Predicting Excursions and Right-Sizing Shippers: Two Paths to a Leaner Cold Chain

Moving from temperature monitoring to predicting excursions takes more than putting a data logger in every shipper. It also takes the infrastructure and the organizational will to act on what the data shows, according to Vijay Paliwal, vice president of advanced solutions and customer experience at Cold Chain Technologies.

"Visibility is easy," Paliwal says. Speaking with Pharmaceutical Commerce at LogiPharma USA 2026, where he joined the panel "Reinventing Cold Chain Packaging & Technology: Smarter Systems for a More Predictable and Sustainable Future," Paliwal notes that loggers can report a box's location and the condition of its shipper. That alone is not enough, he says. "The intention behind predictive monitoring is to be able to do something."

Getting there means drawing on more data points to build risk profiles that separate the shipments that need attention from the ones that don't. Paliwal gives the example of a network moving 100,000 shipments. As many as 95,000 might carry no risk, and another 3,000 might be low risk. The remaining 2,000 or so fall into the medium- or high-risk tiers, and that is where resources belong.

The first step is defining risk. After that, manufacturers need packaging partners that can coordinate with data logger companies, 3PLs and other logistics service providers. If 500 shipments are flagged at high risk of excursion, a packaging partner working with a carrier such as UPS or FedEx can direct an interception to protect the payload. Ideally, he says, the patient or customer "doesn't even know all of this drama happened in the middle."

On packaging waste, Paliwal says the industry has long relied on overqualified solutions. Companies have paid more than necessary to be certain the product is protected. A manufacturer might choose a 96-hour shipper for a next-day air shipment, so the box arrives with about 70 hours of thermal life left over. "I call that waste," he says. He also acknowledges the logic of making conservative decisions when only a few variables are known.

Reliance on expanded polystyrene (EPS) shippers creates a separate tension for companies with sustainability commitments. They must weigh a lower per-shipment cost with EPS against the higher cost of a vacuum insulated panel (VIP) system. That calculation is shifting as total cost of ownership comes down, particularly for reusable parcel shippers. Paliwal sees manufacturers looking at the overall cost of a solution rather than a single variable. That approach reduces waste in financial, environmental and risk terms. Depending on a company's risk appetite, he says, options now exist to cut it.

Watch Paliwal’s previous interview installment:

1. How Lanes and Duration Shape Cold Chain Packaging Selection