On this episode, I was joined by Jan Van Niekerk who is the VP of Engineering and Innovation at SpotSee. We discussed freight damage and how SpotSee is providing solutions for identifying damaged freight and pinpointing where exactly the damage is occurring in your supply chain.

Key Takeaways

• Jan shares with us that 2% of freight gets damaged which seems like a small percentage but when you quantify it in dollars it is actually trillions of dollars in product. Needless to say, freight damage is a large issue that costs money for many different companies and industries. Something that deserves attention and the ability to root cause to take counter measures.
• SpotSee offers a suite of different products for many different levels of need. Ranging from simple indicators that turn red when a certain level of impact is received to the package all the way to devices that can alert you at any point in transport that damage has occurred and where it occurred. This greatly increases visibility to where issues are occurring allowing for further root cause analysis.
• With many products never leaving the box through the distribution process, handlers may never know that damage has occurred inside until the product reaches the customer and it is too late to protect from a complaint or poor customer experience. In the episode, Jan gives an example of one company that was testing their packaging with SpotSee’s products by dropping the boxes on the ground. The result of the test was that there was no damage to the box so the expected result was the product was okay, however, when they opened the boxes they found the product was destroyed. SpotSee’s indicators give visibility to these types of occurrences and alert employees that an inspection is needed.
• Many times freight damage cannot be explained as trucks are sealed and truckers may not have any idea or give any insight as to how damage could have occurred to freight during transportation. Utilizing indicators can allow a company greater visibility as to when damage is occurring and even where damage is occurring on some of the more sophisticated devices. Jan gives a great example in our discussion about a full load of windshields being damaged in transit and how the company was able to take preventive measures to ensure it would not happen again due to utilizing data obtained from indicator devices.
• The newest product for SpotSee is the ShockWatch RFID which combines impact indicators with RFID technology. This allows inventory to be easily located utilizing RFID technology and at the same time giving indication if any product is damaged. It is a low cost solution to obtaining location based data on where damage is occurring. While it will not give you exact location like cellular activated tags, it will give you an indication that damage occurred between two RFID reader points allowing you to know in which part of the supply chain the damage occurred.

Listen to the episode below to find out more and let us know in the comments where your biggest issues with damage are.

For more information on SpotSee you can find their website here.

To connect with Jan you can find him on LinkedIn here.

You can also purchase the ShockWatch on Amazon right here.