VeriLocation, provider of GPS fleet tracking and telematics systems, has spent the last year developing a temperature monitoring solution for a specialist logistics company.
Biocair specialises in the international shipping of goods that must be kept at a certain temperature, such as drugs, vaccines and radioactive material.
Typically in this sector, businesses use a temperature logger as a way of reporting historical temperature data to the client. The biggest flaw to this practice is that the temperature cannot be monitored remotely in real time, and problems cannot be detected quickly.
VeriLocation worked with Biocair to combine its VL-Fleet in-vehicle tracking system with existing Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. Temperature sensors within the active RFID transmitters are placed inside the goods area of the vehicles, removing the need to drill any holes or damage any part of the cold storage areas.
The temperature information is then wirelessly sent to the VL-Fleet reader device, which combines it with GPS location, date, time, speed, direction of travel and other vehicle telematics. This can then all be viewed in real time by Biocair using a normal internet browser. Temperature range triggers can then be used to provide alerting when thresholds are breached.
‘We picked VeriLocation to build this solution for us because they were able to demonstrate how their out-of-the-box solution could be developed for our specific needs,’ said Biocair’s Global Business Systems Manager Daniel Allcock.
‘VeriLocation has taken two well known technologies and combined them in a new way. This has been a major step forward in enabling Biocair to give proactive information to its clients.’
Biocair can monitor the real time temperature of goods in its vehicles no matter where they are in the world. And clients are given historical reports showing the temperature of goods for every minute of the journey.
The company has also now started to use the technology to capture data from suppliers preparing goods for their cool chain, increasing confidence for clients.
VeriLocation’s technology sends data over GPRS cellular networks, so Biocair’s suppliers are given temperature sensors and a ‘black box’ that does the work and sends data without any input required from them.
The next development for VeriLocation and Biocair will be providing clients with a live data feed of the temperature of their goods in transit, in real time using web services.