Integrate cold chain management systems?

Integrate cold chain management systems?

“We integrate cold chain management systems.”

I was struggling for a ‘tag line’ for Modality Solutions for some time, trying to explain what we do. Something pithy, something edgy… Controlled-environment logistics or ‘cold chain management’ means many things to many different people. As a professional logistician for almost twenty years, I have had the great privilege to meet a lot of passionate people who are committed to providing exceptional service in high value, highly regulated supply chains. What could we add to an industry filled with dedicated, intelligent, and passionate people? Then it hit me – we integrate cold chain management systems! But what does that really mean?

When I hit my fellow principals up with this idea, and they had already heard a lot of bad ideas already, they looked at me as only an engineer can – “Duh! Of course we do…”

However, there is an underlying complexity to great engineering work my principals do every day. A balance between perfection and pragmatism, design and decision tradeoffs, budgets and timelines… Like any tightly integrated system, a variety of subsystems in any controlled-environment logistics network must be fine-tuned to ensure optimal performance, cost control, and regulatory compliance. Over the next several weeks, we will be sharing some of our insights on how to integrate your cold chain management systems.

The first step will be defining these sub-systems. We have a pretty good idea on the systems we focus on, but we are going to be asking for some help! I love the LinkedIn community and their ability to gather information and focus like a laser on specific issues… With the help of ‘social media’, I am going to start several conversations on this topic and see what our peers in industry think about cold chain management systems integration and distill their best ideas here. Stay tuned!

P.S. I tried to capture this idea for an interview with SupplyChainBrain (www.supplychainbrain.com) in November 2011. Robert Bowman, managing editor for SupplyChainBrain.com, helped me tremendously to organize my thoughts… Enjoy!