What US brands are in the ATP game?
Got word today my corporation wants to put out an RFP for new ATP readers across our 10 plants and try to secure better pricing on the swabs. Current use for all is Hygiena EnsureTouch machines running primarily UltraSnap swabs with limited SuperSnaps used at a couple plants. Part of the RFP will be online result monitoring with corporate level access to the different plants for downloading and monitoring of the plant activities.
Options seem limited as I start my research into this: Hygiena obviously, 3M merged with NeoGen, and possibly EcoLab seems worthy of inviting. We want to stick with US based companies to speed up shipping of units for repairs and keeping freight costs down on the swabs (we're averaging about 70,000 swabs a year from my trended data across the US). Are there any other players I should include?
Also, if you have horror stories I should hear about from these brands, feel free to share.
Neogen has some decent tracking software, but we have had trouble with getting certain items from them since their merger. Something we took into account when choosing an ATP reader was storage requirements. Neogen swabs require refrigeration whereas MVP Icon swabs from BioControl can be stored at room temp. BioControl's software is a bit outdated and it doesn't look like it supports corporate monitoring, but it does a very good job and is easy to use locally. Their swabs are shipped out of Milwaukee btw.
You might have luck sticking with Hygiena. From what I've seen they have pretty good technology. What's the reason you'd be moving away if you already have the devices and sales relationship?
Neogen is having a hard time servicing all the new business at this point (I think they drastically under thought the volumes) AND they have just spread out cost increases BUT i love love love my 3M dashboard for ATP AND we didn't have to build the units ourselves, 3M did it for us. Everything came ready to rock right out of the box, so if Neogen continues to offer that with the 3M units, I wouldn't use anyone else
at 70000/year, you should be in an ideal place to negotiate pricing for at least 12 months
@MattQA: Thanks for the info. Reason for the RFP is our VP FSQA wants to see if dangling our combined buying power into getting a manufacturer to offer new readers for free or at least a severe discount. We want to get two new readers for each of the plants as our EnsureTouch units are getting a little worse for wear. We don't love Hygiena's turn around time on repairs, 6-8 weeks on average, but at least they do send us loaners. Hygiena's updated subscription model was also a point of contention in November: SureTrend online cloud is still technically available for free, but they told us we would have to start paying about $6,000 a year for Global Admin/corporate access to see all of the separate plants like I had been doing for free. (That hasn't actually changed for me, but it would wreck corproate reporting if it ever does get locked down).
@Scampi, good to know on the NeoGens. NeoGen has been trying to get our attention for about a year and they're offering swabs at a considerable discount, so I'm glad to read that you like the UI.
years ago, I used charm. I'm not sure where they fit into the race these days. I think everyone transitioned to hygiena and 3M.
We're still using Charm, but it's a dinosaur.
We're still using Charm, but it's a dinosaur.
I actually had to look them up to see if they are still around. They always treated me well. Nice to see the reader is much smaller now.
Fellow Neogen user in past roles and loved the ease of use both with the readers and software, all things were fairly seamless. Using Hygiena currently at a new site and not a big fan of the software. Neogen also had some great customer relations and would train staff onsite (even provide certificates of attendance/training verification) which was very valuable. As stated prior with the amount of swabs you are using you should be able to leverage some good pricing.
I was a Charm user for years, but in my facility, ATP really does not have any value add so I don't even use ATP.
Their units are easy to use and the software for reporting is decent.
If nothing else, give them a look.
Marshall