Coming Soon: New Research Material Management System in Mountaineer Marketplace for HSC Campus

As part of our continuing efforts to simplify and standardize how we operate and help you work smarter, the Procurement, Contracting and Payment Services (PCPS) and Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) teams have partnered to develop a new chemical procurement and inventory system for West Virginia University.

The new system — which is called Research Material Management (RMM) — will be cloud-based and reside in Mountaineer Marketplace.

The platform is designed to streamline the chemical purchasing process and make it easier for users to perform market comparisons of chemicals based on their value, purity and availability.

Further, the system will provide WVU the opportunity to drive volume with preferred suppliers to aid in pricing discounts. Additional benefits include:

• The system will offer real-time updates of storeroom chemicals (usable chemicals other WVU labs no longer need) and allow the sharing/borrowing of chemicals across labs, which will help reduce waste.
• The system will create a chemical inventory by laboratory as purchases are completed and access to safety data sheets will be maintained for all products electronically. In time, this process will replace the annual excel-based chemical inventories.
• The platform will allow administrators to receive notifications on incoming chemical shipments that may require regulatory compliance disclosures.
• EHS personnel will barcode chemicals prior to arrival in the laboratory and will assist in coding chemicals already in inventory (Legacy Chemicals) into the RMM system.

The RMM system will go live on Monday, Aug. 2, for the Morgantown Health Sciences campus. Plans to expand this system to other campuses will follow throughout the coming year.

Users will continue to have access to their current punchout ordering processes (e.g., Fisher, Sigma, Qiagen and VWR) to assure ordering capability during this transition.

However, users are strongly encouraged to use the RMM system whenever possible to begin building a computer-based chemical inventory and to prepare for the discontinuation of competing ordering platforms.

Health Sciences users will receive additional information and instructions via email for using the RMM system. Further, the EHS team will set up Zoom meetings to walk through the system with users after the platform goes live.

In the meantime, users may email RMM@mail.wvu.edu with any questions.