Transporting inventory throughout your supply chain can pose many challenges, especially if your products or equipment are fragile or prone to damage.

The primary factors that can affect your supply include impact, tilt, and temperature. Severe impact, unexpected tilt, and unacceptable temperature can damage or destroy inventory while it’s in transit — costing you money and upsetting your reputation among customers.

Fortunately, supply chain managers can take certain precautions to monitor environmental issues and address them to prevent future occurrences. They can even make adjustments in real time to ensure safe delivery of inventory. Shipping damage indicators and monitors — many with instant alerts and connectivity — can prompt receivers to inspect affected packages for damages and optimize the supply chain with logistics improvements.

Let’s take a look at how these factors affect your supply chain and how you can your optimize supply chain with monitoring by mitigating and identifying potential issues using SpotSee products — while also ensuring accountability with partners along the way.

Impact

Sudden impact (often referred to as “shock”) is one of the most common causes of inventory damage during transit. SpotSee’s impact condition monitors and indicators can help you identify exactly where and when impact levels are exceeding desired limits so you can take proper corrective action.

Common Use Cases: Transportation of glass or fragile items, HVAC equipment, furniture, medical devices, electronics and appliances, transformers, and other items that can get damaged by impact.

SpotSee Solutions:

ShockWatch 2 — ShockWatch 2 impact indicator labels can be applied to packages and change color when mishandling occurs. Mishandled packages can be easily identified and inspected for damage upon arrival. The labels are tamper-proof, and simply having the labels on packages deters workers from mishandling them.

SpotBot — SpotBot monitors, available in a range of connectivity capabilities, allow businesses to monitor impact and temperature from start to destination and use cellular service (which offers real-time updates in the SpotSee Cloud), USB, or Bluetooth to communicate trip data. SpotBot makes note of an impact event and its g-force (up to 65 Gs), as well as any out-of-threshold temperature fluctuations, and maps them geographically so the user can understand the severity and location of a damage occurrence. SpotBot is best for objects weighing less than 30 tons. Users can stop damaged shipments before they arrive or take corrective action en route.

ShockLog — ShockLog devices provide a detailed look into acceleration, duration, and amplitude of a potentially damaging event in the supply chain (up to 200 Gs). With the lowest noise floor in the market, ShockLog can monitor assets weighing up to 250 tons. In addition to its standard impact monitor, ShockLog’s capabilities can be expanded with add-ons to measure temperature, humidity, pressure, tilt, roll, vibration, and GPS-monitored location. Users can review detailed trip data via USB download, and upgrade to satellite or cellular connectivity for real-time alerts and visualized locations in the SpotSee Cloud.

SpotSee offers more than a dozen devices to monitor and indicate impact using connectivity options like Bluetooth, cellular, satellite, RFID, and USB download so you can access data in real time or after your inventory reaches its destination. Learn more at https://spotsee.io/impact.

Tilt

Another factor that can negatively affect supply chain shipments is tilt. SpotSee’s tilt indicators let you know if your inventory or equipment has tilted sideways, the degree of the tilt, and if the package completely overturned at some point during shipment.

Common Use Cases: Transportation of industrial and aerospace equipment, glass, HVAC, appliances, auto parts, biotechnology, art/photography, chemicals, construction equipment, and more.

SpotSee Solutions:

TiltWatch XTR — TiltWatch XTR can be applied to packages and will turn red if tipping has occurred. The indicator will not trigger under normal handling conditions.

TiltWatch Plus — If you need more detailed tilt data, TiltWatch Plus has three sections that display the following: (1) degree of tilt to the left, (2) degree of tilt to the right, and (3) total overturn.

Additionally, the ShockLog 298 can monitor tilt as one of many criteria alongside impact and temperature. Learn more about our tilt indicators at https://spotsee.io/tilt.

Temperature

Some items must remain within a certain temperature range for safe transport. Warm temperatures or extreme cold temperatures can cause such items to arrive in an unacceptable condition. SpotSee’s temperature indicators and monitors help ensure items remain within proper temperature ranges during transport.

Common Use Cases: Pharmaceuticals, fresh food transportation (like meat or fish), chocolate, electronics, chemicals,  tissue samples and specimens, flowers, food delivery, and more.

SpotSee Solutions:

ColdMark — ColdMark indicators change color when your shipment goes outside a specified temperature range.

WarmMark — WarmMark indicators provide a visual alert when temperatures exceed a certain limit and even indicate if the exposure was for a short or prolonged amount of time.

LOGIC Temperature Recorders — LOGIC temperature recorders are programmable recorders that allow you to set thresholds important to your products. With USB and RFID data connectivity, these monitors can let you know when temperatures fall outside desired thresholds so you can identify problem points in your supply chain and take corrective action.

TempU Recorder — TempU is a 60-day temperature recorder with preset temperature thresholds that allows you to record and analyze temperature data and generates a detailed PDF of the trip. It also includes a built-in visual alarm light, should thresholds be exceeded. 

SpotBot — SpotBot monitors impact and temperature (plus humidity and tilt) and can transmit data in real- time using cellular or Bluetooth communication.

Learn more about our temperature indicators at https://spotsee.io/temperature.

Optimize Your Supply Chain for Safe Delivery of Inventory

Want to learn more about SpotSee’s products and how we can help you optimize your supply chain? Fill out the form below to discuss your needs with a SpotSee expert who can customize a logistics monitoring plan to fit your unique needs.