Your Supply Chain Is a Distributed System (And It's Failing Like One)
A vaccine is left at 4°C and begins its journey. It passes through three trucks, two warehouses, a regional depot, and finally a fridge at a clinic. At some point it sits above 8°C for about forty minutes: maybe on a loading dock in July, in a doorway while someone signs for the pallet, or overnight because a compressor failed and no one noticed. When it arrives, the label looks fine, the barcode scans, and the system shows it in stock. So a nurse takes it and draws a dose.
But the vaccine is already spoiled. It might be hours before anyone notices, if anyone notices at all.
You may have seen the statistics. The WHO estimates up to half of the world’s vaccines are wasted each year, with cold chain issues a major cause. Some studies estimate about a quarter of doses are already degraded by arrival, and the...
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