Know where your product is, how it got there, and what’s happening to it right now.

The impressive researchers at Gartner define real-time visibility as the ability to provide commercial customers (and consumers) with real-time insights into their orders and shipments once they have left the supplier’s warehouse. In the Transparent Path platform, those insights include location, temperature, humidity, light, shock over time. 

Real-time visibility lets you monitor all of your shipments across all modes and logistics partners. The real-time aspect of this monitoring allows for rapid decision-making and supply chain agility.

Know what’s happening – right now

Real-time (or near-real-time) visibility allows customers to know exactly what’s going on with perishable products at any time, regardless of where that shipment is (on the road, in a warehouse, or on a ship).

Act in time to preserve your product

The value for perishable products is clear: by knowing when location or conditions might jeopardize a product, early enough to save that product, the value, safety and freshness of that shipment can be preserved.

Fewer supply chain financial losses

Losing shipments in the supply chain can really impact a shipper’s financials. In some cases, losing one important shipment can kill a customer relationship or meeting contractual commitments. Platforms like Transparent Path can reduce or stop product losses and risk.

Sensors that are always on, always connected

Our sensors are continuouly connected to our platform using 4G or 5G cellular data networks. Each sensor houses a SIM card, providing a unique identifier to our system. As location and environmental data is collected, the sensor makes a connection to our platform, uploading the latest GPS location and data around temperature, humidity, etc. The frequency of these connections depends on the product: apples may only need connecting once every 60 minutes, while fresh fish might require connecting every 15 minutes.

And why is Transparent Path any different?

The lines can get a little blurry when you investigate real-time transportation visibility platforms. Many transportation management systems (TMSes) integrate visibility features into their software. Or visibility systems integrate data from enterprise resource planning (ERP) or inventory control systems.

When you look at Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for real-time transportation visibility platforms, you’ll see a number of companies. While these companies offer visibility features, some were designed for hard goods — with no cold-chain capability required. Some were designed to track sensors, or assets like containers, and solely for the owner of those assets. Collaboration features, in which supply chain partners can easily interact and exchange data, are often lacking.

Designed for collaboration — and for perishables

Many platforms were designed to keep an eye on trackers. Others to track hard assets. Transparent Path was designed specifically for cold chain products, and for collaborative business relationships. We saw the shortcomings of other platforms and spent much of 2020 designing a platform to address these issues — allowing partners to work together to keep food fresh – and margins high.