How to Better Manage the Cold Supply Chain With Mendix and AWS

According to a recent United Nations (UN) report, around one-third of all global food production is wasted annually. This loss contributes some 4.4 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent to our planet per year; about 8% of all annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Fruit and vegetables, meat, fish, dairy and many other perishable goods need temperature-controlled transportation to maintain product safety, quality, and freshness. But according to the UN report, inadequate cold chain logistics cause the loss of nearly half of various temperature-sensitive foods every year.

In the life sciences industry, failure to maintain optimum conditions not only leads to wastage. It can risk human life. In one case, some 100,000 Covid vaccinations and other drugs were lost, when temperatures rose in a cold storage unit.

Today, a number of organizations have built applications on Mendix to help them ensure effective cold chains and supply chains. For example, Farm Trans provides an extensive ‘connected’ logistics supply chain to the food industry, while AntTail provides transparency in the pharmaceutical cold chain from manufacturer to patient.

Gartner suggests designing and managing effective cold chains demands collaboration amongst a broad set of stakeholders and requires significant in-house expertise. That’s surely true, but much also boils down to the smart use of modern technologies, including Internet of Things, Cloud computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Then there’s also the challenge of managing complex integrations. All this places tremendous pressure on logistics functions and hence on IT teams which are already being asked to do more with less.

No one solution that can easily address the requirements of cold chain distribution across all industry niches. Many organizations have tried and struggled to manage the chain with broad enterprise solutions. Others have attempted it with siloed solutions such as for works management, transportation, and procurement. Most fall short in one way or another, often lacking freedom for customization or missing integration and data exchange capabilities. Most struggle to support frequent change, presenting severe headaches to logistics leaders, especially those in dynamic business environments.

Today, newer approaches have evolved to make custom development, system integration, and adaption for change easier. Low-code development platforms are helping organizations build their very own purpose-built applications. These applications enable them to better manage their supply chains, cope quickly with change, cut waste and the cost of waste and outpace slower commercial competitors.

Before we look at building solutions with low-code, let’s first understand the complexity of what’s involved. Not only must an effective solution support every step from product collection through to timely delivery. It must also monitor product location, temperature, and other variables then provide this insight in near real-time to logistics managers, quality controllers, operations and customer managers and other responsible parties. It must also be capable of swiftly alerting field service technicians when conditions suggest equipment failure threatens a shipment. Then, as well as all this, implementation of systems also requires juggling with industrial equipment (sensors, actuators), data management and analytics and with earlier alluded complex system integrations. Addressing all this through traditional application development is often lengthy, effort-intensive, and costly. But don’t be put off. The answer lies with low-code.

In contrast to traditional code-based software development, low-code platforms like that offered by industry leader Mendix enable developers to create applications at speed. Out-of-the-box templates, building blocks, connectors, and prebuilt integration modelers allow developers to build in days what used to take months. Low-code approaches remove much of the complexity, allowing IT teams to focus on delivering business outcomes, rather than spending so much time coding or building integrations.