All Members Community

Hello all,  

Our core facility has many mass spectrometry systems (around 13, I believe), and as a result has a considerable service contract budget.  We have  been contemplating alternative models to service contracts, and i am interested to hear the community's thoughts and experience.  

We currently have contracts with several mass spectrometry vendors, as well as a third party provider.   It isn't that we are unhappy with the service, necessarily, but are trying to find a way to reduce the expenses in keeping instruments functional.   The third party provider has helped with that with some vendors (not all), but the budget is still quite large.

We are therefore thinking about a model where we basically self-insure.   Take all the money we would have spent on service contracts, put in a pot, and pay for services as need arises.   This could include both preventative maintenance and/or repairs.     However there are some questions which arise as we think through this: 

1. our university policy prevents large carry over from year to year - if we put aside a large chunk of money one year and do not have many repairs (woo-hoo!), do we lose the money?
2. Are the mass spectrometery vendors going to provide good support on a contract basis if we do not have a contract? 
3. How likely is this model to actually save money? 
4. Should we consider hiring a person to help support the PM/repair needs, or are we better off paying the vendors to have their people do all the work?  
5. If we do go off contract, and decide it was a bad idea, can we get back on contract without paying an extra fee? 

What i would love to hear from everyone is

1. whether you have operated without contracts
2. If so,
   1. how you managed repairs/maintenance
   2. how you feel it compares financially to a full or partial service contract. 

I am thinking specifically about mass spectrometry, but other high-end instrument discussions are welcomed too!  Thanks in advance, 

Corey

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Corey Broeckling
Colorado State University
Fort Collins CO
------------------------------

Hi Corey,  I hope you are able to join us in Minneapolis for the annual meeting.  We are having a plenary session on April 23 at 9 AM to discuss all of these options (an perhaps to vent some frustrations).  "Service and maintenance of research equipment represents a large portion of any given core facility budget. With the cost of the service contracts increasing year after year, many SRLs are struggling to find solutions to maintain their equipment while balancing their spreadsheets. Yet very few alternative options are made available on the market by manufacturers. During this round table session, we will discuss the current environment with our panelists Brooke Beam Massani, Director of Research Support Services at the University of Arizona; Julie Auger, Executive Director at the Salk Institute; and Roy Martin, Senior Field Marketing Manager for Biological Mass Spectrometry at Waters. This diverse panel will allow us to explore the current needs of the SRLs and the potential solutions that could be developed from the perspective of both the core facility management and the industry points of view."

I hope you can be there!

Roxann

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Roxann Ashworth
Laboratory Director
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore MD
------------------------------

Great to hear this will be a discussion topic!  Unfortunately i will not be at the conference, but some of my CSU colleagues will.   if anyone has experience in this area, i am still eager to hear of it.  

------------------------------
Corey Broeckling
Colorado State University
Fort Collins CO
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 04-01-2024 08:41
From: Roxann Ashworth
Subject: Alternatives to Service Contracts

Hi Corey,  I hope you are able to join us in Minneapolis for the annual meeting.  We are having a plenary session on April 23 at 9 AM to discuss all of these options (an perhaps to vent some frustrations).  "Service and maintenance of research equipment represents a large portion of any given core facility budget. With the cost of the service contracts increasing year after year, many SRLs are struggling to find solutions to maintain their equipment while balancing their spreadsheets. Yet very few alternative options are made available on the market by manufacturers. During this round table session, we will discuss the current environment with our panelists Brooke Beam Massani, Director of Research Support Services at the University of Arizona; Julie Auger, Executive Director at the Salk Institute; and Roy Martin, Senior Field Marketing Manager for Biological Mass Spectrometry at Waters. This diverse panel will allow us to explore the current needs of the SRLs and the potential solutions that could be developed from the perspective of both the core facility management and the industry points of view."

I hope you can be there!

