Cold Chain Management

End-to-end solution for any stage of the chain

Although supply chain management is a critical area of any company — especially due to the fact that it increases competitiveness and customer satisfaction — a recent research from McKinsey states that merely 43% of the companies surveyed have applied digitization to some portion of their process. Nevertheless, the study also suggests that companies that aggressively digitize their supply chains can expect to increase their earnings by 3.2% in average and their annual revenue by 2.3%.

Companies in industries that involve the processing and delivery of goods sensitive to temperature variation require some type of control and monitoring. Various forms of management and monitoring during the process could drastically reduce losses and help guarantee the quality of their products and services. USDA’s Economic Research Service even estimates that, in the United States, 31% of the food is lost at the retail and consumer levels.

Besides the tangible benefits that a well managed operation can bring, companies in certain sectors such as Food & Pharmaceutical are required to comply with local regulatory and enforcement agencies. In the US for example, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is mandated to ensure compliance — similar to the role of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in Europe. Having a tool that can record and generate reports with the conditions reached during the whole process is becoming essential.

In addition, companies in most industries can use the IoT (Internet of Things) to automate the process and collect data to generate insights that can be used to proactively solve problems before customers even notice.

Some of the benefits that IoT can bring to Cold Chain Management are:

• To ensure compliance with regulatory requirements

• Improve customer experience

• Reduce and avoid food waste

• Reduce maintenance cost

• Gain insights for new products and offers

Case 1 – Temperature management for supermarkets

This case exemplifies how a company that needed to monitor the quality and status of perishable goods in a supermarket built the visualization and reports to monitor in real-time. This is an example of an application in the last step of the cold chain process. In cases like this one, the sensors are normally fixed; their location would only be inputted once during the customization of the dashboard.

See this demo working in real time here.

Case 2 – Temperature management in trucks

In this case, one of the goals was to improve customer satisfaction and comply with regulatory environment by monitoring temperature, humidity, location and other variables — all in real-time. After that, the sensor data was combined to generate reports and notifications to indicate when a certain condition was met. Also, the use of geofence capability and integration with webservice, it was possible to determine when trailers and trucks arrived or left certain areas.

See this demo working in real time here.

Check out the stories of some customers that already deployed solutions in this field using TagoIO – Enablers, MonitoredTech, Device Solutions.

Sensors

Companies can apply different type of smart sensors to monitor containers, boxes, and different types of coolers and refrigerators in their supply chain. By having more information in hand, businesses are also able to reduce cargo loss and operating costs. Featured below are some of the sensors used in a typical cold chain solution that are ready to be connected with TagoIO .

Why use TagoIO for Cold Chain Management?

Although there are other providers out there in the market that offer software to monitor temperature in this sector, most of them are incomplete and lack the flexibility that only TagoIO provides. Here is a great list of functions and characteristics from TagoIO that you should consider:

1. Hundreds of different types of sensors are integrated with TagoIO

You can choose from a variety of off-the-shelf sensors that are already fully integrated with the TagoIO platform. Still, if you decide to use a new sensor, or are building your own, you can always integrate it in your solution with ease.

2. Ready for any type of connectivity

It doesn’t matter if you need a sensor that works with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPRS, LTE, Z-Wave, ZigBee, LoRaWAN, Sigfox, or any other type of connectivity — you can always use them with TagoIO.

3. Reports and notifications are fully customizable

You can create highly customized reports for your users in .CSV, .XLS, .PDF, or other formats. The reports can be sent in a predefined schedule, manually, or by event. Scripts to generate alerts, analytics, and integration can also be easily added to your application.

4. Integration is the key to go beyond IoT

With TagoIO, you can easily integrate your application with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), a ticket management system, or any other source of data. For example, if you already have another tracking platform in place that is collecting location from GPS, you are able to combine that data with your new temperature sensors. All sensor data can be automatically combined, processed, and transferred to the business back-end by using our powerful API (Application Programming Interface).

5. Customization and branding to stand out from competition

The level of customization with TagoIO is incredible by any standard. With TagoIO, you are even able to add your own custom icons inside of the widgets. On top of that, you can deliver a solution using your own brand and URL by utilizing the TagoRUN white-label module — that even includes a mobile App for iOS and Android stores.

Learn more about TagoIO’s product features that can be added to your application.

Wondering how to get started? Subscribe today for free and check out some demos and sensors that are already available for you to use.