Introduction to Environmental Monitoring in the NZ FMCG Cold Chain
The logistics challenges caused by the global pandemic has driven the adoption of real-time tracking and environmental monitoring technologies.
The logistics challenges caused by the global pandemic, like increased variability and disruptions coupled with growing demand for greater levels of visibility and assurance, has driven the adoption of real-time tracking and environmental monitoring technologies.
The advanced yet costly monitoring solutions employed by pharma, laboratory and medical sectors are starting to make their way into FMCG supply chains, as costs are driven down due to large-scale adoption by global vendors and customers, as well as the convergence between IoT and RFID.
However, adoption of real-time monitoring and compliance solutions in NZ appears to be lagging the rest of the world - caused in-part by our lack of scale, but also the under representation in NZ by the leading global vendors. This 'local condition' has lead-to the birth of a few local start-ups, who have point solutions suited to a narrow range of use-cases, rather than enterprise-wide application across a broad range of use-cases. Given this market context, it can be difficult for businesses to understand how to differentiate between the available options and what to look for in a cold chain solution – hence this article.
Cold Chain solutions differ for each environment or use case. Understanding the delineations and overlaps will help you pick the right type of solution. Understanding the key features and corresponding benefits within those types will help you pick the right vendor.
Static (interior) Environmental Monitoring
Areas of Use
This covers rooms/buildings, equipment, enclosures and plant (manufacturing), for:
Chilled and frozen storage
Critical manufacture
Pharmaceutical manufacture and research
Laboratory - working environment and equipment
Medical - storage and equipment
Other sensitive storage such as airplane parts (humidity)
Realtime monitoring solution involve an IoT sensor, communication layer, data retention and a user interface. By comparison, environmentally controlled storage facilities have BMS (Building Management System) integrated sensors, and plant have PLC integrated sensors. The concerns with integrated sensors are:
Room exception alerts go to facilities or engineering and by the time the operational or QA team are notified it is often too late to prevent losses.
Integrated readings are taken at fixed locations and not everywhere they are needed.
Integrated sensors are hard to calibrate as needed
compliance data is not easy to extract, retain or prove for compliance, due to the nature of the systems involved
Solution Criteria
The main reason to implement a digital environmental monitoring is Peace of Mind. Instead of continuously to see if you have a problem and hoping that your processes are good enough, you can set up bullet proof monitoring and be comfortable that, unless you have received an alert to the contrary everything is within good operating range and that there is a reliable digital record to prove it. Conversely gaps in the process can lead to significant health and safety incidents and financial losses.
Not all the solutions are equal, so when selecting a one, consider the following:
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Making sure that exception alerts reach the responsible parties in when needed is essential. Alerts can be communicated via email, mobile alerts including text, phone calls, and physical alarms. They might need to handle complex scenarios with degrees of escalation, trends, multiple thresholds, scheduled start stop windows and excursion periods. Alerts routing might need to adjust based on employee rosters.
Making sure that exception alerts reach the responsible parties in when needed is essential. Alerts can be communicated via email, mobile alerts including text, phone calls, and physical alarms. They might need to handle complex scenarios with degrees of escalation, trends, multiple thresholds, scheduled start stop windows and excursion periods. Alerts routing might need to adjust based on employee rosters.
Ensuring alerts are delivered requires a reliable network layer. Wi-Fi is not reliable enough for critical environments. In those instances LoRaWAN communication by the sensors and redundant Internet connections are recommended.
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Proving that the data record is persistent, contiguous and immutable is critical to any compliance requirement. Unfortunately, many organises only find out through an exception incident that there are gaps in the chain of custody.
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It is important to understand the local calibration and certification requirements for your industry. Laboratory calibration can be very expensive, often more than $500 per probe per year. Digital sensors can be calibrated in bulk, significantly reducing the ongoing cost of calibration; sufficiently so to justify the business case in facilities relying on multiple sensors.
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The leading global solutions comply with International data and security standards, supporting granular roles, integration, MFA, SSO etc, and are available as SaaS and on premise solutions.
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Developing, changing and proving processes is one of the highest costs of compliance. Global vendors have IQ, OQ and PQ templates and assistance available for the key industry segments, which improves quality and reduces the cost of compliance.
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The number and type (temperature, humidity, various gasses, pressure, etc.) and sensing range of sensors that can be supported is important. Some solutions can integrate third party sensors that utilise universal connections.
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Readings such as Temperature, humidity and gasses will differ throughout a volume. 3D mapping is required for most compliance purposes, which is difficult to do manually with individual sensors. 3D mapping kits can reduce the cost of compliance.
Cold Chain Logistics
The current challenges facing cold chain logistics are:
Volume: The quantity of items that require tracking directly impacts total cost of sensors.
Communication: Without a network to transfer readings in real-time, alerts are interrupted. Any manual transfer of data also breaks the data chain of custody.
Control: It is hard and costly to implement sensing and network infrastructure at customers, suppliers or logistics providers, or to assure the return of sensors from the end recipient. It is impossible when the logistics providers and end recipients vary. Where the entire environment is known and controlled, it is feasible to build a contiguous monitoring solution using static monitoring tools.
Several emerging technologies are competing to resolve them, but in the meantime the segment is in a heightened state of flux.
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IoT based solutions require a battery to log and transfer readings. The size of the battery determines the life/reusability of the sensor, the communication protocols (e.g. BLE, cellular) it can support and therefore also the cost of the devices. Sensors range from under $15 for short life BLE devices to over $150 for long life sensors that can even communicate over cellular and includes other reading such as shock, light (container open) and humidity. Unfortunately the leading global startups charge per trip for the management software, further putting pressure on the high cost of monitoring. International cellular data costs and coverage at sea or in the air also complicates international cold chain logistics.
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Chemical changing labels provide a binary indication of excursion events where a product has exceeded a specific temperature range by a degree or for a period. Standard labels exist for the common FMCG and medical use cases, but custom labels can be designed. Such label cost $1-$2 each, depending on volume.
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RFID tags can now incorporate sensor data, but they are “point in time” readings since passive RFID does not have any battery to store readings over time or to transfer the data except through the scan that powers the communication. The sensor data can include temperature, torsion, liquid volume etc. The main benefit of such “sense” tags is 1) the low cost (cents) of passive RFID tags, and 2) it also provides location/tracking information.
Because these technologies are still emerging, they often do not have management software and require integration to work with existing systems