If you are having trouble finding fresh flower arrangements, chicken wings, and even some prescription drugs, you’re not alone. These are among the many items still in short supply due to pandemic-inflicted production delays and/or unusually high demand. They are also among the many items cold chain stakeholders are working diligently to preserve when they do have inventory on hand.

In fact, we’ve seen a dramatic uptick in technology spending among those responsible for producing, storing, and distributing temperature-sensitive products since COVID-19 emerged. Between the current shortages and the 2020 storage overstocks of beef and dairy when restaurants suddenly closed and orders were cancelled, cold chains have had to simultaneously accelerate throughput, extend shelf life and reduce waste. Any one of these efforts alone is a heavy lift from a logistics perspective. In fact, it’s dizzying to think about the resources required to keep tabs on the billions of items exchanging hands each day across the globe. It’s not easy to keep an eye on static inventory, either. Stock being held in refrigerators and freezers at warehouses, distribution centers, retail stores and hospitals need frequent quality control inspection, as a single temperature excursion can render them inconsumable.

So, we sat down with our cold chain experts, Andre Luecht, the global vertical practice lead for Transport and Logistics at Zebra Technologies, and Mike Montana, a Senior Business Development Manager for Temptime, which is now part of Zebra, to find out just how the temperature of cold chain products gets tracked through each touchpoint and what can be done to create more visibility into temperature-related quality for consumers, manufacturers, and retailers. Andre has spent the last 25+ years in the supply chain, transport, and logistics field, both as a provider of technologies and services and as a customer/end user. And Mike has spent nearly two decades helping biotech, pharmaceutical and medical device companies improve manufacturing and supply chain process controls. 

Finally, why not consider our M72DPM especially designed for cold chain application?