How IoT Will Transform Cold Chain Logistics Forever
The Internet of Things is transforming the efficiency and potency of long distance food, pharmaceutical and other perishable supply chains. Instead of simply consisting freezers and freight trains, this supply chain, known as the “cold chain” or temperature-controlled supply chain which is now increasingly including digital software solutions, secure cloud technology and open architecture.
The result? Smarter cold chain system, where monitoring devices gives manager a live data about temperature and location and can maintain the required temperature and reduce problems related to the chain before they arise.
Cold chain logistics are important for the safely delivery of perishable goods, chemicals and pharmaceuticals etc. An efficient cold chain maintains these items within strict predetermined temperature ranges in order to maintain their desired qualities. Previously, cold storage managers had to be physically present inside a cold storage facility to monitor deliverables and assure frictionless work. Shipments, storage and even last-mile deliveries can now be analyzed via mobile applications.
The cold chain is also the backbone of the quickly developing pharmaceuticals business. The Pharmaceutical recent findings forecast a 12.7% yearly increase in cold-chain drugs, locating another strain on cold chain logistics. Because of cold chain errors and various malfunctions, most of the pharmaceutical industry has a product loss.
Proper monitoring is essential for drugs and medical supplies in pharmaceuticals industry, as they are often limited in quantity and need to reach their destinations in a specific amount of time.
Statista holds the global food and beverages market that will develop by 10.3% annually, resulting in $153 million in revenue by 2023. Unlike dry storage, cold storage operators have more things that needs to maintain. Warehouse refrigeration systems and frozen distribution centers provided with chillers and freezers are the significant energy consumers that need to follow the strict design and construction requirements. As per Supplychaindive.com, cold storage solutions consume near about $30 billion in power per day. This is why the supply chain industry and cold chain specifically are second on the list of IoT investors.
Cargosense.com evaluates that 20% of drugs are damaged because of cold chain malfunction. Food waste is even adverse. BCG states that 1.6 billion tons of food are damaged or wasted every year and this statistic is assumed to enhance annually by 1.9% from 2018 to 2030.
However, this loss can be eliminated. BCG’s inspection has disclosed five major change drivers that will help to minimize food loss.
The same holds true for other cold chain goods. One huge challenge is initiating end-to-end visibility so that all cold supply chain silos can utilize as one.
How it works?
By applying IoT solutions into the cold chain, companies can consistently connect with every step in the logistical process, allowing for cost-optimizing benefits.
Managers can analyze and toggle temperature settings as required, reacting to changes in local climate, damage to packaging, unpredicted delays and even human error. Even in the especially rare cases where temperature errors are recognized but can’t be addressed, the level of insight provided by IoT technologies enables supply-chain managers to react on potential concerns sooner, before they turn into major catastrophes. These abilities remarkably cut down the damage and waste, while improving distributors’ relationships with their clients. The IoT is a huge mixture of billions of networked sensors and devices, many of which have already been executed for supply chain management (SCM).
There are various reasons IoT components should be good fits within modern cold chains
Food safety
Food contamination and wastage has always been a trouble in the logistics arena. In order to keep these problems at bay, including network-connected temperature and humidity sensors in the warehouse enables first-hand monitoring of food containers, trucks and trigger alerts, which intercepts damage or replacement of bad products way before they reach to the consumers. Shippers can also recognize the problems like finding the origins of contamination and then rapidly restoring them with the help of IoT devices.
Flexibility
Compact integration is most important in cold chain logistics, since a high degree of control makes it easier to assure that temperatures are always right. To that end, IoT sensors and applications can be placed in vehicles and at shipping facilities to generate logical tracking networks across supply chains.
Their small sizes and similarities with multiple communications protocols (e.g., Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ZigBee, cellular, etc.) make them extrinsic for a wide range of environments and requirements. For instance, a logistics provider might use a Near-Field Communications reader to wirelessly read the shipments temperatures as they move from site to site or use cellular for shifting across various locations / sites while other technologies may be more acceptable for facility monitoring.
Precision
Human error is the leading origin of cold chain issue. Common issues involve:
- Setting out a temperature-sensitive container in the morning but not dispatch or shipping it until much later in the evening.
- Storing items unnecessarily in cold rooms, which can mainly damage some pharmaceuticals by causing them to drop below a bearable minimum.
- Overpacking a package, such that its cover doesn’t close entirely and its contents become open to high external temperatures.
- The opposite, leaving too enough room for frozen gel packs to move around as they melt in transit, resulting in unequal cooling and overall poor stabilization
The IoT can give much more precise, automated tracking to keep away from these sorts of issues and assure requirements are constantly met. Analytics collected from embedded sensors can provide a clear picture of which shipments were best maintained across the cold chain, so that their setups could be reproduced elsewhere.
Efficiency
With IoT-enabled SCM, readings could be done much more effectively in real-time, using radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and GPS location data. Temperature controls themselves might be remotely attainable or at least continuously traceable, so that rerouting and other adjustments may be possible to save as many items as possible.
Introducing IoT into your cold chain business assist you to move away from cold-packs and cooling containers and into other areas of fleet for temperature visibility, alerts and notifications, real-time data access, automated report generation and predicative and descriptive real-time analytics. GPS-based asset tracking and RFID systems can also assist to make your cold chain more effective and a solid IoT solution should be capable to handle that for you.
A smart Ecosystem for Perishable Goods
With a smart IoT ecosystem for cold chain supply systems, you can easily analyze, locate and address any potential errors quickly. When temperature goes above the threshold range, the system sent an alerts to the driver and other stakeholders when there is an issue.
IoT monitoring sensors can differentiate between being in transit and being stolen, even to the point of triggering a ‘lockdown’ mode to minimize theft. Food, pharmaceuticals and other perishable products can reach to their destination unbroken in even the most extreme situations. If the goods are reserved in a warehouse, property managers can either deal with potential refrigeration concerns or move the goods to conserve them.
BENEFITS
A cost efficient wireless solution and mobile App makes real time tracking of data easily available for the manufacturers to encounter precise tracking of Food, Pharma, medical supply etc.
Alerts and temperature logs can be examined at customized levels and synched easily with the help of the application and uploaded to the cloud automatically, right until the point of delivery.
By replacing exclusive hardware solutions such as RFID readers by a smartphone, data collection and inspection along the cold chain is made much more reasonable, more often and even smarter.
IoT appears to be an ever-expanding world, introducing unlimited opportunities for industries to expand their competitive advantage via linking sensors, advanced analytics, embedded intelligence and human expertise.
In the future, supply chains joining the IoT club will distinguish themselves from those who are still agnostic and behind the evolving race.