Companies around the world are working on establishing reliable cold chains that guarantee that products — whether they are fresh tomatoes, frozen foods, or life-saving pharmaceuticals — always arrive in good condition and safe for consumption, regardless of the destination.

Despite their best efforts to mitigate risks, cold chains still fail and expose products to risk and companies to substantial losses.

The damage doesn't just hit corporate bottom lines - it has repercussions for global food security and healthcare assurance as well.

Over one-third of the world’s food is lost to spoilage each year due to poor or inadequate temperature control techniques in-transit. This not only affects the availability of food sources, but also life-saving medical treatments across the world.

It's vital for enterprises to not only identify and understand the biggest risks to their cold chain, but also how to address them.

Top 4 cold chain management risks

1) Equipment Malfunction or Breakdown

2) Lack of Uniform Standards or Infrastructure

3) Distribution/Delivery Cold Chain Risk

4) Human Error

How can you reduce your cold chain risk

The right, end-to-end cold chain monitoring solution will afford shipping managers and quality control personnel alike the trifecta of what they need to ensure maximum cold chain reliability:

1) Sense Data in Real-time

Knowing instantly about a temperature spike and which of your parcels are potentially affected is valuable information.

2) Make Sense of Data

Sufficient logistics data, when properly analyzed, can be a treasure trove of predictive and real-time actionable insight.

3) Act on Insights Through Timely Intervention

Real-time monitoring would give you a heads-up early enough to take effective action, dispatching a recovery or refit team to resolve the issue.