It can be attached to a pallet or a container to monitor product in transit-and one company is looking to get even closer to the product. Dallas Semiconductor is planning to roll out an iButton that measures humidity sometime in 2001. It would look essentially the same as the Thermochron iButton, Kurkowski says, but the chip inside would be different. Danger Ahead Knowing when a shipment was damaged can be invaluable. There is no more uncertainty about whether the load was damaged because the truck was kept at the wrong temperature or because the product was left on the loading dock for too long.
Data loggers preserve the accountability of every link in the supply chain.
An entire class of products can prevent the need to determine who was at fault by heading off a spoiled or damaged shipment before it happens. These devices can raise an alarm when the temperature moves out of a pre-set range, giving users a chance to fix the condition. The TempTale4 from Sensitech Inc., Beverly, MA, is an electronic monitor with an LCD screen that displays the highest, lowest and average temperature, as well as the total time the temperature was outside the programmed limits. The data logger has a time and temperature alarm that can be set to alert users of a single movement out of the optimum temperature range or a cumulative effect of multiple, small bumps out of the range. The alarm, new to this latest version of TempTale, is a visual one on the unit itself.