Global Logistics Company Expeditors Ships Medical Supplies from the U.S. to Europe and China with Zero Temperature Excursions

A combination of infrastructure recommendations, employee training and documents coupled with sophisticated data-driven modeling tools eliminates temperature excursions for a multinational medical company.

The Opportunity

Expeditors, a Fortune 500 service-based logistics company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, received a request from a healthcare client in need of a packaging solution that complied with Good Distribution Practice’s (GDP) regulatory mandate for their largevolume shipments to China and Europe. The company’s previous shipping methods — various active and passive packaging solutions — had all proven subject to unacceptable temperature excursions. Expeditors sought a resolution using CSafe’s proprietary pallet shippers – supported by CSafe’s technical consultation services and data-driven analytics — to prevent temperature excursions and assure compliance with GDP guidelines. The customer’s products were manufactured both on the East Coast and Midwest. Multiple shipping locations were studied and deemed higher risks to store the large-volume shipments ultimately bound for China and Europe. CSafe’s first recommendation was to move the product to Expeditors’ temperaturecontrolled center of excellence facility in Chicago. After being made on the East Coast, the shipment was transported to Chicago — in a temperature-controlled vehicle and then packed out in CSafe’s pallet shippers in a pharma-grade environment — for the first leg of the journey. CSafe always volunteers to be on-site for the first shipment to help measure temperatures and complete employee training. In Chicago, both CSafe’s and Expeditors’ teams helped with the first 44 pallets headed to China. During the 10-hour process, they constantly monitored temperatures while simultaneously training the customer’s employees, creating training rosters and studying the organizational hierarchy in order to make contingency plans and educate additional team members. Despite these initial efforts, the team experienced temperature excursions during the first trial shipment. CSafe’s job was not done, but a long-term, productive, and trusting collaboration had begun.

The Breakthrough

While research indicated the pallet shippers were working as designed, CSafe offered guidance and assistance in analyzing the entire supply chain — from the point of manufacture to the product’s arrival at its final destination. CSafe reviewed historical weather patterns at arrival and departure cities, studied analytics from data loggers, and reviewed product handling at the manufacturer’s site to uncover the root cause of the temperature excursions. While reviewing the data logger thermal graphs, they identified a potential problem. Temperature monitors are lightweight, portable devices designed to record temperatures at preset intervals (once every five minutes, for example). It saves the information so that CSafe team members can review a comprehensive record, complete with time stamps, and analyze the various conditions the products have experienced during their journey. These monitors can be used to certify the product’s safety and usability while providing real-time reporting throughout the Cold Chain. Using data loggers, CSafe is able to pinpoint inconsistencies, proactively respond to disruptions, and reduce the likelihood of product damage. Using a Lane Risk Assessment, CSafe’s team reviewed information compiled from data logger graphs to analyze conditions at every handoff point within the freight lane to China.
On day three of the journey, CSafe successfully identified the weak link in the Cold Chain and made immediate recommendations to correct it.