Following the Pack: Reassessing often-overlooked cool-chain packaging

Rising to the standard of transparency

Concepts like the Airbnb-style “pay-per-use” strategy address the shippers’ need for affordable transportation, but fusing that with the new standard of supply chain visibility has proven to be a challenge for the industry.

Providing the lowest price is a high priority for packaging suppliers, but they are also looking for ways to link their packaging to the digital realm, in order to provide shippers with a closer watch on their time-critical shipments. Companies have formed their own partnerships to fulfill that need.

MNX Logistics, a forwarder that utilizes various container companies’ products in its operations, works with healthcare clients for the movement of precious items, such as human organs and pharma products. The company is one of many that now offer their own tracking platforms to customers, enabling shippers to access live data on their shipments anywhere in the supply chain.

“We invest a lot of money and a lot of time in technology and making sure that our ability to know where a shipment is and that it’s in the right condition,” Paul Martins, CEO of MNX Global Logistics said.

The company’s app, MNX Go, gives customers access to a plethora of data on a shipment, but also allows them to sign up for notifications of milestones, like when an item is picked up from a location, keeping shippers constantly in the loop on the status of their time-critical shipments.

Some apps are now going beyond the basic track-and-trace feature to meet the modern customer’s needs, allowing them to receive notifications when a time-critical shipment is at risk, i.e. when its temperature goes out of range, or if it fails to reach the next milestone in the supply chain on schedule. The feature is game-changing for time-critical shipments, in which the ability to receive a notification when a milestone is not hit could mean saving hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.

But the equation becomes complicated when considering the collaboration of various parties that is required in order to make that level of transparency a reality. And balancing this with a need to keep costs low for shippers, who prefer to use passive containers whenever possible, is a challenge.

Depending on the specific container, the product may be made with built-in hardware to provide that data, linking directly into data-tracking apps – like the prior-mentioned PharmaPort – or it may be a case, as is true with most passive containers, where “drop-in” trackers must be added to each shipment to enable data-tracking. It then becomes a matter of forwarders working with individual software and hardware providers to connect those dots – a feat that is much easier said than done.

A regimented standard for exactly what this collaboration looks like is still yet to be solidified in the industry, and partners in the supply chain are still working out the kinks on a case-by-case basis, depending on each container’s technological enablement and how that connects to a seamless digital interface.

While companies do their best to thoroughly structure their supply chains, mistakes, like Southwest’s wayward heart delivery, will inevitably happen – it’s just a matter of dealing with them quickly and being able to rely on their container’s ability to preserve the integrity of its contents. With the emerging harmony of digitalization and the continued innovation of packaging, it’s clear that the strategy will be game-changing. But it’s now up to the industry to continue their strides toward bringing that harmony to its full fruition.