Patent ID: 7937244

Claim:
A method comprising the steps of: (a) scanning, with at least one scanner, environmental sensors physically associated with respective products in containers to read respective product environment data from the environmental sensors wherein the product environmental data includes time data indicating the time of sensing an environmental condition; (b) scanning, with the scanner, respective identification data physically associated with and unique to each product or container; (c) transmitting the identification data and the product environment data from the scanner to a computer system via a network; (d) receiving the identification data and the product environment data from the scanner at the computer system via the network; (e) storing the product environment data in association with respective identification data in the computer system; (f) generating, with the scanner, tracking data for each product identifying a time or a location at which the respective product environment data or the respective identification data was scanned; (g) transmitting the tracking data from the scanner to the computer system via the network; (h) receiving the tracking data from the scanner at the computer system via the network; (i) storing the tracking data in association with the respective identification data and product environment data in the computer system; and (j) analyzing the product environment data and the tracking data to determine whether an adverse environmental condition is recurring at a specific location or time in a shipping route and, if so, at what location or at what time in the shipping route the adverse environmental condition is recurring.