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Optimize Courier is a premier time- and temperature-sensitive global logistics company providing best-in-class service to customers in the pharmaceutical and life science industries.
A new pharmaceutical client approached Optimize to devise a solution to address costly losses within their supply chain. The client lost $2.5 million dollars worth of pharma the previous year when their pharma was shipped at the wrong temperature. Pharma ships at various ranges, including ambient (+15-25C), refrigerated (+2-8C) or frozen (-20C). The losses happened when temperature excursions occurred in only 1% of their orders. To complicate matters, cargo insurance policies do not cover temperature excursions.
The temperature excursions were a result of unpredictable human errors, including improper reconditioning of packaging or mishandling of the shipment by the airline. The client was relying on traditional USB data loggers to record the temperature of their pharma shipments. Temperature excursions were only discovered after a shipment had been delivered.
Optimize’s solution to mitigate these temperature excursions was to partner with Tive and to incorporate multi-sensor SOLO 5G devices with each shipment. The Tive solution provides real-time visibility of the shipment's temperature and sends active notifications to Optimize when a shipment is at risk of incurring a temperature excursion.
Tive helps Optimize actively monitor each temperature-controlled shipment, every step of the way. The Tive application sends a notification to the Optimize operations team whenever a shipment is at risk of deviating from its required temperature range. Optimize uses that real-time notification to immediately investigate if the packaging was preconditioned improperly or if the airline loaded the pharma into the wrong cooler, allowing Optimize to take proactive measures to prevent any temperature excursions.
The following real-life example took place with a $500,000 USD pharma shipment. The shipment needed to stay within the ambient (+15-25C) temperature range and was shipping from Durham, NC to Memphis, TN. The planned routing was using a passenger airline and their temperature-controlled service, connecting in Charlotte, NC.
When the shipment arrived in Charlotte, NC, Tive sent an alert to Optimize indicating that the temperature of the package had rapidly dropped down to +17C. Optimize contacted the airline and learned that the shipment was mistakenly put into a refrigerated cooler (+2-8C). The airline immediately removed the shipment from the cooler and placed it into the proper ambient (+15-25C) conditions. Optimize arranged to recover the shipment in Charlotte, NC with a temperature-controlled vehicle to safely drive the shipment the rest of the way to Memphis, TN. This real-time notification prevented the company from losing $500,000 USD worth of goods and allowed the shipment to be delivered on time and in full.
