What Is a Cold Chain?

A cold chain is a supply chain with a difference.

A cold chain is an uninterrupted supply system that maintains the quality of products from production through to transportation, distribution, storage, and retail by using temperature-controlled environments.

What Does A Cold Chain Do?

An unbroken cold chain provides a safe, temperature-controlled environment for sensitive items such as fresh and frozen food produce, pharmaceutical products, biologics, chemicals, and vaccines.

The cold chain is essential for maintaining the quality of these high and low-risk perishable products and ensuring they arrive in optimal condition, fit for use or consumption.

How Do Cold Chains Use IoT?

IoT enhances the cold chain by enabling real-time logistic management of every link in the chain. It does this by using sensor-based technology, which allows sophisticated real-time data tracking.

Instead of manually collecting data by examining data gauges, connected sensors continuously monitor every link's environmental conditions in the cold chain.

IoT-Enabled Cold Chain Benefits

• IoT sensors collect real-time data on location, temperature, and humidity, optimizing both reactive and proactive monitoring.
• Smart IoT ecosystems identify incidents immediately and help to mitigate any damages or delays with reactive responses.
• Rich data collected from sensors provides deep analytics, which can perform an audit on each part of the chain and optimize for efficiency.
• Improves predictive maintenance and cost-effectiveness: fixing problems before they happen and scheduling maintenance to reduce downtime
• Reduces wastage: a high-quality cold chain will guarantee the product's safety and quality by maintaining optimum environmental conditions.