Automating cold-chain exception administration

Cold chain alerts: the same logger travels in different shipments

A dispatcher receives a temperature alert from a data logger, and the message holds only the device number. The logger was used earlier on another consignment, so matching by number points to the wrong shipment. Before passing the alert to the quality person, the dispatcher searches three places to find which consignment the device travelled with, and when.

The automation assigns the alert to a shipment by the time the logger was linked to it. The employee opens the reading with its time and unit and checks the match. When the link is missing, the case goes for clarification. The document with the temperature requirements the company named appears with the shipment, and the person responsible for quality decides whether the goods can still be sold.

GS1's EPCIS and CBV 2.0 guideline from March 2023 describes events that link goods, time, place and context. It is a good pattern for recording a deviation on a shipment.

What automating temperature exceptions costs and when it pays back

The count covers the work around each case: searching, reading, writing and handing over. What remains is the time to check the result, 30% of today's work in the scenario. Before the quote we measure both times on 20 to 100 cases the team has already handled, in a free test that takes 5 working days.

A bigger cost than the dispatcher's hours is goods assessed too late. When an alert waits hours to be assigned, the shipment may already be with the consignee, and the decision about the goods comes after the fact. So in the test we count the time from the alert to handing a complete event to the quality department.

First check your monitoring platform

If your temperature monitoring platform already links the logger to the consignment and lets you run clarifications, configuring it is enough. Ordinary rules handle known identifiers and the time the device was assigned. AI helps with longer correspondence from the carrier and the consignee that needs summarising on the event. An integration makes sense when alerts come from the platform, shipments sit in another system and the requirements in a third.

Where to start

The first project covers a chosen group of shipments and the loggers in use, with a test on events from the last few months. We build this kind of system as part of our AI automations. For the free process review, a description of one case from the last few weeks and the tools it went through is enough. You do not need to send confidential documents, and you receive a written plan within 2 working days.