North West Labs Proves Third-Party Service Can Cut Equipment Costs by $1M+ Without Sacrificing Reliability
Industry: Clinical Reference Laboratory
Specialization: Toxicology, PCR Testing, Women’s Health, UTI Testing
Location: Michigan
Partnership Duration: 2018-Present (formalized 2021)
Equipment: Sciex 4500 LC-MS/MS Systems
By the Numbers
Overview
In 2021, North West Labs faced a decision most growing reference labs eventually confront: stay with expensive OEM service that isn’t keeping up with operational needs, or put equipment reliability into the hands of a third-party provider.
Their service was taking weeks to schedule site visits. For a clinical reference lab specializing in toxicology, PCR testing, women’s health, and UTI diagnostics, processing over a thousand samples daily with 24-hour turnaround commitments, that response time put client relationships at risk.
They made the switch to Innovative Lab Services (ILS). The results proved what many labs suspect but hesitate to act on: third-party providers can deliver faster response, better service, and lower equipment costs without compromising reliability. North West Labs went from 3 systems to 12 in four years, and their turnaround commitments never slipped.
You don’t have to choose between affordability and reliability. You can have both.
Challenges
Volume Outpacing Service Capacity
North West Labs’ toxicology clients, including drug screening facilities, pain management clinics, and legal investigators, depend on strict 24-hour turnarounds. Miss those windows and the consequences are immediate: clients leave, cases stall, treatment decisions get delayed.
“Drug screening facilities can’t wait,” says Justin Nickell, Technical Supervisor and Consultant for North West Labs. “People could go back to jail. It’s extremely time-sensitive.”
By 2018, the lab was processing over a thousand samples daily. Their OEM service relationship, which had worked at a smaller scale, couldn’t keep pace with that volume. When instrument downtime stretched from days into weeks, the math became stark: a single day down created a backlog of hundreds, if not thousands, of samples. Two days meant clients missing their windows. Three days meant losing those clients.
Slow & Insufficient Troubleshooting
The service experience became predictable in the worst way. Call for support, wait for a callback, then hear the earliest site visit is weeks out.
“You couldn’t get anybody out for 2-3 weeks,” Nickell recalls. “When you’re running samples non-stop, that’s not acceptable.”
Troubleshooting felt transactional. OEM support would default to questioning methodology instead of investigating the equipment. “We’d have the same method running on 20 instruments across the company, but they weren’t hearing the real concerns,” Nickell says.
Every day of instrument downtime meant growing backlogs and mounting pressure to meet commitments clients wouldn’t tolerate missing.
High Capital Investment
To increase capacity, North West Labs would have to purchase new equipment. However, new Sciex 4500LC/MS systems typically range from $300,000 to $400,000 each1, making aggressive expansion out of reach.
Solution
First Impressions with ILS
It was July 2018, the day before the 4th of July weekend. North West Labs was in the middle of a critical validation project in Kentucky when they discovered their new Sciex instrument had been installed incorrectly. With the holiday approaching and samples waiting, the situation was urgent.
Alan Miller, Founder and Senior Field Engineer at Innovative Lab Services, showed up the next day to fix it.
“Alan came there the next day to fix it,” Nickell says. “[That showed me they understood the] high urgency and [had] a way to get things done right.”
That response time, next-day service over the 4th of July weekend, stood in sharp contrast to the weeks-long scheduling North West Labs had come to expect. Nickell started recommending ILS to other labs. By 2021, North West Labs formally partnered with ILS as their third-party analytical equipment service provider.
Faster Response Times and Comprehensive Support
North West Labs needed a partner that could match the urgency of their testing volumes. ILS structured their service delivery around immediate responsiveness and direct communication rather than rigid contract terms.
“They get a person every time they call, not a machine,” says Cody Wickham, Field Service Manager at ILS. “We work with their specific needs rather than forcing them into rigid contract terms.”
Where OEM service required weeks to schedule site visits, ILS engineers were typically on-site within a day. For urgent issues, they’d stay late to get instruments operational. Nickell recalls service calls that stretched past midnight.
“If we only have 9-to-5 to work on an issue, [we can’t get samples out on time and] we’re dead,” Nickell says. “When instruments go down, ILS stays until they’re running again. That’s not something you see with OEM service.”
As North West Labs scaled, ILS adapted its support model. They bolstered local engineering capacity to ensure it maintained rapid on-site response times. They maintain strategic parts inventory for North West Labs’ specific instrument models, eliminating backorder delays.
The service relationship also adjusted as North West Labs built internal technical capabilities. What started as full troubleshooting and repair shifted toward collaborative problem-solving, with ILS providing backup when issues exceeded internal expertise.
