutting environment.
One common situation involves the high cost of mobile phases for HPLC. Acetonitrile can cost as much as $0.09/mL, and if you used your instrument every day, in a year you could spend $10,500 just on this solvent. You could save about 50% on solvent costs by switching to a column with a smaller diameter, but it will take some staff and instrument time to make the change and verify the results from the new configuration. In more complicated situations, getting outside help might be necessary, and regulatory requirements (validation, paperwork, etc.) would add to the costs. Even with these additional expenditures, this activity is a good investment for the laboratory if you look at the results from a business standpoint.
In the next section, we demonstrate this advantage by calculating the ROI for making this change. |
Calculating ROI for Smaller HPLC Columns
by Robert Zarracina, Business Development Manager
Return on investment (ROI) is the rate of benefits received for an investment in an item or activity. See the discussion in our September newsletter (Vol. 1, No. 3) for more details. It is calculated as:
ROI = 100 * (Benefit - Cost)/Cost
Any ROI over 20% is usually considered a good investment.
For a simple column change, the savings are $5,250 and the cost for the change is $4,000.
ROI = 100 * (5,250 - 4,000)/4,000 = 31%
For a more complicated situation involving two instruments, use of an outside expert, and method validation, the benefits are $12,600 for an investment of $10,700.
ROI = 100 * (12,600 - 10,700)/10,700 = 18%
Would You Like to Learn More?
This discussion is from an article entitled "Investing to Save" that will appear in the December, 2012 issue of
Lab Manager Magazine. Please visit their website to read the full version: Lab Manager Magazine On-Line
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Expense Saving Solutions from
ACCTA, Inc.
With three decades of experience teaching labs about how to get the most from their chromatography systems, we are confident that we can make improvements to your methods and procedures, and save your laboratory both time and money. Click here for more details. |
Regards,
Merlin K. L. Bicking, Ph.D.
ACCTA, Inc. |
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Get a Free CBA
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| Concerned about the cost and benefits of the investments that we describe? Contact us for a personalized Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) that will show your management what a good investment this can be. Contact Robert Zarracina for details. |
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