Anyone successfully consolidated lab supplies under fewer vendors without it being a disaster
We run a quarterly review of lab supplies spend and our current setup is honestly a patchwork. PBS comes from one vendor, saline from another, nuclease-free water from a third, and plasticware from a fourth. It works, but it's a nightmare from an accounting and reorder standpoint.
Goal isn't really to minimize cost. It's to stop getting hit with surprise quote variances on routine items. Last quarter the same nuclease-free water we'd been buying for two years suddenly came in 22 percent higher than the previous order, and nobody flagged it. For anyone who's consolidated lab supplies under fewer vendors recently, who did you go with and how has the pricing held up over the next two or three quarters? Any unexpected pain points (lot consistency, shipping, support) once you committed to a single supplier for multiple categories?