meet the plane at the rerouted destination and move the freight by ground to
its intended goal.
“We have cut two days out of transit
times in most cases for vaccine shipments where we are actually providing
a next-day service, which has allowed
customers to ship on more days of the
week,” Hook says.
Data on the transit environment are
now available in 72 countries.
“The Proactive Response software
anticipates when scans should be
made. We can anticipate a problem,
intervene, and take corrective action
long before the customer would realize the shipment is going to be late,”
Hook says.
“In the air freight business, we
have not had these visibility tools in
Data on the transit environment are
collected on active and passive packouts
after the shipment is completed and
sent electronically to the customer.
collected on active and passive packouts after the shipment is completed
and sent electronically to the customer.
UPS, says Hook, is studying the
inflight environment of its “brown
tail” fleet.
“Bio-pharma companies tell us that
temperature mapping is an increasingly critical component of their supply
chain planning,” he says. “We recently
helped a bio-pharma company shipping
from an air hub in Europe monitor
cargo and ambient temperatures. For
this time-definite passive packout, we
mapped the environment encountered
in the truck, on the tarmac, in the aircraft, and at final delivery, so they can
demonstrate to regulatory bodies they
understand the ambient temperature
encountered.”
In June, UPS launched the UPS
Proactive Response contract service
for safe delivery of high-value small
parcels such as vaccines and clinical
specimens. Targeted primarily to the
clinical trials market, the round-the-clock service uses a monitoring engine
that automatically compares data on
where a package is against where it
should be.
Packaging that isn’t going to meet its
delivery window is flagged, and a call
center is alerted to intercede, following
customers’ instructions. The service is
place in all parts of the world,” Hook
adds.
“With the globalization of healthcare,
the opening of manufacturing facilities in
Eastern Europe and Asia, and the global
expansion of clinical trials, the challenge
is to expand our tracking technology for
full visibility in the lanes needed by each
manufacturer,” he adds.
Temperature True currently covers
UPS’s major gateways in the United
States, UK, Europe, Asia, and Puerto
Rico. “We are getting requests for some
secondary markets in Asia and South
America. [For example], several of our
large pharma customers want to move
into Argentina, Chile, and Brazil. For
these markets, we have to establish cold-storage backup facilities, make sure we
have healthcare-compliant refrigerated
trucks in place, and implement SOPs and
local training,” Hook says.
The logistics provider is expanding its
healthcare footprint with new facilities
in Roermond, The Netherlands, and in
Puerto Rico, set to open this year.
A 150,000-sq-ft distribution facility in Puerto Rico will support UPS’s
supply-chain network for sensitive drug
and biotech products. In Roermond, a
215,000-sq-ft healthcare facility will feature customized inventory management
and compliance tools, and temperature-sensitive storage and quality assurance services, supporting the freight and express
package networks.
■
The healthcare facilities of UPS are based in Louisville, KY, near its largest international hub, Worldport.
There, workers can monitor temperature-sensitive shipments via remote tracking devices.
