Cold Chain Management

The cold chain is a temperature-controlled supply chain for temperature-sensitive goods such as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, biologics, chemicals, food, and beverages. The cold chain includes all segments in the supply chain from the producer to the consumer where temperature is the most important factor for quality and prolonging or maintaining the shelf life of the products. Managing the cold chain requires temperature monitoring and control at each step of the supply chain. Cold chain management (CCM) plays an important role in tackling the challenges to obtain the optimization of product quality, product safety, and minimization of wastage. CCM system requires fast and smart decision through monitoring and traceability to provide high level of service while keeping quality of products. With the combination of science, people, process and technologies, and optimization along the supply chain, the cold chain will gain benefits such as high product and service quality, safety, efficiency, and profitability.

Cold chain management is important in supply chains such as food and pharmaceuticals as it can reduce the risk and cost. The key to managing the cold chain is to monitor and maintain the product temperature and coordination in each stage of the supply chain. Temperature control needs to be improved throughout the cold chain that consists of processing, storage, transportation, and distribution activities to ensure food safety and hygiene and to maintain the product quality. The cold chain is quite complex due to limited lifetime, product-specific requirements, and the deteriorating quality of goods over time. This chapter explains the fundamentals of cold chain management that include definitions, structure, features, principles, regulations, standards, etc.

Prior to mechanical refrigeration systems, people harvested natural ice and used cellars to cool and preserve the perishables, especially food. There were other preservation methods available: salting, pickling, drying, spicing, and smoking. However, most of the fresh foods and other temperature-sensitive goods were available only in the local market due to their short shelf life and perishability. With the advancement of cooling technology, temperature-controlled supply chain or cold chain is developed; therefore, the fresh food today can be stored longer and transported to different markets across the borders of the countries. Refrigeration technologies play vital role to preserve and transport perishable food from the point of production to the point of consumption. In the past, a cold chain simply denoted single temperature warehouses and refrigerated vehicles. There was no awareness of integrating the supply chain links and, as a result, billions of dollars’ worth of losses occurred every year. To achieve basic understanding on the cold chain, food and vaccines cold chains are explained and socioeconomic and environmental impacts, and the research trends of cold chain are presented.

Cold Chain Logistics (CCL) is comprised of equipment and processes that keep perishable products under controlled cold environment from production to consumer end in a safe, wholesome, and good-quality state. Typically, cold chain needs to deal with refrigerated facilities such as refrigerators, cold storage warehouses, refrigerated truck, and containers in the stage of production, processing, packaging, warehousing, transportation, distribution, and retailing. However, cold chain is not only about the facilities and equipment used in different stages. The integrity of the cold chain must be maintained from the very beginning of production or processing, through each link such as loading, unloading, transport, handling, and storage to the consumer end. To manage an integrated cold chain, the basic understanding of product characteristics, refrigeration, freezing, necessary facilities, and equipment is necessary. Automation and maintenance of cold chain equipment are also important functions in managing a cold chain.

Since a cold chain refers to a temperature-controlled supply chain, data collection (e.g., product tracking, temperature tracking) methods are vital to maintain a sustainable and unbroken cold chain. Selecting the right temperature-monitoring tool is critical to avoid spoilage, to ensure pinpoint accuracy, and to comply with mandatory regulations. In general, there are five options of tools to monitor cold chain equipment/facilities such as fridge, freezer, cold storage, and warehouse which are thermometers/probe thermometers; chart recorders; temperature indicator labels; data loggers; wireless sensors/Internet of things (IoT) devices [radio frequency identification (RFID), wireless sensor network (WSN), etc.].

The supply chain can be quite complex when dealing with food products. The limited lifetime and the deteriorating quality of perishable foods over time contribute substantially to the complexity of their management. The preliminary tasks before storage are as important as the tasks after storage to maintain a sustainable and unbroken cold chain. In storing perishable products, one must consider product characteristics, especially temperature requirement. Temperature requirements vary among food items, whether frozen or chilled, and they even differ across types of foods. Even short exposures like a few hours to extreme hot or cold temperatures can cause a marked decrease in shelf life and loss of quality. Good temperature management is, in fact, the most important and simplest procedure for delaying the deterioration of food products. The optimization of temperature control in storage facilities such as refrigerated truck, warehouse, and cold store is crucial in today’s operation of Cold Chain Logistics. Some methods to define optimal target temperature are introduced in this chapter. The improved cold chain needs to be instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent. Therefore, cold chains need to be interconnected to customers, suppliers, and IT systems, as well as to products, trailers, and other smart objects that monitor the cold chain.

There is frequent loss of quality and value when goods are stored and transported. Quality needs to be assured that the products are kept at the prime conditions along the supply chain. The deterioration of perishable foods can lead to a decrease in the aesthetic appeal as well as a reduction in nutritional value. The degradation of quality in some food is readily visible by changes of texture or colors, but there are some situations where the degradation might not be so readily visible. However, the visual judgment on current quality is very subjective and not reliable in practice. To assess the quality, the monitoring and collection of quality data through indicators using sensors are needed to calculate and judge the actual quality of the product. Wireless sensor network (WSN) is an efficient tool to monitor and control the cold chain with respect to the loss of quality in perishable products during transportation and storage. In the case of perishable goods, there is generally a need to monitor goods continuously, since there could be various changes which impact on the quality: a degradation of quality, creation of a hazard, reduction of value or reduced shelf life, etc. While the human senses have only a limited capability to assess the intrinsic product properties, modern sensor technologies can help to provide the required information.

Obviously, traceability is a generic term which is applicable to products across industries; however, it is widely practiced in food industry. Many definitions of traceability can be found and defined by organizations and individuals with different perspectives based on different products’ supply chain. The global concern for food safety and quality and the need for traceability are being addressed by the development of legislation, new international standards, and industry guidelines. Quality and safety are both linked to traceability, whereas safety is implicated by traceability more often. They are two very important elements of people’s conceptions of food and associated decision-making (i.e., food choice). Traceability is primarily viewed as a tool for the food safety by providing means for recall as well as proof for authenticity of food, but it also related to food quality. Since both quality and safety were shown to be related to confidence, traceability may indeed boost consumer confidence through quality and safety assessments.

From the early 2000s, the idea of connecting home appliances to the Internet had been popularized and was seen as the next big thing. Big electronics companies launched the Internet-based smart refrigerator which features a touch screen which provides daily recommendation of food recipes and ability to connect to other devices such as speakers and smart televisions. However, there is no guarantee that the fridge will be getting updates after a few years, and it is too expensive for most people. Therefore, there is a market demand for smart refrigerators that own essential features in affordable price since the use of smart appliances is increasing today. This chapter presents a case study on the design and implementation of smart refrigerator which could give smart features comparable to typical dull and cheap refrigerator.