Product (Smart-Trace)

To the best of the company’s knowledge, Smart-Trace is the only system currently available which provides prompt notification of movement and temperature events for perishable products throughout the supply chain at pallet load level. The Smart-Trace end-to-end business process is protected by International Patents in the major markets of the USA, Japan, United Kingdom and Australia.

The steps in the process are as follows:

Step 1:
The sender of perishable goods activates and attaches a scanned, non-returnable Smart-Trace tag to the elected pallet loads and registers the consignment at dispatch. Pallets are then loaded into a refrigerated truck, trailer or container. Data on the pallet load condition starts to be sent to the central Smart-Trace server.

Step 2:
Once the trailer is in transit, the Smart-Trace tags sends continuous dynamic data signals from load to a Smart-Trace Gateway in the refrigerated truck, trailer or container via a robust, self-healing, ad-hoc wireless network.

Step 3:
The Smart-Trace Gateway assembles the tag data and attaches the GPS position into messages that it transmits in near real time (usually every 15 minutes, but up to 2 hours for long sea journeys) via GPRS or satellite to the central Smart-Trace Server.

Step 4:
The Smart-Trace Server records the message in its database, and prepares secure, customised reports based on the unique pallet-load identity, location, and temperature data by date-time from the trip origin to destination, including cross-dockings (where goods are unloaded, reloaded into different transport and continue to their destination, subject to the new transport also having a Smart-Trace Gateway).

Step 5:
The sender of the perishable goods automatically receives or accesses the customised Smart-Trace information via the Smart-Trace web application. Current options include SMS alarm to the mobile phone, secure internet notification or exception report direct into the sender’s warehouse management system. The Smart-Trace system provides an independent audit record for evidence of regulatory compliance and a capacity to predict any shelf-life impact of time/temperature abuse on the product, similar to the report generated below.