Packaging can be qualified and routes carefully planned – but in the real world there are many challenges that can’t be predicted or tested on your shipment’s journey. World Courier explores how to prepare for unforeseen circumstances to mitigate risk in your supply chain planning.
Here are six potential logistics challenges that could impact successful delivery:
1. Transport and Handler Strikes
Time and temperature-sensitive materials rely heavily on expert handling. Industrial action or understaffing can leave packaging vulnerable to damage and temperature excursion. Temperature excursions can decrease a drug’s therapeutic effect. A freeze-thaw cycle can cause some biologics to lose their effectiveness entirely. In the worst case, the temperature change can render it toxic for patients – all of which can have significant implications for the outcome of your study.
2. Poor Airline Handling
Shipments can easily be compromised thanks to poor airline handling. To lessen this risk, modern shipping containers are working to secure payloads and reduce the likelihood of disruption at intermediate touch points.
3. Custom Regimes
Incorrect paperwork or customs confusion can easily disrupt a shipment’s journey and delay it longer than is safe or prudent, which can be detrimental to clinical trials and the patients awaiting these life-saving medicines.
4. Technical Fault
Technical fault can easily take place in the shipping process, from exposed shipments on landing bays to other delay-inducing factors. In these circumstances, it is essential for packaging materials to be up to the job of handling the delay and protecting the payload from harsh conditions.
5. Inadequate Infrastructure
Today, shipments are travelling further distances than ever before – with inadequate infrastructure on the route, such as airports without cooling facilities, or a substandard cooling facility with a limited temperature range. There are many threats facing long-distance shipments today, which will need careful planning to safeguard against these circumstances.
6. Climatic Events
Typhoons, earthquakes, and other natural disasters can delay or damage shipments. Packaging must be ready to handle these possibilities and protect the sensitive materials being shipped.
Whilst logistics providers work to minimize the possibility of shipping interruptions or delays, these six challenges are regularly encountered. However, there are approaches to mitigate the risk that unforeseen occurrences can have on your supply chain. Disruptions to the transport chain, unforeseeable climatic events and geopolitical roadblocks are a fact of life. Preplanning, risk management and getting the processes and paperwork correct – these are all essential.
Manufacturers need to be prepared and round-the-clock commitment is the only guarantee of safe delivery:
Partner with a Specialist Logistics Provider
The expertise and detailed knowledge of a specialist shipping partner is indispensable when planning a shipment, but for materials that are high value, time- and temperature-sensitive, critical to a clinical trial or a medical emergency, a successful transit requires more than this.
Ensure Support on the Ground
Ultimately, because conditions along any shipping route may change with little or no prior warning, it takes something extra to guarantee that a shipment will be delivered safely.
This extra element is the dedication and commitment of the logistics partner’s staff on the ground, who work 24/7 to manage the progress of each delivery, and who go to extraordinary lengths when necessary to make sure that important materials reach their destination and the intended recipients on time, and in perfect condition.
Learn more about key issues and new developments in packaging, and how the choice of packaging is only one of a much larger set of decisions – all of which can play a critical part in the success of your shipment. Please download our new e-book, Packaging for the Most Challenging Shipments
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