FedEx expands its SensAware service for temperature-controlled shipping

As a complement to the temperature-controlled shipping of life sciences products, through its Healthcare Logistics and Custom Critical business units, FedEx (Memphis) has been developing a small electronic box, the SenseAware unit, to both record shipping conditions (temperature, pressure, light exposure and other factors) and location tracking, through GPS or cellular communications. Now, the company has announced that the service is now carrier-neutral, and available through Delta, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and certain third-party ground carriers. Additionally, the service is available for trade lanes including Canada, the UK, Australia and Singapore (and will be expanded further). Finally, the device itself is now in a second-generation form, the SenseAware 2000, that has longer battery life, improved GPS and cellular connectivity, and ability to perform geo-fencing (sending alerts when a shipment strays from a designated lane).

Generally speaking, shippers contract with FedEx for the tracking service, obtain the device, activate it when including it in a shipment. Within the FedEx network, the device is returned back to FedEx (or to the shipper); that is, a shipper doesn’t purchase the device but rather contracts for the tracking service.