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Live from Cool Chain Europe: The 10 Commandments of temperature-sensitive product supply

Brought down from the mountaintop of experience handling temperature-sensitive products, these 10 commandments summarize best practices in cold-chain logistics.

At a well-attended tabletop discussion on day one of the Cool Chain & Controlled Room Temperature Logistics Europe conference in Luxembourg, Laurent Foetisch, Managing Director of Supply Chain Operations SA, shepherded participants through “The ‘Ten Commandments’ for Successful Supply of Temperature-Sensitive Products,” developed by Cold Chain IQ and Kaoutar Sahli Lenstra, Senior Cold Chain and Specialties Analyst for Pfizer and a member of the Industry Advisory Board for this year’s event.
At a well-attended tabletop discussion on day one of the Cool Chain & Controlled Room Temperature Logistics Europe conference in Luxembourg, Laurent Foetisch, Managing Director of Supply Chain Operations SA, shepherded participants through “The ‘Ten Commandments’ for Successful Supply of Temperature-Sensitive Products,” developed by Cold Chain IQ and Kaoutar Sahli Lenstra, Senior Cold Chain and Specialties Analyst for Pfizer and a member of the Industry Advisory Board for this year’s event.

At a well-attended tabletop discussion on day one of the Cool Chain & Controlled Room Temperature Logistics Europe conference in Luxembourg, Laurent Foetisch, Managing Director of Supply Chain Operations SA, shepherded participants through “The ‘Ten Commandments’ for Successful Supply of Temperature-Sensitive Products,” developed by Cold Chain IQ and Kaoutar Sahli Lenstra, Senior Cold Chain and Specialties Analyst for Pfizer and a member of the Industry Advisory Board for this year’s event.

The commandments provided an easily accessible summary of some of the major issues presented during keynote and other sessions throughout the day. Among them, the importance of communication, documentation, and a clear understanding of your supply chain. It also allowed participants—some of which represented technology providers, others pharmaceutical and clinical trial companies—to share their experiences.

While a robust discussion resulted in only five of the 10 commandments being covered during the tabletop, Foetisch provided the balance in a handout.

1. Thou Shall Not Forget to Prioritize
“Whenever you start a new temperature-controlled chain, or face new GDP or regulatory requirements, you need to prioritize,” said Foetisch. “You need to think, ‘How can I tackle this big animal? I am not going to eat this big dinosaur all at once, I need to cut it into pieces.’ The question is, how can you cut it into relevant pieces?”

Foetisch suggested a first step is to look at your main products, do some segmentation work, and then run a risk analysis. Once you have determined where the main risks are, he said, you can then begin thinking about the program you want to put together.

2. Thou Shall Not Adopt a “One-Size-Fits-All” Approach
A theme that was exemplified by an earlier keynote by Pfizer Supply Chain Excellence Manager Graham Martin in “Reducing Lead Times and Maximizing Efficiency through Developing a Geographical Zoning Approach,” this commandment advises the development of as many solutions as are required to ensure the integrity of your products throughout the supply chain.

In Martin’s session, he shared how Pfizer uses a system of geographical zoning, or bracketing, for qualifying shipping lanes. It allows Pfizer to establish temperature profiles for lanes that can then be used in other lanes with the same profiles. Although Pfizer ships to 180 destinations, it has just eight packouts for winter and summer, Martin shared.

Said Lenstra in the 10 Commandments document, “With Pfizer, we don’t have any one approach that fits all our sites, but what we have are guidelines.”

3. Thou Shall Not Treat All Partners the Same
The importance of communicating with each and every provider and partner along the entire temperature-control supply chain was one that was emphasized by a number of speakers throughout the day. “You need to have Technical Agreements, you need to get info from [the] forwarding company on their processes and on their trucking partner’s processes,” said Foetisch. “You have to physically talk to your partners, you have to have SOPs, [and] you have to have written agreements. It takes a lot of time and resources to make it happen.”

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