“Best in Class”

This week, The RFID Network awarded Intelleflex with a “Best in Class” award for our battery assisted passive (BAP) tags.  It’s great to have independent validation of the claims we make about the performance and capabilities of our products.  In our marketing materials, we attest to provide read/write performance at free range distances of 300 feet (100 meters), The RFID Network’s tests demonstrated read ranges of 403 feet (123 meters), breaking the record for previously tested BAP tags.

The RFID Network’s host, Louis Sirico, published a product review on their website and produced an interesting video that discusses their impressions of our XC3 Technology RFID tags.  You can read the product review and watch the video here.

Please let me know what you think of the video.

Kevin Payne

Senior Director of Marketing

kpayne@intelleflex.com

7 Unique Challenges for the Pharma Cold Chain

There was an excellent article in this week’s edition IQPCs Pharma IQ Newsletter  that discussed Seven Unique Challenges in Maintaining Cold Chain Continuity for the pharmaceutical industry. Per the article, eight of the top 10 pharmaceutical products expected to need cold chain storage in 2016 – 80%!!!  This is requiring changes in the global cold chain to help ensure the quality and efficacy of these products.  The seven challenges are:

1. Security – especially due to an increase in counterfeiting
2. Maintenance of cold chain conditions in the air and on the ground
3. Planning, adaptability and contingency plans
4. Requiring documentation and deciding on the value of the material
5. Addressing regulatory compliance
6. Adapting to improvements in kit design  for biopharmaceutical packaging
7. Increasing the use of technology that enables tracking of temperature and location

Better information is being seen as the key to ensuring regulatory compliance, and using data logging technology can help couriers to ensure they meet the tightened shipping requirements.  Additionally, the article  notes that documentation is becoming an increasingly pertinent part of regulatory compliance, even in emerging markets.  It cites that World Health Organisation guidelines require that time and temperature controlled shipments have monitoring systems that provide documentation which can be both stored and accessed. 

Access and security are key to driving waste out of the system, improving revenues and, most importantly, ensuring efficacy and quality of products being delivered to health care providers and patients.

You can learn more about why companies are increasingly turning to track and trace technology at the IQPC Cold Chain and Temperature Management Global Forum being held September 26 to 30. I’ll be there and invite you to stop by the Intelleflex booth and say hello.

Hope to see you there,

Kevin Payne

Senior Director of Marketing

80% of drugs will need cold chain storage

Use of RFID among Logistics Companies is Increasing

Mark Roberti’s blog in RFID Journal referenced an interesting article that  appeared June 27 in the magazine DC Velocity. The article describes how logistics companies are increasingly turning to RFID-based solutions to streamline operations. DC Velocity, in conjunction with Baylor University and Bryant University surveyed 175 supply chain and logistics companies to ascertain their existing and planned usage of RFID-based solutions.

Quoting both the original article and Roberti’s blog, there are some interesting take-aways in the article:

• About 33% of the survey respondents are already using, piloting, or in the midst of implementing RFID technologies in their logistics operations. Another 27 percent are considering implementing RFID in the next two years.  That represents nearly 60% of the respondents.
• The majority of those applying or planning to apply RFID solutions are doing so to streamline internal operations.  59 percent of the survey respondents who already have some sort of RFID experience are focusing their implementations on internal improvements.
• 43 percent see it as a strategic move to improve efficiencies of multiple, connected processes within the company.

While we are also finding increased interest in applying RFID to improve internal operations, we are actually seeing a significant interest in supply chain applications that span multiple companies, particularly in the perishable and pharmaceutical market where condition monitoring is important.  We’re finding that it is increasingly important for cold chain companies to have documented chain-of-custody information for goods as they move through the supply chain.

It’s an interesting article and blog post by Mr. Roberti – well worth the read.

 

Kevin Payne

Senior Director of Marketing