How Timestrip irreversible time sensitive indicators are used in Germany by Ulmer Wohnungs for their apartment ventilation units to remind tenants that they need to change the ventilation duct filters.
Translation: "In many UWS apartments, ventilation units are installed which permanently ensure fresh and clean air. Only when the filter is clean, do the fans work quietly and use less energy. In our
Timestrip Time Sensitive indicator labels
Timestrip can make you a custom Time Sensitive Indicator Label - we create custom solutions that measure time ranging from 1 hour up to 2 years. We are ISO 9001:2015 certified and Timestrip time indicators offer a helpful visual reminder of service and maintenance schedules for consumable components. Accurate and reliable, Timestrips contribute to a more positive experience for the consumer and help ensure optimum performance from appliances that need replacement indicators or service reminder indicators in order to function effectively.
The big word in the logistics and supply chain “world” is RISK, and a risk assessment being performed, or at least having a mitigation plan in place, is becoming part of many certification requirements, like ISO 9001, and other pending or recently introduced federal regulations.
It will be no surprise, I am sure, when I mention certain facts like – “Where humans are involved in a process there will be errors, and 90% plus of all supply chain errors are human errors”; but how do you avoid these?
Firstly, let me say there will always be Risk not only in the common elements of the supply chain but also and especially with the way that you handle any cold chain or temperature-controlled products.
So how do you manage these risks?
There are 4 common and accepted ways that Risk can be managed, or mitigated:
- Risk Avoidance: Changes made to your processes and players that ensures risks are no longer an issue.
- Risk Mitigation: Reduce the severity of the loss or prevent the likelihood of the risk from occurring.
- Risk Acceptance: Avoidance of a potential risk area is not possible or economically feasible, so it is acceptable and will not impact your business.
- Risk Deflection: After the risk has been identified and quantified, transfer that risk to the control of another player or partner in the process – maybe add it as a clause to be addressed in a vendor contract.
So how do you establish a Risk Mitigation Plan?
- Review and audit your supply chain to assess where risk does, or may exist
- Assess what the impact of these risks may be and create a list with the highest probability items at the top to address first
- Define your risk mitigation strategies for the highest-level items and work down the list from High to Low
- Implement the strategies and document them.
What else should I do, or know?
- Even though your Risk Management plan includes good SOP’s and WI’s make sure that people are adequately trained in these disciplines
- Conduct self-audits regularly
- The cost of a Cold Chain Monitoring device or solution, is far less expensive than the cost of disposal of a temperature compromised shipment
- All Quality Systems and Risk Aversion Plans should have one over-arching goal – Quality of Product and Consumer Safety!!!!
At Timestrip we are acutely aware of all kinds of risks that can exist in all kinds of supply chains from Pharmaceutical to Food and even beyond to special chemicals and laboratory testing time lines.
For a full range of our products please visit our products page
We are happy to announce our 24 month elapsed time indicator is the newest addition to our stocked elapsed time monitoring indicators.
Now available for ordering.
For users, the Timestrip® 24 month elapsed time indicator offers a convenient visual reminder of service maintenance schedules for household and industrial products.
Brands can integrate the indicators directly into consumable products. Customers can then be visually alerted that the products need to be discarded and replaced regularly.
Medical devices can be harmful if not routinely replaced. These long time indicators are perfect for visually reminding you how long they have been in service.
Simple activation, clear elapsed time indication
Timestrip® 24 month time indicators are single use and show the total amount of elapsed time since activation — up to 2 years.
Our elapsed time indicators are inert until activation. First, press the blister on the back of the indicator to activate. A red activation line appear in the front window. Next, the window will then fill with colour as time passes.
During the monitoring period, you will be able to see the colour progress pass each time marker. The colour progression lets you know how long it has been since activation. Timestrip® 24 month has time markers at 3, 6, 9, 12, 18 and 24 months, the indicators have plenty of options for flexible time monitoring uses.
Interested in how Timestrip® 24 month elapsed time indicator could work for you? Ready to order? Contact us today.
For our full range of short and long elapsed time indicators: see here for elapsed time monitoring indicators
Content by MW Communication
Already in 2012 the world’s third largest importer of seafood, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization predicts that China in 2016 is set to become the world’s top destination for seafood imports. Key economic data and trends point to further growth in domestic consumption and, despite indications that the country’s economy is slowing, it has nevertheless trebled in size since 2001, with Forbes magazine predicting it will surpass the US in scale in 2018.