Roxann

------------------------------
Roxann Ashworth
Laboratory Director
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore MD
------------------------------

Hi Corey, 

I am not sure if mass spectrometry equipment is similar to microscopy, but I can give you some feedback based on what I've learned about microscope service contracts. The main reason to have a service contract (other than having troubleshooting and repairs covered) is to be at the top of the list for getting assistance from the vendor service department. If your core facility is like ours, if the equipment is down and not operational for users or projects, then the core will lose money and the reputation of the core could be impacted. If you do not have an active service contract, you are at the bottom of the list to get assistance and this may take a long time for the company to respond or have time to come to your location in-person to fix anything. In order to decide on whether a service contract is worth the cost, you may have to keep track/consider past service needs. There will be years that more service is needed. Perhaps calculate the cost of the service visits and repairs if they happened outside of a contract. For instance, an older Argon laser on a laser scanning confocal costs about $25,000, so if one needs to be replaced, the labor, travel and parts for this one repair would cover the annual service contract. But we do not need a new laser every year. We keep our service contracts on our laser scanning confocal microscopes to have fast response and for variable levels of parts needed. If you can hire someone who knows how to perform service on many systems, that would probably be more economical. For many advanced microscopy systems, this is not very common (though others can weigh in on this), but I have heard of a couple cores that do their own laser scanning confocal repairs. We do not service contracts on all systems, though.  Regarding your question of being off contract and then trying to get back under contract, this is a question for the vendor. They will have different policies. We do not have service contracts for some of our basic systems or older systems that can not be fully covered. I would suggest trying to connect with other mass spec core facilities. I am not sure how similar the situation is for mass spec and light microscopy equipment.  

Lisa Cameron

Duke University Light Microscopy Core Facility

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Lisa Cameron
Director, Light Microscopy Core Facility
Duke University
Durham NC
------------------------------

Hi Corey,

 In our metabolomics core, we don't carry contracts on any of our instruments. We also have 13 mass specs in the core, 9 of them from a single vendor. Our staff is extremely skilled, and can repair most problems themselves. They've developed a good relationship with their main vendor, and have never had issues getting parts or service when we needed it. It helps that we have some redundancy among instruments so if one goes down things may slow, but we're not at a complete stop. Doing it this way is a big cost savings for us. We spend about 25K to 45K annually on various repairs, which is much more cost effective than keeping service contracts on all the instruments.

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Natasha Nikolaidis
Associate Director of Operations
Purdue University
West Lafayette IN
------------------------------

Natasha - thanks for this!  this is great feedback.  

------------------------------
Corey Broeckling
Colorado State University
Fort Collins CO
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 04-02-2024 10:15
From: Natasha Nikolaidis
Subject: Alternatives to Service Contracts

Hi Corey,

 In our metabolomics core, we don't carry contracts on any of our instruments. We also have 13 mass specs in the core, 9 of them from a single vendor. Our staff is extremely skilled, and can repair most problems themselves. They've developed a good relationship with their main vendor, and have never had issues getting parts or service when we needed it. It helps that we have some redundancy among instruments so if one goes down things may slow, but we're not at a complete stop. Doing it this way is a big cost savings for us. We spend about 25K to 45K annually on various repairs, which is much more cost effective than keeping service contracts on all the instruments.

------------------------------
Natasha Nikolaidis
Associate Director of Operations
Purdue University
West Lafayette IN
------------------------------

I'm in a microscopy core and can share experiences from that perspective.  The Microscopy Society of America has Focused Interest Groups (FIGs) with one being FOM (Facilities Operation and Management) and I used to attend their session during the annual meeting.  The topic of OEM (original equipment manufacturer) service contracts versus "insurance providers" was a recurring discussion.  The "insurance providers" like SU (Specialty Underwriters) and Remy offer an alternative to OEM contracts at roughly a 30% discount.  They contacted our purchasing department asking that they have a shot at our service contracts, which I resisted strongly.  These "providers" state that you can choose the OEM for service if you'd like.  That is fine if the OEM will work with them.  Also, the OEM places those customers who have a contract with them ahead of insurance claims for both on-site service and parts.  You need the one part from their inventory as an insurance client, the OEM contract person gets it.  One OEM I worked with said that they would not perform service unless I issued a PO for the total amount of the repair, so that if the insurance company failed to pay, they would charge my PO.  That doesn't seem like a good savings to me and is more paperwork, which is what I experienced from actually having one instrument covered by an insurance provider.  When that system had issues, I had to contact the insurance company and ask for a PO to be generated with an estimated cost of repair.  If while on-site, the service engineer discovered more issues or needed additional parts, I had to submit more paperwork, which could potentially delay the repair.  Most service engineers run a tight schedule and don't want to hang around while the paperwork flows back and forth and honestly, I have better things to do with my time than shuffle paperwork.  

