What are Potential Risks in Cold Chain Management?

As the vaccination program for Covid-19 worldwide is in full swing, ever wondered, how come even the most remote areas of the world managed to procure the vaccine supply and inoculate their citizens? The major credit goes to the various companies' excellent supply chain management and Logistics services. They have faced plenty of hurdles during this ongoing pandemic but, something which might have posed the biggest challenge was to ensure a smooth workflow of the cold chain management that, if found to be faulty, could have caused the loss of billions of vaccines.

Using the most sophisticated technologies both in the warehouse and logistics, AWL has always strived for excellence as far as the management of temperature-sensitive products like food/ pharmaceutical/ chemicals is concerned. However, the field of cold chain supply systems is highly unpredictable due to the enormous number of variables involved.

Let's have a look at the ten most potential risks involved in this sector and how we at AWL tackle those issues:

The Involvement of Human Errors

In a conventional system, often the supply chain personnel are not well equipped to handle the product/service either due to a lack of proper training or owing to very meager automation that, in turn, may lead to damage of the product either in the warehouse or during transportation. 

At AWL India, we provide cutting-edge technology-based warehouses using IoT, AI, ML, etc., that are very automated and thus reduce the usage of human intervention and, in turn, the errors caused due to it. Our customers can closely track the shipment of the various inventories in real-time using in-built sensors, GPS, etc., even without logging in.

The Theft Risk

During the transportation of the products from the warehouse to the cargo depot or vice-versa, there is a potential risk of theft or counterfeit of the products. At AWL India, shipment tracking of the inventories in real-time both by the customers and logisticians helps prevent any mishap in this regard.

The Risk of Distribution/ Delivery

For the products to be distributed to their respective destinations, they first need to be stored in the warehouses, and this is where some critical issues arise like; possible hardware failure, damaged packaging, etc., that in turn would either delay the shipment or degrade the product.

At AWL, we strategically manage the warehouses to maintain a surplus amount of facilities even during crunch.

Concern of Costly Expenditure

The sophisticated technologies implemented in cold chain supply systems are worth it but are often quite expensive thus becoming a hurdle for the under-developed and developing countries. The requirement of maintaining cold temperature throughout the process is itself a costly affair. We at AWL; promise to deliver inventories at a lower cost by devising strategic transportation and distribution management.

Uncertainty in Demand

Even if one employs all the possible strategies to deliver the intact product to the customers, there is always a certain degree of uncertainty looming around. It may be due to any of the reasons like a ban on certain imports/ exports by the Central government, an outbreak of an epidemic in a region that drastically reduced the demand of the product that has already been released for shipment, etc.

We at AWL though can't promise to eradicate these problems completely but can surely mitigate the issues with our efficient transportation strategies

Environmental Impact

Various environmental policies, regulations, and a number of other variables — global, local, sometimes even geological — can affect the supply chain’s business or operating environment, forcing logistics players to reevaluate or update their technology, practices, or contingencies based on strategic objectives.

We at AWL, have world-class warehouses operating with cutting-edge technologies to help the inventories sustain the variables. Our Reverse logistics system is also equipped to handle these issues.

Increase in Regulations/ Clearance

In this ever-changing world, where government rules and regulations change very frequently, it becomes difficult for the cold chain supply managers and logisticians to adapt, adhere and comply with the differing clearance/ regulation policies and frameworks thus causing unnecessary delay in shipment, high expenditure, etc.

We at AWL, abide by the series of regulations mandated by the ICC (International Chamber of Commerce) to smooth business transactions upon arrival and departure of goods between any countries. The goods can also be stored at our bonded warehouses with zero customs duty until their delivery to the final destination.

Retailer Risk

Even if the entire team of the cold chain supply system and logistics manages to take utmost care of the products during storage, shipment, or distribution, there still remains a probability of negligence on the retailer's side. This eventually would ruin the entire effort that was put to deliver a quality product to the customer.

So, we at AWL, have developed effective strategies for reverse logistics wherein the products to be returned are first retrieved from the customer or the warehouse. All the products returned are consolidated as per the company’s policy and quality checks are performed. After examination the products are accordingly returned to the seller, repaired or refurbished.

Supplier Risk

Often, the raw materials provided by the suppliers/ manufacturers don't meet the required standards or the suppliers are very casual in their work. Any of these factors can ruin the final quality of the product.

We at AWL, have developed effective strategies for reverse logistics wherein the products to be returned to the manufacturer must be handled quickly within the specified window of 15 days while the refurbished products can be resold to reclaim the profits.

Lack Of Uniform Infrastructure

Even if the best quality of the product is ensured at one end of the supply chain, it doesn't give a confirmation that the entire process, till the product is delivered to the customer, would be as uniform and smooth as was observed at one end of the supply chain.

We at AWL, employing sophisticated technologies, strategic management in warehousing, Transportation and Distribution, Express Cargo, order fulfillment, and shipment tracking ensure to maintain uniformity throughout the supply chain process as customer satisfaction is our prime importance.

We hope to serve you in the near future!