This growth in China’s seafood imports comes at a time when the seafood sector generally is in excellent shape, growing at a faster rate than any other protein industry with the world’s top 150 seafood companies generating $107bn in sales in 2015.
Unsurprisingly, China’s top suppliers are almost all situated around the Pacific basin. In 2013, Russia was in first place with a 17.8% share followed by the US (15.3%), Peru (12.1%), Chile (5.3%), Norway (5.1%) and Canada (4.8%), with other seafood imports being sourced from over 100 other countries. That year in value terms, its main seafood imports included flours and meals of fish, used in animal feeding ($1.7 billion); frozen Alaskan pollock ($883.6 million); frozen cuttlefish and squid ($445.9 million); and frozen cod ($434.0 million).
This astonishing growth in seafood imports is explained by a variety of factors:
Firstly, higher Chinese incomes have fuelled an increase in domestic demand: between 2001 and 2014, real wages in China rose fourfold and this trend is ongoing. Data from the Economist Intelligence Unit point to national average urban incomes rising by around 70% between 2012 and 2017, from US$6,291 to $10,791.
Moreover, this increase in domestic demand includes that for high-end seafood imports, such as lobsters come from France, Canada and the US; abalones from South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand; red shrimps from Ecuador and Argentina; king crabs from Russia and Chile; salmon from Chile, Ireland, Scotland, and Norway; and oysters from America, France, and New Zealand. Such products are obviously favoured by wealthier Chinese consumers, but the country’s emerging middle class is also demonstrating a growing appetite for these seafood imports.
An indication of this trend is the recent news report that the Russian Caviar House has begun exporting black caviar to China, with regular annual shipments of 100-150 kilograms currently being planned, according to company director Saodat Sultanova.
The second key factor explaining the growth in China’s seafood imports is that its domestic production capacity has been extremely adversely affected by pollution and thus cannot meet this increase in demand. Indeed, despite it being the world’s biggest seafood exporter, double in value terms of its nearest rival, Norway, the environmental impact of its breakneck economic growth in the last 20 years has created an insurmountable environmental obstacle.
In March this year, China’s Agriculture Minister Han Changfu said: “… the increase in China’s seafood output has come at the expense of the country’s natural environment.” Han also said that the production capacity of the country’s environment has been stretched to breaking point, with various measures undertaken this year to address the situation. These have included the launch of an effort to protect and repair its freshwater fishery resources, an increase in its annual fishing ban on the Yangtze River from three months to four and an extension to the ban to local rivers and lakes. Such actions will inevitably impact negatively on aquaculture hubs like Jiangsu and Hubei, since the Yangtze flows through those areas and means that China is having to source its seafood elsewhere.
Such environmental issues also affect the safety of China’s domestic seafood production, leading to consumers avoiding potentially harmful products.
In 2012, the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) published administrative measures on the control of agricultural product (including aquatic) quality and safety, which included regulations on risk monitoring and sampling. Also since 2012, a further regulation is that food and beverage exporters to China are required to register through the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ)
Despite these measures, in November 2016 it was reported that Chinese seafood retailers are increasingly nervous about stocking domestic seafood, which may have excessive traces of antibiotics. Sales outlets are also beginning to eschew selling live seafood, a choice favoured in particular by older Chinese shoppers, who traditionally bought these products from supermarkets and wet markets. Retailers say they are concerned about costly closures caused by failed safety inspections by food hygiene officials. Meanwhile central government affirmed that the safety scare wasn’t due contaminated water in live fish tanks.
This explains another key trend: the growing importance of place of origin for Chinese consumers. The market for seafood from Canada and Alaska for instance have continued to develop, with northern prawns and Canadian lobsters especially popular. Indeed, advertising the places of origin is set to become an ever more important aspect of marketing seafood imports in China, especially where the source is trusted for its rigorous temperature controls and requirements.
Demand for such products is further stimulated with Chinese consumers’ own ongoing positive experience around product quality, texture, safety, etc, all of which is inextricably linked to effective temperature control monitoring throughout the cold chain process.
The regulatory framework for importers is complex. Beyond having to satisfying country origin export regulations around documentation (commercial invoice, packing list, export health certificate, certificate of origin, etc), all products on cross- border platforms such as Kuajingtong, should meet all the requirements set by Chinese regulations, including Chinese language labelling, certification and registration standards.
