The Animal Facilities Management module is used to operate an animal facility and track animal inventory. In addition to tracking individual animal information, facility administrative staff can use the Census and Inventory features to identify how many animals are in the facility, and what is the current capacity at each animal storage level. The capacity is defined initially for each area, and setups include the number of sub-nodes per location, (for example, racks per room or rooms per floor). At the animal level, number fields define enclosures per rack (a rack holds groups of enclosures) and housing units number fields define the maximum of how many animals can reside in an enclosure.
With these setups in place, the capacity of the individual facilities, buildings, floors, rooms, racks, and enclosures can be managed and easily queried. Results will indicate the capacity at each level, and provide animal staff with locations and how much space is available to add new animals. This information is invaluable as a tool to manage staff responsibilities and allocate resources as animal capacity increases. Extra or underutilized space can be identified to streamline efficiency and eliminate waste, whereas crowded areas can be indentified and better managed.
