How can Environmental Monitoring Eliminate Issues in the Food Supply Chain?

Ensuring food product quality and safety with EM solutions utilizing IoT technology enables companies in the food and beverage industry to strengthen the food safety systems and better protect the consumers.

FREMONT, CA: Food supply chains are continuously becoming complex as the food enterprises increasingly face a deviation from the required environmental conditions like theft, fraud, and poor handling. Supply chains are global, including transit routes like road, sea, rail, and air that create many potential points of failure in food safety or product integrity protocol. To keep the product quality and safety, the companies should implement environmental monitoring (EM) solutions, which clearly depict a whole picture of their food products as they shift through the supply chain. The EM solutions that use the devices are powered by the Internet of Things (IoT) that allows real-time tracking of the cargo and offers actionable data that can mitigate the common problems, change the outcomes, and guard the brands and consumer health. Here are some issues that food manufacturers and distributors are facing that are eliminated by the EM solutions.

Present Issues for Food Supply Chains

Companies in the food and beverage industry face diversion and theft at any of the blind spots along the supply chain. According to a report by BSI Supply Chain Services and Solutions, food and beverages account for 34 percent of all cargo theft, proving to be one among the top commodities targeted by thieves. Food product quality and safety have been severely affected during transition cargo owing to poor handling that exposes to water, heat, and cold or substance contamination. The inefficiencies in routing, including failing to stick to transport regulations, improper monitoring of traffic, and not utilizing GPS location tracking, can result in product spoilage.

EM Solutions for Food Supply Chains

Real-time EM solutions are capable of tracking the product by giving the companies a vibrant and detailed picture of the current state of their products, including their location. EM solutions utilizing IoT technology ensures continuity, productivity, and visibility. It uses sensors placed on containers that send data on regular intervals over a communication network that is made available via a software platform. The platform allows users to set parameters like maximum and minimum temperature to alert the system of irregularities. This data provides enhanced visibility for the supply chain, thereby protecting the consumers.

With the advent of EM technologies and IoT enabled tracking, supply chain operations can be streamlined. Companies can prevent waste and financial losses, thereby occupying a significant position in the market place.