Also that year, China updated its Food Safety Law, affecting ingredients, testing methods, manufacturing, contact substances, packaging, and nutrition labelling. Two important regulations, including a “Food Traceability System” and “System of Real Name” have been established and allow consumers to require a “continuous compensation”.
Lastly, Chinese regulations can change quickly and therefore it is important for importers to remain up to date with all policy changes. For example, since 2014, China has banned the imports of whole salmon, but not processed salmon.
That said, this know how around regulations is clearly not an obstacle to the many companies already exporting seafood products to China and a major trend moving forward is predicted to be around the development of e-commerce for the sale of imported seafood products.
Fan Xubing is the founder and president of Sea Bridge Marketing in Beijing and has worked for many years as a partner in promoting sales of imported seafood in China, especially online. He says that 2015 saw a rapid development of e-commerce business of imported food generally. Sales of such products including seafood have increased by over 50% and Chinese consumers are becoming accustomed to buying seafood products online.
He also says that 2016 has seen many improvements in cold chain logistics, tighter controls over temperature and more effective regulation related to seafood safety. He points to e-commerce firms such as Jingdong and Womai, which increased their investment in their cold chain logistics, and how it has become increasingly common for Chinese consumers to get the products on the day they order online or the following day.
China’s seafood import sector has been given a significant further – and often underreported – boost with the decision by central government in recent years to allow more regional cities to handle imports of perishable goods, simplifying a significant aspect of import logistics.
In the capital of comparatively wealthy Jiangsu province for instance, this has led to imports of seafood trebling and in Suzhou, which started handling seafood imports in 2015, the AQSIQ predicts more than 1,000 tons of fresh salmon will be imported into the city in 2017. The AQSIQ also reports that this year Nanjing’s Lukou Airport handled 300 tons of salmon from Chile, the Faroe Islands, the UK and Australia.
This surging demand for seafood imports has had, and will carry on having, a profound impact on cold chain logistics. According to market research by ReportLinker, in an environment where most cold chain logistics enterprises often operate both a cold storage and transportation business, the circulation in China of cold chain agricultural (including aquatic) products reached 330 million tonnes, up 16% year on year, and this is projected to double by 2020.
Acana is a new and dynamic player in the Aircare, Insecticide and Household categories based in Nottingham in the UK.
As part of its aggressive NPD program, Acana has launched a new Moth Monitoring product – available in both Primary & Refill packs.
Both packs can be found initially in John Lewis, Lakeland and Robert Dyas stores and the products are also about to launch in overseas markets including Malta, UAE and Saudi.
Pest control trap replacement timer
This latest addition to the Acana Moth Range has been specially developed to attract and trap moths – without the use of harsh chemicals. The Moth Trap uses the latest pheromone technology to attract adult moths and checks for any moth infestation as a ‘first alert’.
The product comes with a Timestrip visual ‘End of Life’ Indicator mounted on the front. Once activated by simply finger pressure it displays elapsed time and prompts the replacement of the sticky pad moth catcher after 8 weeks.
Stuart Anderson, Managing Director commented: “Acana is delighted to be using the Timestrip technology. From the get-go I have been a “believer” in this innovative solution and our new Moth Trap products are the perfect products to take advantage of the benefits the Timestrip provides.”
He went on to say: “Users of our new product can see exactly when they need to replace the Pheromone Glue Boards. We are confident that this will lead to prompt renewal and help increase repeat purchase rates.
It has the added benefit of showing users when the product has stopped working – insuring continuous protection from the menace of Moth damage. The technical nature of the Timestrip also helps reinforce the Acana brand values.”
The Moth Trap is only the 2nd Acana product to use the Timestrip device but Acana plans to extend the scope of its adoption to other future products.
As Timestrip Managing Director Reuben Isbitsky observes “Our life In Service indicators can monitor elapsed time from just a few hours to 3 years and we have already engineered our product into components manufactured by some of the world’s most trusted brands.
Acana shares the common aim of helping consumers take the guess-work out of following refill replacement schedules and we are delighted to be working with a UK company looking to innovate within established categories.”
