Ordering

One of the most substantial differences I've found between pharma & academia is the process of acquiring reagents. In your average academic lab, a lab manager holds the keys to the ordering machine. You put in your requests with her, in a more or less organized fashion, and at some point she'll order them. In your average pharma unit, everyone has access to the ordering infrastructure and (generally) there is no one person who sees after everyone's orders. There may be a centralized group that keeps the gloves & tips stocked, but nobody's ordering your antibodies for you.

Upsides to the academic system:

• Reduction of waste. There is one set of common restriction enzymes, tissue culture media, tips, gloves, etc, rather than everyone having their own set of stuff.
• Centralization of knowledge. Only one person has to know how to deal with procurement, and resolving purchase orders, and the like.

Downsides to the academic system:

• Centralization of power. If the lab manager is out, or too busy to order, your order will just have to wait until later.
• Imposition of ideals. I've been in a lab where the lab manager decided that we were buying too many Qiagen maxiprep columns, and was only going to buy X amount per month. We always ran out. There were witch trials to figure out who had used extra, and which labs we could pilfer them from.

Upsides to the pharma system:

• Familiarity with the product. I know if I need those ELISA kits ASAP, or if they can wait until later. I also know if Sigma is sold out of the 5g size of something, I'd be happy with a couple of the 1g size instead - lab managers can't know that information off the top of their head.
• Immediacy. I can place an order right now - I don't need to remember which day of the week the orders go in, or if it's too late in the day to place it.

Downsides to the pharma system:

• Decentralization of knowledge. Creating POs at both of the companies I've worked at means you get cryptic emails from the procurement group, hinting that some random purchase order has an 04FE1 error, and it needs to be fixed. What the hell does that mean? There isn't a good contact person to get help from - procurement often can't communicate what needs to be done in a way we can understand, and there often isn't one person in the lab who knows how to fix these errors.
• Redundancy. All three labs on my floor have the same sets of TC media, enzymes, luciferase kits, etc.
  

There are certainly benefits on both sides. Right now, I am dealing with four different POs that have mysterious "faults" in them, and it's taking a lot of my time to try to fix them, and so I'd vastly prefer the academic system at this moment. (Granted, if I were in the academic system, I'd still be the one dealing with these POs, so I guess I don't really gain anything from wishing, do I?)

I think, overall, the way academia handles ordering is probably preferable. I feel like the benefits of having one knowledgeable person in lab & the potential to eliminate (or at least reduce) redundancy outweigh the advantages of immediate ordering.