Scalable Temperature and Humidity Monitoring System for Pharmaceutical Cold Chain Logistics

The client faces the challenge of maintaining real-time monitoring of temperature and humidity conditions for pharmaceutical cargo transported by air, ensuring compliance with strict regulatory standards. Existing systems lack scalability, real-time anomaly detection, and transparent access for supply chain partners, risking product safety and regulatory violations as the volume of shipments and data increases.

A major logistics provider specializing in air freight services for temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical products across global markets.

• Develop a scalable and high-availability system capable of monitoring temperature and humidity across up to 10,000 aircraft with sensors in 50+ aircraft and 60+ sensors per aircraft.
• Implement real-time data collection with asynchronous computations and rapid read/write capabilities within 100 milliseconds.
• Incorporate anomaly detection and automatic incident alerting to promptly address temperature/humidity deviations.
• Establish a secure RESTful API to enable supply chain participants (manufacturers, warehouses, hospitals) and third-party services to access monitoring data.
• Design the architecture with microservices for ease of maintenance, scalability, and added functionalities.
• Enable autoscaling and load balancing to handle fluctuating data loads efficiently.

• Independent microservices responsible for data ingestion, anomaly detection, alerting, and API access.
• Implementation of a timeseries data mechanism for efficient sensor data management.
• Asynchronous and parallel processing to minimize response times to under 100 ms for read/write operations.
• Automated anomaly detection based on predefined temperature and humidity thresholds, with incident alerting mechanisms.
• A RESTful API for external clients and integrated systems to access monitoring status and historical data.
• Support for integration with third-party logistics information systems, such as flight tracking services.

• Sensor data streams from cargo containers
• Third-party logistics and flight tracking services
• Supply chain management systems
• Notification and alerting platforms

• System scalability to support data from 50+ aircraft and over 10,000 shipments
• Real-time processing with maximum latency of 100 ms for sensor data read/write
• High availability and fault tolerance to ensure continuous monitoring
• Secure API access and data confidentiality protocols
• Ease of system configuration and management

The implementation of this scalable, real-time monitoring platform will enable the client to ensure the integrity of temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals throughout transit, thereby reducing the risk of product spoilage and regulatory non-compliance. Expected enhancements include improved incident detection, increased supply chain transparency for partners, and the capacity to efficiently handle large volumes of shipment data, ultimately supporting the company's expansion into temperature-controlled logistics with reliable compliance and operational excellence.