How To Choose The Best Temperature Data Logger Solution For Your Cold Chain Monitoring
Challenges within the food supply chain.
Data loggers help you keep a close eye on the environment of your assets. Temperature control is an essential part of the cold chain. Having a traceable record of any breaches of set conditions during storage, transportation or distribution is important for greater understanding of cold chain management.
Asset intelligence helps stakeholders in the supply chain improve processes by helping them to develop a greater understanding of data with the use of innovative solutions for asset management.
When assets are critical and valuable or temperature-sensitive, it is necessary to ensure their safety while in transit & in storage. To address any events where breaches may have occurred data has a significant role to play.
Real-time Monitoring For Your Assets.
How To Choose A Real-Time Temperature Data Logger Solution?
In the world of digital, everything is sampled data. From the pixels of the screens we look at, to the music we hear, to phone calls and face time, what we see are data packets sampled at high frequency to give a seamless experience of continuous data.
If you are looking to remotely monitor your consignment being transported, you need to use a live monitoring data logger.
Your monitoring experience depends on a few key factors. Here is a list of elements you need to check with your service provider before choosing a real-time data logger solution for your moving consignments.
What Is The Temperature Recording Frequency?
This is generally known as the temperature recording interval, it tells you how frequently the data logger is going to take a record of the temperature measurement in its environment.
Generally, a data logger temperature recording interval of 10 mins should suffice in many cases. In the case of some critically sensitive consignments like vaccines, even a small exposure time could prove catastrophic. Hence taking a smaller minimum reading interval could be necessary.
Is It A Probe Solution Or Internal Sensor Solution?
Measuring the temperature in the right environment is important so that there is minimum deviation between the measured and actual temperature in which assets are being maintained. An internal sensor solution needs to be placed inside the vaccine box, along with the vaccines. Many select a data logging solution with a probe, so that the data logger is on the outside of the box and the probe is inside.
What Is The Temperature Monitoring Range?
The temperature monitoring range shouldn’t limit which assets you can monitor, whether it is ambient, frozen, deep-frozen or ultra-negative temperatures that you are storing or transporting the assets in. Having a customisable temperature monitoring range from -99°C up to 99°C is going to help meet all the monitoring needs within the cold chain.
What Is The Cloud Sync Frequency Of The Data Logger?
Data loggers are IoT solutions that speak with the internet at frequent intervals. How frequently the data is transmitted is going to determine how often your remote monitoring dashboards are updated, which in turn determines how old the “live” data is. The cloud sync frequency of data loggers is considered good and reliable if it is around 30 mins.
What Is The Internal Memory Of The Device In A No Network Zone?
Your consignment may travel to remote areas, where there is no connectivity. The device must have enough memory on the chip dedicated to store the data, so that no data is lost when the trip passes through a no network zone. Data loggers generally offer memory with storage capacity of around 30,000 readings.
What Is The Fall-Back Option For Connectivity & Data Access?
Many companies utilise real-time monitoring solutions to monitor vital conditions of assets throughout distribution or storage. However, there can be connectivity issues, where solutions must be fail-safe so that the data is still retrievable. Here are a couple of fail-safe ideas that are common in the industry.
Wi-Fi fall back:
- If there is a cellular network connectivity issue, the device must be able to connect to a hotspot that can act as a cloud gateway to upload the data.
USB connection for data access:
- If the destination of the consignment has no network or internet access, how can the data be accessed? The age-old USB connection option is a redemption for real-time connected solutions in these extremely unconnected conditions. Plug in the data logger to your computer via USB and access the report for filing, safe keeping and future reference.
What Is The Battery Life?
Considering that all the essential features are present, the data logger must also last through the trip. In the modern age of multi-modal logistics and uncertain regulations, a trip could take anywhere up to a month to reach its destination. This makes battery life a primary concern when choosing a data logger. Battery life also depends on the data recording frequency and data transmission frequency of the data logger.
How To Switch Off The Data Logger?
If you are transporting or storing high-value consignments, it is not a good idea to have a switch off option for the data logger. The Adapt Loggers solution range was created with this in mind and cannot be switched off.
Other Trip Considerations
- Ask these questions beforehand so that your operations won't be affected due to a non-intuitive data logger design.
- How to start the trip?
- How to stop the trip?
- How to check the temperature during the trip?
- How to access the data after the trip?
- How to read the trip summary for temperature violations?
- How are the violations recorded and how to understand when and where the temperature violation occurred?
Data Logger Web Portal Considerations
Can You Share Your Live Dashboards With Other Users In The Organisation?
The best thing about using a real-time asset intelligence solution is the comfort of cloud connectivity and the data access possibilities it provides. When a temperature excursion is detected, all the stakeholders who need the information are immediately alerted via., SMS, emails and push notifications. Having all the relevant users able to access the web-portal helps trigger immediate action and avoid further avoidable exposure to the assets.
Many organisations integrate asset intelligence to central command and control centres. The control towers generally act as a single window of monitoring and call to action for the organisation.
Can You Share Your Dashboard With Clients?
In many circumstances sharing a trip report at the end of the trip will suffice for sharing data with a client. However, in the age of data-security and ubiquitous data access, to meet customer’s expectations and earn their trust sharing live dashboards with clients is growing in popularity.
Does The Cloud Service Of The Data Logger Have Role-Based Access?
As a direct user you can control who has access and the data they are able to view. In addition, an audit trail can also be viewed to understand how the portal has been utilised by users. For data security and data access concerns, it is generally a good idea to look for CFR21 compliance.
Download our checklist to help evaluate what type of solution and features would be required to meet your monitoring needs.
Data Logger Checklist
Download our checklist to help evaluate what type of solution and features would be required to meet your monitoring needs.
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