Technology has evolved and made our lives a whole lot easier. We aren’t even required to go out to shop as we can now use the numerous e-commerce websites to have items delivered to our doorstep. In the pharmaceutical industry, the logistics department plays a very crucial role. The shipping of products in this industry should be done very consciously, as most of the medicines are temperature sensitive and can also get ruined due to humidity. Every year millions of dollars' worth of medicines are damaged due to improper shipping techniques currently practiced. Currently, an issue of great concern is the transportation of goods such as medicines, vegetables etc. which are very temperature sensitive.
One Swiss company named Smart Containers came up with an ingenious idea of making use of several sensors to make sure that these shipments are delivered without any damage. Within 5 years, Smart Container grew in popularity and is one of the largest container service provider for the shipping of pharmaceuticals in the region. However, due to the current centralized system, there is a considerable delay in exchange for live information. Additionally, all the transport details need to be manually mailed to the concerned authorities. This is both, time-consuming and labour-intensive. To help further expand and help improve the transportation and logistics services globally, they have come up with an ICO project.
How can Blockchain help solve this problem?
Blockchain technology has already overturned the world as we know it. The smart containers which carry the medicines during transport contain a lot of sensors which measure the surrounding environment like temperature, humidity, etc. All these data can be fed straight into the blockchain. Due to the decentralized nature of the blockchain, all the concerned parties can get the information immediately.
The most inefficient part about the current logistics is that numerous emails need to be sent to keep track of each shipment. The response time might be further delayed. Therefore, the update on the shipment is not completely accurate.
However, by using the blockchain, this can be eliminated. Since the blockchain ledger is open source and decentralized, anyone can see the information on it and hence, know the exact location of a shipment.
The sensitive information such as the shipment contents should not be available to the general public. To make this happen, Smart Containers has a unique way to do it.
Smart Containers
After being very successful in their current venture, the Swiss-based company wants to further expand and lower the costs at the same time. Hence, they proposed the solution of making use of the block chain technology. The main aim of the project is to make sure that no goods are ever damaged during transportation.
The containers make use of reusable materials to make very efficient containers which are highly reflective and hence don’t absorb much heat. They are also equipped with several sensors that keep track of the outside temperature and provide sufficient cooling on the inside.
To track the location and other parameters like humidity, temperature, etc., they currently use logistics. This is time-consuming as well as expensive. To reduce the costs as well as get instant updates, the company plans to implement the block chain technology. This will eliminate the need for paper records and will reduce the costs.
The project makes use of two chains instead of just one blockchain. Some documents are going to be made available for everyone to view on the Ethereum blockchain. More sensitive information is going to be available on a secondary chain. This will be accessible only by the people who have the permission to do so.
By doing this, the information will be transferred instantly without the need for any paper documents or emails. Additionally, only the concerned people will have access to this sensitive information.
Furthermore, Smart Containers Group is a majority shareholder of two fast-growing companies.
SkyCell
SkyCell has entered the global pharmaceutical transport market looking to utilise the direct to patient market driven by patient needs. They are aiming to be the biggest pharma container supplier worldwide.
FoodGuardians
FoodGuardians supply reusable containers for transporting food safely. Similar to Skycell, their goal is to enable food to be sent directly from producers to consumers.
Smart Containers is releasing two tokens (SMARC & LOGI).
SMARC Coin – This is a profit share token with funds used to scale FoodGuardians and SkyCell.
LOGI Coin – A utility token and the currency that will fuel the LOGI CHAIN ecosystems (payment of smart contract transactions. As soon as more logistics players start using this platform, the LOGI token will be used to pay for the services.
Use cases
The uses of this platform are not limited to only the pharmaceutical industry but has a wide range of use cases.
- Food industry: Food transport is a sector where the climate is a concern. Hence, the containers can be used to transport food more efficiently without any spoilage.
- Eco-Friendly Logistics: The current system requires a lot of documentation. This is traditionally done on papers. Hence, this causes deforestation. Since Smart Containers makes use of the block chain to maintain all records, there is no need of paper and hence fewer trees are cut.
- Transportation of electronics: The logistics service offered by Smart Containers might be a boon to major electronics producers. Usually, there is huge delay caused due to the time that is taken by the logistics. This can be avoided by using the blockchain based logistics service. Hence, companies can now release their products faster to compete against a rival device.
Bottom Line
Smart Containers is already a very successful company with 100 patents to its name. They are not chained to only pharmaceutical transport, but also food transport. In order to expand their reach, they have started the ICO. This means that an investor can invest in the project knowing a real working solid company is behind the ICO. The idea of using IoT sensors and logistics together to get efficient and fast live feed is truly remarkable.
The combination of the Blockchain technology and the IoT sensors is simply amazing. The LOGI chain (Logistics using the blockchain) alone will attract the attention of many big players. For example, Samsung recently announced the use of block chain to reduce time wasted during logistics. This could only mean that the possibility of the success of this project is very high. By eliminating the need for paper documents, not only is the team saving more trees but also speeding up the whole shipping process. This will further encourage every other logistic company to follow the same. Therefore, this will be another way to help propagate the Blockchain technology amongst the general public.
Details
Official site: https://smartcontainers.ch/
Official Bitcointalk thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3058528.0
Whitepaper: https://smartcontainers.ch/en/assets/20180502_smartcontainers_whitepaper_v2.pdf
Official telegram link: https://t.me/smartcontainers
Bitcointalk Username: neverloggedin
Bitcointalk profile link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1457262