Inside Job

When employees at cancer-testing firm NeoGenomics tracked a specimen through their laboratory last year, they were shocked to discover it traveled one-third of a mile from start to finish.

It's a familiar story for fast-growing companies that continuously add people and equipment. The circuitous route the specimen took through the 26,000-square-foot NeoGenomics lab in Fort Myers wasn't by design. Over time, NeoGenomics has successfully grown its cancer-testing operations to the point that people and equipment were located wherever there was room to put them, without too much regard for workflow.

But NeoGenomics executives decided last year they couldn't wait to reorganize the lab because they knew it couldn't handle the additional work that was coming in the future. “We were operating at full capacity,” says Helen Edenfield, director of project management for NeoGenomics.