If you go down that path and are not happy, most vendors will require that the instrument needs to be "re-certified" at your expense.  They want to send a service engineer to make sure it is 100% functional before offering a new service contract on it.  The lab pays for the engineer's travel, per diem, on-site labor and materials to get back to contract level.  

So does this save money?  Depends on whether you have the time to deal with the bureaucracy and if you can afford instrument down time. 

I know of one lab that hired a service engineer to take care of all the EM's on campus.  That is an option as long as you can get parts from the vendor. 

So obviously, I'm not a fan of alternative service options out there.  I quit using them on the one piece of instrumentation and have stuck with OEM contracts.  I used my experiences to present the pitfalls to administration to show that for research flow, this was not a true savings.  I was able to get a larger subvention in my budget for service contracts. 

On a similar tangent, I just had an EOL (end of life) event on one confocal recently, vendor couldn't source parts so they dropped the contract.  They were able to suggest a former service engineer who struck out on his own. He has been buying de-commissioned system to add to his warehouse, from which he gets his parts supply.  Maybe there is a similar entrepreneur in the mass spec area.  

Best of luck,

Randy

------------------------------
Randy Nessler
Director, Central Microscopy Research Facility
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA
------------------------------

Thanks Randy,  sounds like you have lived through some of the concerns we have.  I appreciate the account.  

------------------------------
Corey Broeckling
Colorado State University
Fort Collins CO
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 09:44
From: Randy Nessler
Subject: Alternatives to Service Contracts

I'm in a microscopy core and can share experiences from that perspective.  The Microscopy Society of America has Focused Interest Groups (FIGs) with one being FOM (Facilities Operation and Management) and I used to attend their session during the annual meeting.  The topic of OEM (original equipment manufacturer) service contracts versus "insurance providers" was a recurring discussion.  The "insurance providers" like SU (Specialty Underwriters) and Remy offer an alternative to OEM contracts at roughly a 30% discount.  They contacted our purchasing department asking that they have a shot at our service contracts, which I resisted strongly.  These "providers" state that you can choose the OEM for service if you'd like.  That is fine if the OEM will work with them.  Also, the OEM places those customers who have a contract with them ahead of insurance claims for both on-site service and parts.  You need the one part from their inventory as an insurance client, the OEM contract person gets it.  One OEM I worked with said that they would not perform service unless I issued a PO for the total amount of the repair, so that if the insurance company failed to pay, they would charge my PO.  That doesn't seem like a good savings to me and is more paperwork, which is what I experienced from actually having one instrument covered by an insurance provider.  When that system had issues, I had to contact the insurance company and ask for a PO to be generated with an estimated cost of repair.  If while on-site, the service engineer discovered more issues or needed additional parts, I had to submit more paperwork, which could potentially delay the repair.  Most service engineers run a tight schedule and don't want to hang around while the paperwork flows back and forth and honestly, I have better things to do with my time than shuffle paperwork.  

If you go down that path and are not happy, most vendors will require that the instrument needs to be "re-certified" at your expense.  They want to send a service engineer to make sure it is 100% functional before offering a new service contract on it.  The lab pays for the engineer's travel, per diem, on-site labor and materials to get back to contract level.  

So does this save money?  Depends on whether you have the time to deal with the bureaucracy and if you can afford instrument down time. 

I know of one lab that hired a service engineer to take care of all the EM's on campus.  That is an option as long as you can get parts from the vendor. 

So obviously, I'm not a fan of alternative service options out there.  I quit using them on the one piece of instrumentation and have stuck with OEM contracts.  I used my experiences to present the pitfalls to administration to show that for research flow, this was not a true savings.  I was able to get a larger subvention in my budget for service contracts. 

On a similar tangent, I just had an EOL (end of life) event on one confocal recently, vendor couldn't source parts so they dropped the contract.  They were able to suggest a former service engineer who struck out on his own. He has been buying de-commissioned system to add to his warehouse, from which he gets his parts supply.  Maybe there is a similar entrepreneur in the mass spec area.  

Best of luck,

Randy

------------------------------
Randy Nessler
Director, Central Microscopy Research Facility
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 4/3/2024 11:47:00 AM
From: Corey Broeckling
Subject: RE: Alternatives to Service Contracts

Thanks Randy,  sounds like you have lived through some of the concerns we have.  I appreciate the account.  

------------------------------
Corey Broeckling
Colorado State University
Fort Collins CO
------------------------------