When Quality Needs Clean Temperature Data

Can a Thermometer and a Software Development Kit Enable Integrated Quality Measurement and Real-Time Alerts?

When Quality Needs Clean Temperature Data

Introduction:

Integrating an automated temperature measurement solution into a processing facility and/or supply chain is required or at least optimal in multiple industries. In some regulated lines of business, such as the food industry, temperature measurement provides one of the few clear quality inputs. Processors must maintain food at temperatures that inhibit the growth of pathogens which cause consumer foodborne illnesses. Failure to do so can result in recalls, lost revenue, increased expenses, and damage to the brand. As a result, food processing and downstream supply chain operations must monitor their products to assure that temperatures have not risen above widely accepted levels where pathogens multiply.

For fifty years or more, quality measurements across many industries were conducted with paper and pencil on a clipboard, then manually filed. As technology advanced, quality technicians entered the data collected from the processing floor or the loading docks at change-of-possession into a local computer. However, both of these methods proved to be fraught with errors, even by the most careful quality technicians and managers. Whether transcription errors in recording, data entry errors into the computer, or misfiled reports, errors in quality data recording are the rule, not the rare exception.