How to build ambient shipping profiles

Carlos Castro, Cold Chain Project Manager at Bayer Healthcare, describes how ambient profiles should be built and what practices should be avoided.

Ambient profiles must be a true representation of the temperature a shipping container experiences during transit from origin to destination sites. Failure to capture realistic temperature conditions in the supply chain will create inefficiencies and increase the risk.

Ambient profiles are defined by three elements: temperature, time and logistics steps. These elements (i.e. building blocks) are usually recorded in two groups (temperature and time and logistics steps and time). The first group, temperature and time, is recorded by an external temperature monitor while the second group, logistics steps and their start and end times (date and time), are usually compiled by the freight forwarder with the help of all the carriers and handling agents.

Today there are many suppliers of temperature monitors and adding temperature monitors to each shipping container is not only a common but also a recommended practice. Shipping containers may include one or multiple internal and external monitors depending on the objectives defined in the temperature monitoring strategy. The external monitor provides the first data group (temperature and time). The internal temperature monitor also records the temperature data using a predefined interval time and does not provide details about the logistics events (limited data) but it confirms the product stayed within the established temperature range.

Figure 1 shows an example of the temperature-time plot recorded by an external temperature monitor attached to the shipping container.

Note that the following assumption is made: the temperature that the monitors and the shipping container were exposed to is the same and to verify this assumption more than one shipping container and multiple monitor locations must be tested. Variations in temperature in different areas of the cooler or carrier’s vessel and variations in handling agents could lead to differences between temperatures of the external monitors. Also note that the ambient temperature recorded by the external monitor is not the reported weather data.

The logistics steps are usually defined in the routing or shipping route. The routing is the series of storage and distribution activities taking place during the transportation from origin to destination and which maintain a specific temperature range. Each logistics step has a start and end time as well as a maximum and minimum temperature associated to it. The second data group compiles the logistics step and the time but will not provide the temperature associated to each step.

Figure 2 shows an example of a routing.

When the results of the temperatures/time and logistics steps/time information are combined, a new graph is rendered, as shown in Figure 3.
The new graph shows the logistics steps and the temperature and time associated to each step. Temperature spikes (high or low temperature) are now linked to each step and can be managed to reduce the spikes. Figure 3 shows the temperature spikes are happening during the aircraft loading (i.e. tarmac time).
Understanding each routing is critical to building a profile because each logistics step has a potential impact on the temperature found during distribution.

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