In the pharmaceutical industry, it's important to make sure that your products are getting from one destination to the next without being undermined by humidity or extreme temperatures. However, without a clear plan of action or a trusted supply chain partner, it is nearly impossible to keep track.
That’s why it’s so essential to have a cold chain process in place. You can take all of the guesswork out of ensuring that your products arrive the way they’re supposed to, by partnering with a dependable, expert shipping partner.
Here are the 3 most common mistakes when cold chain shipping pharmaceuticals - and how to avoid them:
1. Failure to Forecast
In principle, involving your shipping logistics partner as early in the process as possible is recommended because no two situations are exactly the same. The sooner the necessary shipping requirements can be understood, the sooner a customized solution can be built to fit that application.
To give a good feel for what range of solutions may be applicable, temperature mapping is critical to identifying what temperatures may be met along the way.
2. Not Monitoring Temperature at Every Level
You have the choice to monitor at the product, box, case, pallet, or cargo level, when it comes to temperature monitoring. By monitoring at the product level, you’re able to continually keep a watch on the product even when shipments are split apart to be taken to separate locations.
Electronic solutions are a critical component of pharmaceutical cold chain shipping because they give us the ability to identify any gaps or weaknesses in the supply chain. We’re able to pull digital data history so we can see which temperatures were hit at which time and upload the data to a Cloud Repository or Quality System.
3. Not Utilizing Phase Change Materials
Phase change materials offer thermal stabilizing solutions, which takes on multiple forms such as:
- Panels
- Pouching
- Pellets
These solutions can help with keeping a product warm, cold, or simply function as an insulator to maintain up a specific temperature for long period of time.