Like many of us that work in this industry I always follow very closely the presentations from the Spring and early Summer rounds of trade events and industry meetings to see what might be new.

Being that cold chain and drug security are close to my own areas of personal interest I always tune in on the articles and data related to these two areas.

Just recently there have been a number of reports and surveys issued from highly respected partners in our industry like:

• UPS.
• HDMA
• PDA
• Rx-360
• Georgia Tech.
• All to name but a few!

- about major causes of supply chain shipment failures and the reasons for temperature excursions that go undetected until it is too late (Forensic failures) or those that have not been " managed" well from the start.

Of no surprise to many of us, I am sure, the number one error that causes cold chain shipment failures is - Human Error by an estimated score of 90% (Georgia Tech), a close second is no data recording device added to the shipment, or if it was, it was not started!

Many companies spend much time, money and effort on validating new routes, developing new packaging and profiling the routes for challenges and calculated events that are seen as Risk creating. So Risk Aversion plans are set up and one part that seems to get overlooked is training of the logistics and distribution staffs, or organizing a complete review of all Work Instructions (WI's) or Standard Operating Procedures (SOP's).

There are many points in the supply chain where Human Intervention occurs and certainly a primary one of these is setting, starting and placing the temperature logging device within the packaging.

All DeltaTrak loggers come with a standard patented feature called Shadow Log™ and the logger in essence will always be running so that a temperature data recording can be captured for any shipment even without the logger being manually started - generally this is a required step in any WI, or SOP.

So look at your cold chain shipping processes and areas where human intervention is a natural part of the process and review your Risk Aversion plans - just perhaps a new approach to how you use data loggers and what type you use may make good sense to include in your Risk Mitigation plans.