The Best Way to Ship Perishables Must Include Real-Time Condition Visibility

Effective supply chain management is already challenging enough. When you are shipping perishable products that must be transported in exacting conditions, though, supply chain management becomes all the more difficult. Thankfully, real-time condition visibility and the tools that make it possible can go a long way toward helping companies navigate the best way to ship perishables. Doing so will ensure the safety and quality of their perishable products and helping them implement a cost-saving loss prevention strategy.

The Challenges of Shipping Perishable Products

Managing a supply chain for perishable products comes with the same challenges associated with managing a supply chain for non-perishable products, along with additional quality-control and loss prevention concerns. Starting with the inherent difficulties of shipping any product, the ability to track the hyper-accurate location and status of shipments in real-time is one key challenge of shipping products, perishable or not. Supply chain managers need to know what is flowing in and out of their warehouses and exactly when new inventory will arrive, and real-time track and trace capabilities are the keys to solving this challenge.

Along with tracking the location and status of their shipments, though, companies seeking the best way to ship perishable products must also track the condition of their shipments in real time. For example, a company shipping frozen foods in refrigerated containers needs the ability to monitor the temperature of its shipments to ensure their quality and safety upon arrival. In some cases, the quality and safety of perishable products are impossible to provide without real-time condition monitoring. Companies might not know whether their perishable products are safe to send to customers even after those products arrive unless they monitor their condition throughout the supply chain.

The final challenge of shipping perishable products is in-transit damage rates are actually increasing rather than decreasing. According to Packaging Digest, as much as 11% of cargo is currently damaged in transit, making it all the more difficult to ensure the quality of perishable products.

Why are In-Transit Damage Rates on the Rise?

In-transit damage rates have been rising lately, but why is this the case? While there is no simple answer to why carriers are now reporting higher damage rates than they have in the past, this rise in in-transit damage rates can be linked directly to carriers currently struggling to keep up with demand. Along with higher prices and limited capacity, demand for transportation services has recently outpaced supply, in many cases, causing the quality of carrier services to suffer, potentially marking one reason why damage rates are on the rise.

Whatever the cause, though, these rising damage rates are bad news for companies that already have to deal with the numerous challenges in finding the best ways to ship perishables . Thankfully, though, real-time condition visibility helps solve these challenges in several powerful ways.

Real-Time Condition Visibility: The Modern Solution to Loss Prevention

Real-time shipment condition visibility solutions such as Tive's GPS trackers make it easy for companies that ship perishable products to monitor the condition of their shipments in real-time throughout the supply chain. With Tive, companies can track a shipment's temperature, humidity, light exposure, and shock absorption and receive automated alerts anytime one of these measurements drifts beyond acceptable threshholds. By making it easy for companies shipping perishable products to monitor the condition of their products in real-time, Tive ensures that every product that makes it into the hands of your customers is safe and undamaged.

Along with helping ensure the safety and quality of your products by alerting you when shipments might have incurred damage, Tive's GPS trackers can also play a vital role in helping prevent product damage in the first place. By providing you with a completely transparent supply chain that makes it easy to pinpoint when, where, and why the damage occurred, Tive can empower your company's loss prevention strategy and help you fine-tune your supply chain for minimal in-transit damage.

When exploring the best way to ship perishables, providing unmatched real-time condition visibility is only the beginning. Tive's GPS trackers also provide accurate, real-time updates on the location and status of your shipments, solving another critical challenge of supply chain management by providing your freight’s exact location and when it will arrive.

How to Achieve Real-Time Condition Visibility

Achieving real-time condition visibility is as simple as placing a Tive tracker in each container you ship. Once these trackers are in place, you can look forward to complete shipment condition visibility and unmatched track and trace capabilities from a single user-friendly cloud application. Thanks to the immense benefits that this solution provides and the challenges that it solves, the best way to ship perishable products must include real-time condition visibility.

A Partnership with Tive is the Best Way to Ship Perishables

Real-time location and condition visibility can guarantee the quality and safety of your perishable products while also providing you with the data needed to develop an optimized loss prevention strategy. To learn more about the best way to ship perishables and the many features and benefits of Tive's industry-leading GPS trackers, software and service, be sure to contact us today!

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