The Visibility Challenges & Solutions for Perishable Shipping

When shipping perishable products, all of the challenges typically associated with retail supply chain management are magnified because perishable products must be shipped in carefully controlled conditions. With damage rates and shipping costs both on the rise, creating an effective loss prevention strategy centered around visibility is more important than ever for companies shipping perishable products. This article explores both the visibility challenges of perishable shipping and the innovative perishable shipping solutions you can use to overcome these challenges.

For best practices on how to implement real-time visibility with shipping perishables, be sure to read our playbook.

What is Visibility for Perishable Products?

In the transportation industry, visibility can mean many different things for a lot of people. At its most fundamental level, visibility means the ability to track the location and status of in-transit shipments — this is known as "transportation visibility."

Along with this crucial type of visibility, retailers looking for a perishable shipping solution also require real-time shipment conditions visibility. Real-time shipment condition visibility means monitoring the conditions of in-transit shipments across measurements such as temperature, humidity, light exposure, and shock absorption. Shipment condition visibility is vital for companies shipping perishable products for more reasons than one.

Why is Shipment Condition Visibility Important?

The ability to monitor the real-time conditions of perishable products offers a couple of powerful benefits. First, it enables shipping companies to ensure the safety and quality of those perishable products upon arrival. In some cases, it is easy to tell at a glance when perishable products have indeed perished. In other cases, though, it's much more difficult to keep damaged products from slipping through the cracks and winding up in customers’ hands. However, shipment condition visibility solutions such as Tive's real-time trackers designed to alert you when a shipment's conditions fall beyond acceptable tolerances make it much easier to ensure the safety and quality of perishable products.

Along with helping companies identify products that have incurred damage and boosting quality control, a perishable shipping solution that includes real-time shipment condition visibility also plays an important role in preventing perishable products from ever being damaged in the first place. For one, real-time condition monitoring can sometimes enable companies to identify and correct a problem before it results in damaged products. If you notice, for example, that your cargo's temperature has risen higher than it should, you may be able to contact the carrier and have them fix the issue before your products spoil.

Real-time shipment condition visibility also prevents lost products by enabling companies to analyze their supply chain and determine where, when, and why the damage occurred. With the supply chain transparency provided by shipment condition visibility, pinpointing and resolving repetitive issues that lead to damaged products becomes much more feasible.

Challenges of Visibility for Perishable Shipping

With perishables, shipping solutions must achieve visibility to address several challenges that companies shipping non-perishable products do not have to contend with, including the following examples.

Inventory Management

Inventory management is a complex yet vital objective for all retail companies. For those that ship and sell perishable products, inventory management is even more challenging. Perishable products tend to have a limited shelf life and thus must be restocked both more frequently and in a more controlled manner.

Increasing Regulatory Requirements

For better or worse, regulations regarding shipping perishables have only grown stricter in recent years. Today, retail companies shipping perishables, shipping solutions must meet a range of regulatory requirements regarding how those products are shipped, processed, and stored. While necessary, these requirements often represent a heavy burden for companies selling perishable products.

Multi-Factor Shipment Condition Tracking

There's more than one way a perishable product can become spoiled. Certain pharmaceutical products, for example, must be kept in specific humidity and temperature ranges. To meet this requirement, companies need perishable shipping solutions that monitor both conditions while a product is in transit, making this requirement one of the critical challenges of visibility for perishable shipping.

Data Processing

When you are continually collecting real-time data across various metrics, leveraging any value from that data requires an efficient approach to data processing. Without the right data processing system and solutions in place, trying to analyze all of the data needed to achieve complete shipment visibility can feel like trying to drink water from a fire hose.

Perishable Shipping and the Internet of Things: How Tive's IoT Real-Time Trackers Provide Complete Visibility for Perishable Shipping

At Tive, we are committed to helping retail companies all over the world overcome the challenges of visibility with perishable shipping with solutions that revolve around our innovative IoT hyper accurate real-time  trackers. With Tive, companies can effortlessly monitor the temperature, humidity, light exposure, and shock absorption of their in-transit shipments, receiving real-time data and immediate alerts anytime one of these measurements strays outside of its acceptable range.

Along with providing complete shipment condition visibility, Tive's trackers also provide real-time transportation visibility, ensuring that you can always pinpoint the real-time location and status of your freight.

By providing complete condition visibility and transportation visibility alike, Tive is helping companies overcome all of the most pressing challenges of perishable shipping.

Tive Can Help You Build Perishables Shipping Solutions that Save Shipments

Managing a supply chain for perishable products entails a lot of unique challenges. However, the good news is that the right visibility solutions can go a long way toward mitigating all of these challenges. If you would like to learn more about how Tive's industry-leading hyper-accurate real-time trackers can help you achieve complete visibility into your perishable shipments and empower a profit-boosting loss prevention strategy, then be sure to contact us today!