Cytovance Biologics

“Clustermarket helped streamline procedures in our R&D labs through their easy to use equipment scheduling platform, which improved communication and ensured we had an accurate way to track our instrument utilization.” - Vy Trinh at Cytovance Biologics

Lab profile

• Number of users - 34
• Number of instruments - 17
• Type of lab – R&D labs in a biopharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing organization
• Location - Oklahoma City, US
• Previous system - Excel spreadsheets

Founded in 2005, Cytovance Biologics, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing organization specializing in the production of therapeutic proteins and antibodies from mammalian cell culture and microbial fermentation. At their state-of the-art facilities, Cytovance Biologics offers process and analytical development, cGMP manufacturing services, and complementary support services. Their mission is to be a responsive, reliable, and resourceful partner to their clients to help them reach their development goals.

Problem

Before adopting Clustermarket’s easy to use asset management system, R&D labs at Cytovance Biologics were using Excel spreadsheets to reserve equipment time and keep track of instrument usage. Housing a large variety of instruments in several different labs made this difficult to manage and keep track of only with the use of spreadsheets.

In addition, housing sensitive instruments such as Cytovance Biologic's mass spectrometers from ThermoFisher Scientific Inc., and Octets from Sartorius, meant ensuring a proper schedule. In addition to scheduling, monitoring the usage was crucial to avoid breakage and damage of the instruments‍. Accurate tracking of equipment usage provides important information used to assess capacity and accurately forecast equipment needs.

Solution

To give their users the option to see all the instruments available to them and plan their experiments more efficiently, Cytovance Biologics decided to implement the Clustermarket lab asset scheduling system. In addition to ensuring users could see the available equipment and book it at their own convenience, it also gave an overview of equipment usage and utilization. 

Another hassle that Clustermarket helped tackle was managing access to different instruments. With Clustermarket in place, Cytovance Biologics is now able to invite users and manage their permissions to ensure the correct instruments are available for them for scheduling. The scheduling of instruments is based on the rules set by the admin.

Clustermarket’s easy-to-use announcement feature also helps ensure consistent communications when an instrument needs to be calibrated or is down. This helps keep track of instrument downtime and maintenance as well as any recurring issues.