Tips for Ordering Dental Supplies and Keeping Your Dental Supply Inventory
We know it’s important to efficiently manage the inventory and the ordering of the dental supplies for the dental office.
It is essential to ensure we do this to have smooth operations and avoid shortages or overstock, so we want to have some strategies that can help us streamline the process.
Inventory management
You should have a system for inventory management and there are some software programs available that help to manage supplies. It helps to set order points and helps managing the orders.
There may be costs involved for these programs that exceed your budget.
You could also manage this with a spreadsheet to keep an inventory of how many items you’re supposed to have in stock and minimum quantities.
You could also have an order list each week so that when items are below the minimum, you can place it on the order list. Then as the items come in and the receipts come in, you can match it up to the order list to confirm that the orders arrived and match it to the list.
Organize essential vs non-essential supplies
You might also consider organizing supplies by essential versus non-essential supplies.
There may be some items that are lower priority, but certainly the items that you consider most essential, they should always be checked carefully each order cycle.
You can also group supplies by type such as restorative materials, hygiene, disposables, so it’s easier to check a certain item at a certain time.
Minimum order threshold
You want to set a minimum threshold level so that it’s clear to know when we need to reorder.
If it takes a week to deliver and we know how many of this item we use in a week, then we should know at what point we need to order.
Again, we don’t want to have too many products, but we need to order in time to make sure we have time for the new item to arrive before we run out.
Audit the supplies
It’s important to have regular audits of the supplies, whether it’s monthly or weekly, just to check the inventory against any list of what you think you have to help identify discrepancies or misuse.
Check the expiration dates to make sure everything is up to date.
Use the first-in first-out system to make you are using the products that need to be used as soon as possible.
Sometimes you can automate reordering by establishing a partnership with certain vendors that you use a lot, you may be able to have a subscription to help keep a certain item in stock.
Try to consolidate orders.
Ordering frequency
And if there’s certain specials from suppliers , it may be a chance to order more of a certain item if it has a long shelf life and you’ll use it.
Track usage trends so you can look at past inventory usage and know during busy periods how much you use items to help predict needs for the future.
Get input from other staff and have a standard operating procedure that’s clearly understood about how things will be replenished.
It’s important for everyone to know when to order, how to order, who orders, who puts things away.
Understanding the ordering process
Everyone needs to know how the system works so that when they recognize needs, they can help and have an emergency protocol so that if an item is short, how can you get something
quickly?
Are there other dental office locations that you can borrow from?
What are you going to do if something runs out ?
Also, you need to control cost regularly.
Look at the prices from different vendors to make sure you’re getting the best deals.
Monitor for any waste or overuse of certain items, different trends and use from one year to the next.
And then label things clearly on the shelves.
Monitor the suppliers
How are they doing with their delivery times and their accuracy?
Negotiate discounts or better terms if you’re a loyal customer and you buy a lot from this vendor.
Following these strategies are going to help maintain the inventory better, reduce the cost, and make sure that you have the supplies that you need as far as stocking the supplies.
You’ll have some items that are essential and some that are less frequently used.
You probably want to put a certain amount of items in the operatory for ready access, especially if you use those on every patient.
Some supplies can be put in a central lab storage area if they’re used less frequently.
Maybe crown and bridge material or some items like that that could be shared from room to room. And could be placed in a central location like a lab storage area.
And then you may also just want a storage closet area for overflow items to replenish the rooms so that when the usable inventory is used up, there will be a storage closet that you can replenish.
Organize your storage
When organizing the storage closet, it’s good to categorize things.
It can be a central place to store things, almost like a store to go to when you need more in your rooms and in your lab.
Group things by hygiene supplies.
Have adequate shelves and bins that are labelled clearly.
This will make it easy to identify what’s in there, just by looking at it, and have an easy environment to access in the dental operatories when you’re trying to utilize things quickly.
Use drawers and dividers to help separate and categorize supplies. You may have some items on the countertop.
You could also use wall mounted storage, certain shelves, mobile carts can be filled with things, but try to standardize your organization from room to room so that it’s easy to see whichever room you’re in, where to find things and make sure it’s stocked.
We don’t want to store more than we need in each room because it can lead to an excessive inventory. But if everything has a clear spot for it, you’ll be able to more quickly recognize what needs to be restocked.
So have a good supply system, it’s critical for the office. Think about how you handle things, and that way you’ll have a smoother operation for having the supplies you need.
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