Tales of Wales, Money for Free and of Newly Discovered dieases

Several months ago I was called out of the blue by a Canadian firm who was helping to establish connections for a Welsh delegation coming to Maryland to strum up business through collaboration.  I was considering hosting a special BioBeers for them here, but that never panned out.  What was established is being called International Business Wales, Washington Mission Portal.  Amongst the delegation are a number of Life Science Companies.  The briefing for Life Science companies and an opportunity for one-on-one discussions is next Friday, June 26th in Alexandria (unfortunately).  I am going to attend.  If anyone would like to tag along, please let me know.  I think you will be quite surprised when you investigate the amount of Life Science research going on in Wales.  I know I was.  Plus, one of the companies, in particular, is doing almost exactly what I am trying to do with placenta.  For me, as great fit.

That is next Friday.  Next Thursday is the long awaited return of the MdBio Golf Outing at Whiskey Creek.  My team is set and ready to roll.  I hope some of you have also signed up.  This used to be to highlight of the year for many of us.  Networking and a Reunion all rolled up into one.

On a totally unrelated topic, I was amused reading an article in the Frederick News Post this morning about the on-going inventory audit at USAMRIID.  Amused because i don’t blame the way this was reported, but having worked in inventory control & logistics for 15 some odd years, discovering 9,200 “finds”, items they didn’t know they ever had isn’t unusual. The article says there were over 70,000 total counted sample. One should report the result in terms of the accuracy of the inventory.  In this case, for simplicity, say (70,000 -9,200)/70,000 =  87% accurate.  In my experience, if the only thing the auditors were going off of, as the article implies, were excel spreadsheets and lab notebooks, I would be surprised if an academic lab like USAMRIID could sustain over 60% accuracy over the decades these samples have been stored there.  Still, this does not present a seriously “out of control” situation.  But one word of warning:  conducting a “physical inventory” once per year (again, just quoting the article), is a HUGE, ENORMOUS, stupid and foolish waste of time!!!  For the past 20 years the way to maintain control of your inventory is to conduct periodic, weekly, cycle counts:  randomly selected items or locations.  The frequency and number of counts is determined by total inventory and the degree of accuracy you’d like to maintain.  In this case, lets say they have 70,000 vials to count.  If every week  1,500 vials were counted from random locations (which isn’t difficult since they’re being stored in cryo racks I assume containing multiples per box), the entire inventory would be counted in 47 weeks.    Or say 300 per day.  And even more important, cycle counts are more likely to catch mistakes or systemic errors closer to the time they occur.  Yikes, the book on cycle counts vs and Annual Physical Inventory were written a long time ago.  That rant accomplished, most companies still do physical inventories because the accountants like it.  Stupid.

And lastly, I want to briefly comment on the story (HERE and HERE and also heard on WFMD) breaking this week about Life Technologies being granted money through the state and city for their expansion into the old PGC building.  Howard left a comment about this earlier.  I worked DBED on a PWQ grant while with the former Life Technologies for $25K to train new employees for the Distribution center we were building.  I remember John Gardner, our Comptroller or something like that (his wife is now a county commissioner), asking why on earth do we need $25K from DBED when our operating profit was something like $50MM the year before?  Yes, we used to be that profitable before the IVGN debacle. My opinion is that any money the State/County can provide to assist in creating jobs is going to be paid back in probably the first year in sales tax, income taxes and construction contracts to build out the new facility.  It is money well spent that will be returned.  If this isn’t the role of Economic Development, better on a “sure thing”, then what is?  Providing loans to risky start-ups?

And b y the way, I may have said at one point I thought that Life Tech was putting Stem Cell stuff in the new building:  totally wrong.  I learned from an insider that the new facility is going to be used as a distribution Center for the ABI products.  Since ABI systems are used for diagnostics, they need a cGMP facility and controls.  So, good news:  the new facility is taking jobs away from California!  All more reason to spend locally!