DeltaTrak, innovator of cold chain and supply chain management solutions, was issued a patent by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the Method of Managing Information for the Supply Chain of a Perishable Commodity. This patent directly pertains to DeltaTrak’s FlashTrak® Global Chain of Custody (CoC) information management system that was introduced in November 2022.
FlashTrak CoC expands the functionality of DeltaTrak’s FlashTrak platform to provide detailed supply chain traceability, helping stakeholders identify all entities associated with an order, predict product quality, trace shipment information, and confirm compliance with government regulations.
The journey of perishable goods from the growing environment to consumers is critical to prevent spoilage, reduce waste and ensure product safety. Due to siloed, antiquated systems, no single entity has comprehensive data on the entire journey of a perishable good. Historically, a user needing CoC information would spend considerable time and energy logging on to different, often redundant applications to piecemeal information.
Developed to utilize data captured by Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Application Programming Interface (API), FlashTrak CoC is a cloud-based platform that serves as a single repository ecosystem of information.
FlashTrak CoC benefits
- End-to-end product traceability using industry standard GS1 standards– from the source to the store and every movement in between.
- International shipment tracking using key identifiers like booking numbers, master bills of lading, purchase orders, invoices, etc.
- Locating shipments on land, water, and air.
- Management and maintenance of required regulatory compliance documents.
- Automated collection of international shipping documents.
- Automated digital claims service.
“This kind of critical business information is traditionally found in separate, disparate systems making it difficult, expensive and time consuming to gather and analyze all the data required to make smart distribution decisions,” said Fred Wu, DeltaTrak founder and CEO. “Our patented CoC platform gives users access to key outputs needed to make smarter and faster decisions, helping reduce operational costs, protect product quality and even perform precision recalls due to enhanced traceability of problem origin.”
FlashTrak also addresses sustainability by continuously monitoring the status of the products in transit. In the United States, food loss and waste results in 170 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, excluding the emissions from wasted food sent to landfills. Approximately 12% of food waste occurs during the distribution process, mainly because of improper refrigeration.
“Temperature control during the movement of perishable goods is paramount to ensure shelf life and food safety,” said Wu, who noted that pharmaceutical products face the same challenge. “FlashTrak CoC is the only patented ecosystem platform that integrates both the IoT quality data of the product and the transactional commercial data to provide full supply chain traceability of where and what is the condition of your cargo in real time.”