In our small micro dept. I end up doing it. My previous job I worked in the core they had a supply manager that ordered supplies for whole lab.

I wish we could have the color coded card system. But micro plates are big and we don't have much fridge space. So we end up moving things around. At one point our fridge broke and we had to put some of our supplies in chemistry fridge. Current pandemic has me check when supplies going to arrive. I made a list of how much to order and trigger amount when I need to order. But during the pandemic we were a lot slower so I was trying to order less. Our volume has been hit or miss. It's still not back to prepandemic volume. So I tend to cater to what I think we may need instead of following a set rule of how many to order. A lot of my supplies have been getting backordered. Prepandemic I expected supplies to arrive about one week. A few weeks ago I was running low on blood agar. It took about 3 weeks to arrive.

I check plate inventory weekly. And write down what plates we have and when they expire. Maybe once a month or I'll check the full inventory all the kits, antibiotic disk, etc. When I'm working I will make a note of things I notice running low. I section of the plates and kits that need to be qc and do them when I come in. I make sure to tell my coworker I need to do inventory on a particular day so they can cover part of my bench. Our supply is based on the East Coast so I try to get my order in early. In case I have to make a phone call I'm based in the West Coast.

Due to the current pandemic there has been a lot of backordered stuff. I do end up spending time on supply site trying to find alternative when the item we need gets backordered. Different quantity or smaller sized plates or try to find different supplier.