Today the world has come closer with the advancement in transportation and shipping services making global markets easily accessible. We can enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables grown in Australia in most parts of India, and Indian produce is available across the world. All this is happening because the cold chain logistics industry has grown and adopted advanced technological intervention to ensure that a temperature-controlled environment is available, maintained and managed from the point of loading to the last-mile delivery venue.
Here are five best practices followed globally in the cold chain logistics industry that is enabling this freshness and hygienic transportation of products/chemicals/medicines and drugs:
Temperature maintenance & monitoring through IoT
IoT is an excellent choice for monitoring and reporting temperature at specific points. It is an efficient time management system that offers a cutting-edge option for reporting temperature at various points. IoT enables systems to capture real-time data from sensors that can be instantly saved in a cloud server. This data can then be converted into emails or Short Messaging Service / WhatsApp messages and delivered remotely to the recipient’s email inbox or mobile phone. The severity of the hazard can be determined using these notifications and warnings, and corrective actions can be taken, thereafter.
For consistent temperature and accuracy maintenance, an IoT platform ensures that the chamber is monitored in real-time as temperature settings are standardized. To manage the set temperature uniformly on both the air and product temperatures and to avoid temperature drop/abuse, an auto/red alert is triggered to notify temperature abnormalities for immediate corrective action. This unit comes with a GPS and data logger so that temperature can be monitored on location.
Quality control and compliance managementQuality Control Management plays a vital role in the cold chain industry, primarily for food and pharmaceutical products. It is essential to oversee quality at all stages of the cold chain because it is critical to maintaining its shelf life up to the last-mile delivery point. There are various tools available to check and control the quality parameters. Service providers must ensure that these tools are integrated into their system to provide perfect products to the end consumer while adhering to strict compliance and zero compromises. These quality management tools enable maintenance and provide them with systematic approaches or alerts when they need to be on the lookout. All the warehousing and distribution service providers have adopted good practices and standard operating procedures.
Quality and compliance are the two most important features of the cold chain industry. They go hand in hand and cover various aspects. food safety certification, regulatory licenses, and fire compliance are a few statutory parts to score additional mileage on awarding new businesses, especially from MINC.
Driver management, safety, quality
Fleet and driver management is one of the most important tasks in logistics. Training the drivers regularly and teaching them product handling will protect your assets and product quality.
However, a logistics company must invest in the training and welfare of its drivers. The job of drivers is high-risk, and they must be trained to look out for their safety while on the roads. Regular counseling and training sessions must be conducted for them. Although there is a remarkable improvement in the highway infrastructure, and the government keeps striving for road safety, we still need to be mindful that there are some roads where drivers can face issues. They need to be trained for managing road safety as well as product safety.
A green initiative, solar, electric, and PCM base
Global supply chain industries are now fully aware of the environmental hazards their operations pose. Resource optimization is a mantra and an essential component of all businesses. Electricity is a significant cost factor in cold chain businesses. Following technological advancement, almost all service providers have turned to solar energy as an electrical substitute to the extent of environmental and infrastructure support. As a result, Gogreen added value to global warming and benefited natural resources. Therefore, using solar energy and electric vehicles is one of the best ways to achieve a sustainable green energy process.
Alongside the usage of Electric Vehicles (EVs) instead of diesel vehicle engines, industrial refrigerators and PCM-based technologies are much more contributing to the Gogreen initiative.
Customer engagement
The customer’s experience with a company is perhaps the most important factor in determining whether or not the company will be retained. The success or failure of the cold chain has a significant impact on that experience. The current lean supply chain concept clashes with the current customer demands because it lacks resilience and focuses solely on process efficiencies.
We need a focused approach to knowing the customer and allowing the customer to participate and engage with the company around their personalized needs. The cold chain needs to shift from a process-focused system to a customer-focused effort (which still requires efficient processes) and support a much better customer experience ensuring increased trust, loyalty, and, therefore, greater revenue.
Investing in best practices
There are many cold chain companies worldwide, but not everyone follows global standards. In the absence of some basic standardized processes, these cold chain companies not only end up losing valuable profit margins but also trade-off clients.
Cold chain business is highly dependent on technology and its optimum utilization. It is high time that every company relooked at their systems and introduced changes that would not only benefit them but also the end consumer.
The writer is Vice President – Operations, Snowman Logistics.