ILS technicians work across the full analytical path. When methods underperform, they don’t limit troubleshooting to hardware or declare “it’s not the instrument.”
“A lot of service teams won’t touch applications,” Nickell says. “They’ll say, ‘call your technical supervisor, that’s not our job.’ ILS will assist clients. A lot of places find that attractive.”
When North West Labs encounters method development challenges or unexpected performance issues, ILS helps diagnose whether problems originate from the instrument, the method, or sample preparation. The approach extends beyond break-fix service to preventive maintenance and collaborative troubleshooting.
For a lab processing over a thousand samples daily with a 24-hour turnaround, that support model meant the equipment became a reliable infrastructure, not an operational risk.
Refurbished Equipment at Half the Cost
North West Labs also took advantage of ILS’s refurbished equipment program. Through it, they could purchase refurbished Sciex 4500 LC-MS systems, saving $150,000-$250,000 per instrument. Over multiple purchases, this approach saved North West Labs more than $500,000 cumulatively compared to buying new equipment. That pricing difference made expansion financially viable.
The question was whether refurbished equipment could perform reliably under high-volume testing conditions. North West Labs had seen brand-new instruments fail.
“We’d seen brand-new instruments come out of the box with problems,” Nickell says. “It’s not about how new it is. It’s about whether it’s been properly tested and validated.”
ILS addresses this by running customer-specific applications before delivery, not just generic OEM methods. They test using North West Labs’ actual analytical methods: baseline noise requirements, sensitivity targets, the specific conditions the instruments will face in production.
Wickham explains the approach: “We run a mini validation right before delivery using their actual methods. They know exactly what they’re getting before it ships.”
This thorough pre-delivery validation means equipment arrives ready for production use. Because ILS validates instruments with the customer’s actual methods, problems get caught and resolved before delivery rather than after installation.
A Full-Service Third-Party Provider
ILS sells, installs, and maintains the equipment—an integrated approach that eliminates the coordination problems that come with multi-vendor relationships.
“[Some labs] buy equipment off eBay or through a broker, someone else installs it, and when something goes wrong, nobody takes responsibility,” Wickham says. “The shipper blames the installer, the installer blames the equipment seller.”
With ILS, North West Labs instead only has to make one call to one team when issues arise. No diagnosing whether problems originate with the LC system or the mass spec, no coordinating between separate vendors to troubleshoot.
Results
Uptime That Protects Client Commitments
ILS typically arrives on-site within 12-24 hours for critical issues. Systems are rarely down for more than 1-2 days, compared to waiting 2-3 weeks just to schedule an OEM visit. That difference in response time directly protects North West Labs’ ability to meet turnaround commitments.
Since partnering with ILS, North West Labs hasn’t missed a committed turnaround time due to equipment failure.
Aggressive Growth Became Financially Viable
North West Labs started with 3 systems under ILS service in 2021. Today, they have 12 systems under contract, with 6 sold directly by ILS.
Growth Summary:
- 2021: 3 systems under ILS service
- 2025: 12 total systems
- ILS-supplied equipment: 6 refurbished systems
- Cost savings: $900,000 to $1.5 million in avoided equipment costs
- Cost per system: ~$150,000 (refurbished) vs. $300,000-$400,000 (new)
The fleet quadrupled in four years because refurbished equipment made expansion affordable without sacrificing reliability. At roughly half the cost of new equipment, those six ILS systems helped North West Labs avoid an estimated $900,000 to $1.5 million in equipment costs.
Conclusion
Most reference labs assume they have to pick one: pay premium prices for OEM service, or save money on equipment but risk reliability problems. North West Labs didn’t accept that trade-off.
Key Results:
- Response time: 12-hour emergency response vs. 2-3 week OEM scheduling
- Cost savings: $900,000-$1.5M in avoided equipment costs
- Reliability: Zero missed turnaround commitments since 2021
- Growth: Fleet expanded from 3 to 12 systems in four years
The numbers tell the story. Their partnership with ILS cut response times from weeks to hours, saved close to a million dollars in equipment costs, and never missed a turnaround deadline. The fleet went from 3 systems to 12 because the economics actually worked.
But the partnership became more than a cost-saving measure. “It was a dialogue, not a one-sided exchange,” Nickell says. “ILS became an unofficial member of our team.” When your service provider understands your operation well enough to troubleshoot alongside the equipment, they stop being a vendor and become part of the infrastructure.
For other reference labs hitting capacity limits, the takeaway is simple: third-party service doesn’t mean compromising on reliability. It can mean the opposite—faster response, lower costs, and the financial room to actually grow.
1 NY.GOV Price List (November 21st, 2025)
