Material management services and procurement

Running a laboratory can be expensive, both in money and time. That’s why anything you can do to optimize your supply chain management can help you control your spending and reduce the time your research scientists spend on procurement management. That leaves them free to focus more of their valuable time on science.

Procurement and material management services from Avantor^® are rooted in our 160-year heritage of supporting science with custom on-site strategies to help optimize your supply chain and improve lab productivity.

Benefits of material management services

Our expert, on-site procurement teams start by assessing your current inventory and procurement methods so they can identify opportunities for systemic improvement. Then they combine a vendor-agnostic procurement strategy that takes advantage of the millions of products available through our channel brand, VWR^®. We can also work with other vendors to help you develop a custom supply chain that helps ensure you have the critical lab and research supplies when and where you need them.

A supply chain that works the way your lab works

An agile procurement and material management system helps prepare your lab to scale operations and evolve as needed. That’s why Avantor uses its expertise and insights in managing lab supply chain infrastructure to help prepare to easily accommodate changes in your lab’s operation without disrupting your workflow.

Our procurement and supply chain services strategically manage all incoming and outgoing goods to support your operations and inventory requirements. We use our cloud-based procurement software—Inventory Manager—to take over critical yet time-consuming supply tasks, such as:

• Purchase requisition
• Purchase order management
• Invoice reconciliation
• Vendor consolidation

Inventory Manager is our complete inventory management solution that takes ongoing lab inventory tasks off your shoulders and frees your time for more productive use. Inventory Manager provides reports and data insights that help simplify and optimize your stockroom and point-of-use inventory. It helps identify process improvements that can reduce waste throughout your lab ecosystem.

When used with Avantor’s Chemical Manager application, Inventory Manager provides 360-degree insights that include end-to-end chemical management and container-level tracking and compliance. The combination of Inventory Manager and Chemical Manager helps you mitigate potential risk and safety factors involved in chemical storage.

Explore procurement and material management services capabilities

Procurement and supply chain services

At Avantor, we’re conscientious about every step of our end-to-end procurement and supply chain services, all of which can be customized to meet your needs.

Program management

Effective supply chain management begins with expert management of the entire procurement process and supplier relationship, from sourcing the correct materials to optimizing their placement within your lab ecosystem.

Vendor-agnostic procurement

Custom supply chain management requires choices throughout the procurement process. While millions of products are available through our channel brand VWR, we can also purchase and ship from other vendors. That means we can be your one-stop global procurement partner.

Optimized shipping, receiving, and compliance

Avantor’s Inventory Manager and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems help us create an optimal integration solution for your lab that monitors, manages, and automates time-consuming tasks such as:

• Invoice reconciliation
• Purchase order management
• Vendor consolidation

Inventory Manager lets us coordinate repeat purchases to maintain your optimal materials supplies and ensure that products are easily tracked throughout the shipping and storage processes.

Flexible warehousing solutions

As your lab expands or relocates, continuous easy access to compliant storage space can fundamentally stabilize your supply chain. Avantor’s expertise helps implement warehouse optimization strategies that maximize your on-site storage. Our global warehousing network helps ensure your lab’s ability to leverage compliant storage capacity when needed and is linked to the Inventory Manager’s 360-degree materials visibility and reporting capability to help track and control spending.

Point-of-use inventory management

Your lab scientists can spend their time doing what they do best when focusing solely on their research. Avantor’s on-site teams help them do that by using the Inventory Manager’s insights to identify the essential supplies needed for a lab’s bench science based on historical purchasing data and researcher feedback. Products flow from the supporting stockroom based on the Inventory Manager’s data-based insights to help ensure point-of-use stocking levels are optimized to support on-demand use.