Protecting your temperature sensitive supply chain

Pressure on supply chains

Businesses around the world have battled over many hurdles across the last 2 years. Now several factors have contributed to a perfect storm of unprecedented pressures on supply chains. Many articles have been written expanding on the many contributing factors, not least the pandemic, international freight issues, a tightening labour market and the recent conflict in Ukraine. In this article we look at how data loggers can be implemented to protect your existing supply chain by monitoring your cold chain remotely.

Additional complexities within some supply chains are placing even greater demand on cold chain monitoring. We understand these challenges and the risk this poses to product quality and safety. If you consider the journey that your goods might take before they reach your control, temperature sensitive items can be subject to adverse conditions at various intervals. Risk factors are introduced with delays in transportation, handover between logistics operators or during third party storage. Even just a short delay while waiting on a loading bay for delivery to be accepted can have an adverse impact. Where possible this journey should be tracked and traceable with the temperature data validating the integrity of your goods. In some industries, such as the pharmaceutical industry for example, the ability to view this data is mandated and archived for inspection. As technology makes this data increasingly accessible and available, the more it will be expected and scrutinised by Quality Assurance, customers or other inspectors.

Increasing input costs and lead times also means that avoiding the wastage or spoiling of raw ingredients or finished product is now more crucial than ever. Aside from the evident commercial loss, there is also customer satisfaction, product efficacy and brand reputation to consider. Data loggers are available in various formats and price points to suit different supply chains. Advances in temperature monitoring technologies mean that cost should no longer be a barrier for even the smallest of applications.

Data logger systems

Each data logger system presents a set of pros and cons and our engineers are impartial allowing them to help users to weigh up various factors such as budget, product life span, functionality, accuracy, accessibility and even eco-credentials to find the solution that is most suitable for your needs.

Single use data loggers are sometimes the only option for supply chains where it is not always feasible to retrieve the data loggers after shipping. While these can often appear a cheaper solution they are wasteful and usually required in large volumes. There are other low cost options if there is way of ensuring the return of the logger for reuse.

Using cloud technology to monitor temperature conditions is now standard practice across a wide range of industries. Sensors can be included in shipments, delivery vehicles or storage areas to continuously monitor and report data, via the cloud, to users all over the world in real time. This allows various stake holders to access the data quickly and easily. Further to this, many systems can be configured to pro-actively alert users in the case of deviating conditions. This removes the need to even check the conditions offering additional productivity benefits. It also means that interventions can be made during transportation to protect the product from spoilage or waste. A small system can be implemented for only a couple of hundred pounds so there are no barriers to entry with this technology. For larger applications the system is scalable and offers many benefits when compared with legacy systems. We see the versatility of this system for a wide range of applications, our team can help to understand your requirements and recommend the best system to protect your supply chain.