When shipping cold chain products, temperature monitoring is among the most critical things to implement. Maintaining the ideal temperatures during transport ensures that goods remain safe for consumption upon delivery to retail stores, cold storage locations, restaurants, health clinics, and end consumers’ homes.
However, maintaining required temperature levels is often a major challenge, because you can encounter numerous risks that can change the temperatures and spoil the goods. To guarantee their best conditions while in transit, you need temperature monitoring technologies.
These solutions have robust features to ease your temperature-tracking tasks and eliminate your worries when moving cold chain products.
Here’s how temperature monitoring technology helps to secure your cold chain shipping operations.
1. It records data about the cold chain cargo’s conditions 24/7.
Most temperature-monitoring technologies have continuous data-recording functionalities. They can log freight condition data 24/7 according to their defined parameters. This way, you can always obtain the latest temperature information and reports.
Continuous data capture plays a crucial role in logistics as a whole and cold chain temperature control specifically. When transporting refrigeration-required products, the customer of the logistics service generally has only limited data access, and you can’t assess their conditions yourself. You can only rely on temperature monitoring systems to update you and help you make critical business decisions.
With continuous data recording, you can check whether any safety protocol violations occurred. It will also enable you to catch temperature dips and spikes, study unusual data incidents, etc.
Through 24/7 data recording, temperature monitoring systems can provide extra transparency into every cold chain shipping logistics stage. You can also rest assured that the products will safely remain in their ideal conditions until the last workflow steps.
2. It notifies you of significant temperature incidents.
Cold chain products go through several transport steps and checkpoints before reaching the end-users or final destinations. However, every stage involves some risks that can compromise the items’ conditions.
Let’s say you’re carrying COVID-19 vaccines that you should keep at ultra-low freezing temperatures, around -100 degrees Fahrenheit. If your truck gets into a road accident, temperatures can quickly shift, jeopardizing the vaccines’ quality.
If you do not use temperature monitoring technologies, you would have no idea the items were at risk, because by the time the truck does arrive, the cooling systems could be back online. Consequently, you couldn’t respond immediately and keep the vaccines from eventually getting spoiled.
Fortunately, temperature monitoring solutions can instantly alert you if the goods’ temperatures change. You can receive notifications on your system, check the temperature differences, and resolve the situation before any product damage occurs.
3. It provides safe and accessible temperature data.
Depending on your temperature monitoring solutions’ capabilities, you can access relevant information through SMS, mobile gadgets, and computers. This feature enables you to obtain the data yourself instead of constantly contacting the carriers in every transportation stage. As a result, drivers, logistics managers, etc. can concentrate on their tasks, especially delivering the products to the intended receivers.
Temperature monitoring systems empower you to access data from any device because they use cloud storage services. Armed with robust security features, cloud computing properly stores your data and ensures its availability anytime, even in real-time.
Logistics and transportation stages progress quickly, though, and many use cases don’t require up-to-the-minute information. The chain might involve any number of vehicles – carriers, cargo ship containers, and vans – each with its own temperature control considerations. What’s crucial is that you can validate the transport quality and assess risks upon completion of the journey.
Cloud-backed temperature monitoring systems can also keep your information safe. They have encrypted connections preventing data manipulation at any cold chain phase. You can also define authorization parameters and manage permissions to restrict data access.
Through always-accessible, cloud-stored information by temperature monitoring systems, you ensure data integrity, closely monitor your logistics team, and avoid mishaps.
4. It provides highly accurate temperature information.
Manual approaches cannot give you the same in-depth, live visibility into your products’ conditions as temperature monitoring systems do. These technologies can fill you in on relevant details and logistical issues, such as the number of items with temperature changes.
Obtaining accurate temperature information also empowers you to make quick and sound business decisions. Manually generated reports usually have several flaws and give stakeholders access to information on a delayed basis.
Referring to manual reports can cause you to think things are going well when they’re not. As a result, they can prevent you from implementing appropriate measures at the right time. You may be too late by the time you respond, and the goods have become unsafe for consumption due to spoilage.
In contrast, temperature monitoring systems provide precise information influencing timely, suitable responses and ensuring safe conditions throughout their journey.
5. It can relay data to other cold chain shipping players.
Logistics entails coordination among carriers, retailers, suppliers, consumers, and other industry players. Every stakeholder should know the status of transported cold chain products.
You can have this ability through temperature monitoring systems with multiple-profile data transferring functions. With cross-database information pushes, every person involved in the cold chain logistics can receive, view, transmit, and analyze critical temperature-related information.
Logistics partners can even track the latest conditions simultaneously, enhancing their accountability because of the transparency involved. This feature can also help minimize or eliminate the blame game and improve teamwork. Everyone can see what transpired along the cold chain, pinpoint when things started going wrong, and do their best to correct mistakes.
Not all temperature monitoring technologies offer multiple-profile data sharing. The tech used in this space sees new development all the time. Check with your vendor whether or their solution has this capability before purchasing it.
6. It allows drivers to ensure temperatures remain ideal.
Temperature monitoring reports help drivers — the actual transporters — to ensure goods remain in ideal conditions while on the road.
For example, before drivers take a break, they can recheck the temperatures and park in cooler areas, away from the direct heat of the sun.
They can also plan their routes, stops, and trips and foresee traffic or other incidents impacting the items’ temperatures.
Drivers can even double-check whether the temperature monitoring systems operate correctly or not. If they notice malfunctions, they can notify you to validate and fix the issue and guide them on the next steps.
Secure your cold chain shipping with temperature monitoring solutions.
Temperature monitoring technologies make your cold chain shipping efficient and secure throughout the entire transport process.
They can provide accurate data, help you maintain ideal temperatures, notify you of incidents, and enhance your logistics team collaboration.
Explore the temperature monitoring technologies available in the market and pick the best one that meets your business needs. Investing in one can spell a massive difference in boosting your profitability, client relationships, brand image, and more.
