July 24, 2003

Procurement hoops

Okay, now that we've established that Laboratory employees aren't a bunch of crooks, can we please come up with a procurement system that doesn't make us jump through hoops to purchase 'non-JIT' items. And also allow us to purchase what we need, how much we need, when we need it from both local and nonlocal vendors? I've spent hundreds of dollars purchasing 'JIT- available' alternatives that turned out to not be the right thing, and dozens of nonproductive hours while waiting (and waiting and tracking and waiting) for items on a purchase request to be ordered and delivered. The current non-status for procurement of R&D materials is a bigger waste of taxpayer money than anything we had in place before.

--Mary Barr