Storage strategies rarely fail all at once. More often, they become less effective over time.
A facility footprint changes, equipment accumulates, programs wind down or scale up, project timelines shift, or assets that were supposed to be stored temporarily remain in place for months. Meanwhile, inventory processes, access requirements, and quality expectations continue evolving around them.
That’s why periodically conducting a life science storage audit can be valuable, especially for facilities, lab operations, supply chain, and project teams managing multiple locations or ongoing transitions.
This means a practical operational review of whether your current approach still supports the way your organization works today. The goal is to identify friction, unnecessary cost, space constraints, and risk before they become bigger project or operational problems.
1. Your Inventory Data Doesn’t Match What’s Actually in Storage
One of the clearest signs that a storage program needs attention is uncertainty around what’s there.
Inventory records may exist, but teams still rely on spreadsheets, emails, tribal knowledge, or physical walkthroughs to confirm whether an asset is actually in storage, where it’s located, or what condition it’s in.
That becomes especially challenging when equipment moves between facilities, storage locations, OEMs, or project sites.
A useful inventory system should make it easy to answer basic operational questions:
- What do we have?
- Where is it?
- Who owns it?
- What condition is it in?
- What happens next?
If those answers require multiple people or systems, the storage process may be creating unnecessary work.
2. Retrieving Equipment Has Become a Project of Its Own
Stored assets should be accessible based on how and when they’re likely to be needed.
If retrieving equipment requires significant reshuffling, multiple vendor calls, manual searching, or days of coordination, the issue may be the storage strategy rather than the individual request.
Look at how frequently assets are accessed and whether storage placement reflects those patterns. Equipment waiting for near-term installation, calibration, redeployment, or OEM service should generally be positioned differently from items expected to remain untouched for an extended period.
Retrieval time is a useful operational metric. If access is consistently slower or more complicated than teams expect, it’s worth examining why.
3. Valuable Onsite Space Is Being Used for Assets That Don’t Need to Be There
Facilities teams are often under pressure to do more with existing space.
Yet labs, staging areas, corridors, support spaces, and other valuable real estate can gradually become holding areas for equipment that’s inactive, awaiting disposition, or tied to a future project.
The question isn’t simply whether an asset can stay onsite. It’s whether keeping it there is the best use of the space.
A life science storage audit should identify equipment that could be moved offsite without disrupting current operations. That can help free space for active research, new equipment, construction work, or changing program needs while keeping assets available when they’re actually required.
4. Your Storage Requirements Have Changed Since the Program Was Designed
A storage model that worked two years ago may not match today’s requirements or where you’re headed.
Your asset mix may have changed. Quality teams may require different documentation. New programs may introduce materials with tighter environmental controls. Internal SOPs, monitoring expectations, security requirements, or customer requirements may also evolve.
That makes it important to periodically reassess whether each storage environment still matches the assets being held there.
For some assets, secure ambient storage may be appropriate. Others may require controlled temperatures, environmental monitoring, backup systems, maintenance records, or more formal chain-of-custody processes.
Storage requirements should follow the assets and their current use case, rather than staying fixed because “that’s where we’ve always stored them.”
5. Equipment Is Staying in Storage Without a Clear Next Step
Temporary storage has a way of becoming long-term storage.
An asset may originally be held during construction, a relocation, a program pause, or a facility consolidation. Months later, it’s still there, with no defined plan for redeployment, sale, disposal, installation, or continued storage.
That creates both cost and operational complexity.
During a storage audit, every asset or asset category should have a reason for being retained and, where possible, a next decision point. That doesn’t mean every piece of equipment needs an immediate destination. It does mean teams should know why they’re keeping it and when that decision will be reviewed again.
6. Storage & Transportation Are Managed as Separate Workstreams
Storage is often one step in a much larger asset movement.
Equipment may be decommissioned, transported into storage, accessed for service, moved to another facility, and eventually recommissioned. When storage and transportation are managed independently, each transition can add another handoff, vendor, process, or documentation gap.
Review how assets move into and out of storage today. If every retrieval requires rebuilding the logistics plan from scratch, there may be an opportunity to simplify the workflow.
For organizations managing relocations, expansions, consolidations, or phased installations, integrating storage with transportation planning can reduce unnecessary handling and improve visibility across the full asset lifecycle.
What Should a Life Science Storage Audit Evaluate?
A useful life science storage audit should give facilities and operations leaders a clear picture of what’s working, where friction exists, and which changes would have the greatest operational impact.
At minimum, review:
- Inventory accuracy, ownership, condition, and location
- Storage utilization and onsite versus offsite space requirements
- Retrieval frequency, access times, and recurring bottlenecks
- Environmental, security, monitoring, and documentation requirements
- Assets without a defined disposition or future-use plan
- Transportation, handoffs, and workflows into and out of storage
The output doesn’t need to be a complete redesign. In many cases, the biggest improvements come from identifying a few recurring issues and correcting the process around them.
How Sterling Can Help Assess Your Life Science Storage Strategy
Sterling Life Science Logistics helps facilities, lab operations, supply chain, and project teams evaluate how equipment and materials are currently being stored, accessed, tracked, and moved.
That assessment can include inventory and space needs, environmental requirements, asset accessibility, transportation workflows, and upcoming facility or project plans.
From there, Sterling supports secure ambient or cold storage, inventory management, specialized transportation, chain-of-custody needs, and coordinated movement between facilities and storage locations as requirements change.
The goal is to make sure your storage strategy still fits your operation rather than allowing yesterday’s temporary solution to become tomorrow’s bottleneck.
Wondering whether your current storage approach is still working?
Book time with Jonathan Vargas, Director of Lab Operations, to review your current setup, upcoming needs, and opportunities to simplify your storage and logistics strategy.
