Download PDF
J. Polep Distribution Ensures Food Safety with Samsara’s Temperature Monitoring for Fleets
Technology Category
- Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems
- Networks & Connectivity - Gateways
- Sensors - Temperature Sensors
Applicable Industries
- Food & Beverage
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
- Warehouse & Inventory Management
Use Cases
- Fleet Management
- Geofencing
- Predictive Maintenance
- Remote Asset Management
Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Jon Lasko, Director of Transportation, identified a significant opportunity for improvement in J. Polep's cold chain procedures. The loading dock staff was using temperature guns combined with a 2G trailer tracking application to read temperatures of their multi-temp trailers before loading food shipments. The inaccuracy of the guns and the trailer tracking solution with long-delayed reporting and off-hours alerts disturbing staff while at home were major issues. Lasko knew there had to be a better way to ensure food safety and quality.
About The Customer
The Polep family has been in the distribution business for over a century. Originally known as Polep Tobacco Company, it was founded by Charles Polep in 1898 in Salem, Massachusetts. Over five generations, J. Polep has acquired companies, expanded product lines, and added programs to service the convenience store industry. Jeff Polep, President and owner, attributes the success of his company to a dedicated staff, a loyal customer base, and superior customer service.
The Solution
Lasko decided to try Samsara after hearing about it through a distributor. His team installed Samsara AG15 Trailer-Tracking Gateways on each reefer trailer and placed EM11 wireless temperature sensors in each compartment—frozen and cooler. Deployment was simple, with each sensor installed in minutes due to the lack of wiring. Instead of using temperature guns, the loading dock staff now checks Samsara to ensure that each compartment is at the correct temperature before loading. The temperature readings are continuously recorded and visible in real-time, eliminating the need for manual measurements and recordkeeping. If a door is left open for too long and the temperature rises, Samsara's alerts instantly notify the J. Polep team via email and SMS, allowing them to correct the issue and save potentially thousands of dollars of food from spoiling. The alerts are set up to notify the specific person working that shift, ensuring that employees are not disturbed during off-hours.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
The Kellogg Company
Kellogg keeps a close eye on its trade spend, analyzing large volumes of data and running complex simulations to predict which promotional activities will be the most effective. Kellogg needed to decrease the trade spend but its traditional relational database on premises could not keep up with the pace of demand.
Case Study
HEINEKEN Uses the Cloud to Reach 10.5 Million Consumers
For 2012 campaign, the Bond promotion, it planned to launch the campaign at the same time everywhere on the planet. That created unprecedented challenges for HEINEKEN—nowhere more so than in its technology operation. The primary digital content for the campaign was a 100-megabyte movie that had to play flawlessly for millions of viewers worldwide. After all, Bond never fails. No one was going to tolerate a technology failure that might bruise his brand.Previously, HEINEKEN had supported digital media at its outsourced datacenter. But that datacenter lacked the computing resources HEINEKEN needed, and building them—especially to support peak traffic that would total millions of simultaneous hits—would have been both time-consuming and expensive. Nor would it have provided the geographic reach that HEINEKEN needed to minimize latency worldwide.
Case Study
Energy Management System at Sugar Industry
The company wanted to use the information from the system to claim under the renewable energy certificate scheme. The benefit to the company under the renewable energy certificates is Rs 75 million a year. To enable the above, an end-to-end solution for load monitoring, consumption monitoring, online data monitoring, automatic meter data acquisition which can be exported to SAP and other applications is required.
Case Study
Coca Cola Swaziland Conco Case Study
Coco Cola Swaziland, South Africa would like to find a solution that would enable the following results: - Reduce energy consumption by 20% in one year. - Formulate a series of strategic initiatives that would enlist the commitment of corporate management and create employee awareness while helping meet departmental targets and investing in tools that assist with energy management. - Formulate a series of tactical initiatives that would optimize energy usage on the shop floor. These would include charging forklifts and running cold rooms only during off-peak periods, running the dust extractors only during working hours and basing lights and air-conditioning on someone’s presence. - Increase visibility into the factory and other processes. - Enable limited, non-intrusive control functions for certain processes.
Case Study
Temperature Monitoring for Restaurant Food Storage
When it came to implementing a solution, Mr. Nesbitt had an idea of what functionality that he wanted. Although not mandated by Health Canada, Mr. Nesbitt wanted to ensure quality control issues met the highest possible standards as part of his commitment to top-of-class food services. This wish list included an easy-to use temperature-monitoring system that could provide a visible display of the temperatures of all of his refrigerators and freezers, including historical information so that he could review the performance of his equipment. It also had to provide alert notification (but email alerts and SMS text message alerts) to alert key staff in the event that a cooling system was exceeding pre-set warning limits.
Case Study
Coca-Cola Refreshments, U.S.
Coca-Cola Refreshments owns and manages Coca-Cola branded refrigerators in retail establishments. Legacy systems were used to locate equipment information by logging onto multiple servers which took up to 8 hours to update information on 30-40 units. The company had no overall visibility into equipment status or maintenance history.
