Monitoring frozen, chilled and ambient goods has grown in recent years. Data logger and acquisition specialist imec's range of temperature-monitoring products ensures that a constant temperature is maintained throughout the entire supply chain, maintaining the stability and quality of pharmaceutical products, from manufacturer to end-user.
Founded in 1983, Germany-based imec specialises in supplying data loggers and data acquisition systems. It not only provides well-designed temperaturemonitoring solutions, but also delivers innovative ideas to the monitoring field. Based on the principles of reliability, precision and efficiency, the company is dedicated to offering strict, detailed and valuable information for temperature sensitive goods in transit and storage. imec products cover portable data loggers, environment monitoring systems, wireless data acquisition systems and a web-based data management and storage platform, which enables the firm to better serve its customers in industries such as food, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, logistics, clinics and laboratories, as well as improve supply chain and quality control management.
Transport monitoring of temperature-sensitive products has increasingly become an issue not only for frozen or chilled goods, but also for ambient temperature (15-25°C) products. As such, the use of temperature-recording devices has grown and many companies are switching to single-use data loggers.
Demand for temperature loggers has risen over the past decade, and so the latest generation of single-use loggers has become more cost-effective compared with multiuse ones. But as well as the unit price, these products have additional costs; for example, multiuse devices have to be reprogrammed and recalibrated, and reverse logistics costs have to be considered for retrieving the loggers, when necessary
imec's ITAG3-PRO single-use temperature loggers are less expensive than comparable multiuse versions. The ITAG3- PRO can be completely pre-programmed, which saves a lot of time compared with manually programming each individual device. The ITAG3-PRO is available in different logging periods (one, five, ten, 15, 30 or 60 days) and can be factory-set for the upper and lower threshold alarm, start delay time, alarm delay time and alarm type (cumulative or single event).
With a unique design and small size (similar to a credit card), these disposable loggers can be placed directly by the product for continuous temperature monitoring from one location to another, thereby saving space and weight.
Temperature monitoring should not feel as though it is as complicated as rocket science, so imec has kept its ITAG3- PRO loggers as simple as possible. Handling of the logger is intuitive, and the user manual is just two pages long, containing mainly pictures.
Once switched on, the logger will record until its memory is full, depending on the chosen logging period (memory space for all models is the same, so the logging interval depends on the logging period - for example, three minutes for 15 days - or when stopped manually. The logger can then be connected via its integrated USB port directly to the computer, so no cable or interface is necessary. The device is recognised by the computer as a USB stick, and is displayed as a PDF file, with all the device information, statistics, alarm information, data curve and measurements in a table.
Using the optional TempCentre Software, data recorded by ITAG3-PRO can be uploaded to a database for further analysis. TempCentre Lite is available for download free of charge and there is an 21 CFR part 11-compliant pro version available.
