Businesses strive to make their supply chains more efficient by improving information sharing throughout the supply chain. At each node in the supply chain, forecast and actual sales from the next node are collected, and planning may be done on what and how much to sell, make or deliver - which drives what and how much to order or buy from the previous node. Today, high demands are placed on manufacturers, distributors and retailers along the chain to maximize efficiency, minimize cost and provide the best value to the end-customer.

In today’s complex supply chains, the SandLinks active RFID system provides an excellent mechanism for visibility, reduced shrinkage, electronic proof of delivery, increased efficiency, and lower labor costs.

In-Transit Visibility (ITV) is the use of information technology, communications technology, and sensor technology, including the internet (both wired and wireless), to meet the challenges of surface transportation. ITV products and services extend the supply chain use of RFID into transit, resulting in improved transportation and logistics reliability and predictability, more effective management of transportation infrastructure, and improved quality and availability of information for transportation system users and providers.

The SandLinks system is highly suited for In-Transit Visibility applications, leveraging UWB (Ultra Wide Band) to enable reading of tags through the packaging component, and offering tag-to-tag communication that extends the read range and reliability within a transport trailer.

Spoiled food costs grocers money. Almost one-third of shoppers say the primary reason they avoid a given supermarket is dissatisfaction with the freshness of produce. With temperature-controlled drugs, an improperly stored dose of vaccine or insulin may provide an unsuspecting consumer with no more efficacy than a syringe of water. More than 60 percent of the industry's most commonly counterfeited drugs have cold-chain requirements, making it critical for suppliers of the legitimate products to ensure that their medicines retain their potency in transit.

Using the SandLinks active RFID system, suppliers, shippers, distributors and retailers can learn more than ever before about the temperature history of a product as it moves through the cold chain:

Pharmaceutical Cold Chain
Agencies like the FDA and Health Canada require specific ranges of temperature for pharmaceutical products. Responsibility for the cold chain ultimately resides with the manufacturer, but accountability is shared across the supply chain. The low-cost SandLinks Tag makes it practical to tag each package, and SandLinks’ use of UWB Active RFID enables reading the tag through the packaging component. Additionally, the small form factor of the SandLinks Tag ensures the right temperature is measured, and the system can accommodate large number of concurrent items, without overloading the network.

Perishable Food Cold Chain
Loss of quality can happen at any point from product origin to retail food display. Further, loss of cold chain control may significantly compromise food safety. The benefits of monitoring temperature using SandLinks Active RFID system include liability mitigation through end-to-end cold chain tracking, cold chain uniformity verification, expedient product location and replacement in the event of damage, and better overall distribution network performance and monitoring.