Have you ever wondered how the food and beverage industry operates? Well, it is not an easy road, that is for sure.The FMCG goods need extra care during their transportation process. Not only are they fragile, but also require special temperature conditions. But do not worry, a good fleet management software can certainly help!
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How? Find out in the following article.
Challenges Perishable Food And Beverage Industry Bring to Transportation Businesses
The transportation process of food and beverage items can be very daunting. Managers need to ensure that the wastage caused during this process is as low as possible. This requires taking care of breakage and their quality as well. It might come as a shocker, but almost 14% of harvested goods go stale in the transportation process itself.
Some challenges that plague the FMCG industry when transporting perishable goods are:
Time sensitivity
The time period between production and consumption for most food items is extremely low. This means that their transportation raises the need for not just efficiency, but also safety. This is because most food and beverage goods break very easily. Thus the kind of route a vehicle decides to take plays an important role in the state the goods will be at the final destination.
To add to this pressure, time management certainly does not help. Managers have to ensure that the routes they use for travelling aren’t just made of roads in good condition, but also the fastest. This makes acts like route planning especially difficult for fleet managers.
Temperature Control
Did you know that almost 50% of inventory shrink that happens during transportation of consumable goods are due to temperature mismanagement. Yes, that is right. This alone is enough to explain just how difficult it is for fleet managers to ensure that their good travel with utmost care.
Even with the integration of reefers with the fleet vehicles, maintaining temperature is a huge hurdle in front of managers. The solutions? To make drivers take regular breaks and check on the reefer’s temperature. But this in turn distracts drivers from their task and also affects their productivity.
Can Fleet Management System Help?
Fleet management systems claim to have solutions for all operational challenges, don’t they? Well, this certainly includes the problems that are related to a fleet’s temperature control. Cold-chain transportation refers to the process of using reefers to ensure that the goods inside a consignment do not go bad.
As we mentioned above, even investing reefers can raise challenges for managers. This is why the following fleet management system interaction can make the process easier:
- Thermometer: This is a kind of sensor that helps managers get the temperature of reefers in real-time. Thus, drivers do not have to stop the vehicle to check on the reefer in quick intervals. Instead the data is transmitted to the managers directly. They can instruct the driver to adjust this temperature only when it goes out of the desired range.
- Door sensors: Constantly opening the reefers can be a reason for fluctuation in the temperature. Accidental leakage in the reefer can also cause temperature to rise. Thus door sensors ensure that these reefers stay shut except when related to some task related operation.
Benefits of Cold-chain Transportation for Food and Beverage Industry
Using cold-chain supply chain methods to transport food and beverage goods along ith the fleet management system can have several benefits. These include:
Less Food Wastage
We have discussed above that the shelf life of most food and beverage goods is very short. This is why they are called perishable goods. Some of the goods that require cold-chain transportation are:
- Sea food
- Milk and other dairy products
- Baked goods
- Poultry
- Organic harvested goods
- Eggs
With proper use of reefers with the correct types of sensors, it is very easy for managers to ensure that their consignment does not go stale. This means that the food wastage caused by transportation reduces.
Less Distracted Driving
Drivers have to constantly stop their vehicles to check on the reefers to maintain temperature under manual management. But fleet management software automates this process. The sensors do all the data collection tasks for them.
The system ensures that managers get to know if the temperature goes below or above the set limit. Some of them look like:
- -30°C TO -28°C Deep Freeze Category for seafood, meat export, etc.
- -20°C to -16°C is a Frozen category for frozen food, meat, etc.
- 2°C to 4°C come under the Chill Category for vegetables, fruit, dairy, etc.
- 12°C to 14°C is the cool chain category for fresh produce, ready-to-cook food, etc.
So when mommaerts know that their goods are in danger of going stale, they can alert the drivers and ask them to manually change the temperature of the reefer. This process is much more efficient than one where drivers have to sacrifice their productivity.
Higher Profits
It is very obvious, if the food wastage and driver productivity goes up, fleet businesses will be able to earn more. Most fleet businesses have to bear the cost of damaged goods during transportation, compensation taking a chunk of their budget. This extra cost also reduces with the help of a fleet management system. Thus profitability also increases.
Data-based Operations
Reports created by the fleet management system helps fleet businesses regulate their operation on the basis of their insights. If the report highlights that the reefer experiences fluctuation due to bad door management , then managers can instruct their drivers to not open the consignment unnecessarily. This way optimisation becomes easier.
Conclusion
We hope this article has clarified all your doubts regarding the cold-chain operation for the FMCG industry. The fleet management system helps fleet businesses not just ensure profits, but also helps reduce food wastage. Intrigued about what other benefits the fleet management system has to offer?
TrackoBit is t=one the best fleet management software in the market. It has several robust solutions to offer that can take your fleet business to the next level. Why not try out the system as a demo and then decide your investment plan?
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