Eden Springs, the leading provider of water dispensers in the UK and Europe, is using Timestrip ‘Life In Service’ (LIS) indicators to ensure filter change schedules are followed and water quality maintained. As a result, Customer Service teams are able to plan and schedule sanitizations, filter changes and general maintenance work in advance, avoiding stock shortages and any delays which might cause water coolers to be out of service for short periods.
Water coolers situated in thousands of offices across 15 countries in Europe carry a Sanitization or filter change reminder card attached to the stand casing, with a 6 month Timestrip LIS indicator affixed to the card. This ensures consumers see they are drinking quality water from a regularly serviced water cooler and it shows Eden’s commitment to create an optimal environment for hygienic and safe water consumption in the workplace. Further it ensures that the water delivery teams see when it’s time to change filters during the regular checks.
Life in Service indicators for water filters
Timestrip 6 Month LIS indicators are the perfect low-cost solution for monitoring elapsed time and accurately prompting filter replacements. The service teams simply attach a new Timestrip LIS indicator to the maintenance card when a filter is changed, the Timestrip verifies it has been successfully activated and it’s then clear to everyone using the water cooler what the remaining effective life of the filter unit is.
The irreversible nature of the patented Timestrip smart label technology removes the need to run error-prone service logs and engages both the bottle water delivery teams and the office workers with the process of maintain their drinking water quality.
Timestrip has developed patent protected smart label technology which is accurate, highly reliable and 100% tamper-proof. The indicators work by measuring elapsed time: each indicator contains a porous membrane, through which a colored liquid travels at a pre-calibrated rate. They are activated by finger pressure - simply squeeze the bubble on the indicator and a red line appears almost immediately to confirm that the indicator is active and monitoring elapsed time from that moment.
Commenting on the Eden Springs project, Timestrip Managing Director Reuben Isbitsky said “Our clients find the clear visual reminder feature of our product easy to use, easy to read and trust the display to tell service teams when the component has reached the end of its effective life and should be replaced. They are seen as more cost-effective than an electronic equivalent, not least because they cannot be reset once activated and they have no shelf-life issues, unlike battery powered electronic devices. The environmental benefits, married to significant uplift in customer satisfaction levels make Timestrip LIS indicators a clear winner for switched on businesses.”
The Filtrete™ Water Station quickly filters water directly from the tap into multiple reusable containers for inexpensive bottled water.
Water pitcher filter replacement reminders
Timestrip® time indicators are integrated into the system's filter so you know when it is time to change. Watch this video demonstration to see the integrated Timestrip® technology in action.
A pan-European aftermarket campaign launches this autumn for Parker Hannifin, the global leader in motion and control technologies, aimed at stimulating maintenance and replacement business in the filtration and dryer business units.
Using a specially designed Timestrip® instruction card attached to all new installations and replacement components, engineers activate the Timestrip® at the time of installation and the elapsed time shows customers when mission-critical servicing and
replacement anniversaries have arrived. (more…)
3M incorporated Timestrip® technology on their Filtrete product to maximize customer satisfaction.
To read a case study click here.
Timestrip has reported significant progress in its strategic partnership with Whirlpool Europe. Market-leading Whirlpool has chosen to use Timestrip’s smart label technology in two of its domestic appliance filters.
The Timestrip® labels will be used as six-month replacement indicators for Whirlpool anti-bacterial and freezer filters. Whirlpool’s Microban Anti-bacterial Filter circulates air and eliminates potentially harmful bacteria, mould and mildew in refrigerators.
Timestrip appliance filter change reminders
To maintain its performance, it should be replaced after six months: the Timestrip® labels will clearly show when the filter is coming to the end of its life. Timestrips® will perform a similar function for Whirlpool’s new domestic freezer filters, which help to prevent frost, providing an easily visible indication of when the filter needs to be replaced.
“This is an excellent step forward in our partnership with Whirlpool,” confirms Reuben Isbitsky, Joint CEO of Timestrip, “and we are continuing to actively explore ways of using the Timestrip® technology on a wider range of Whirlpool filters and other products.”
Timestrip is firmly establishing itself as the standard in replacement indicators for appliances worldwide. Consumers are beginning to understand that replacing consumable items such as filters on a regular basis makes a recognisable difference to the performance of their appliance. Manufacturers experience greater customer satisfaction and an increase in consumable sales for a very small incremental cost.
Timestrip® labels automatically monitor elapsed time and can work under a wide variety of conditions, from ambient environments to fridge, freezer and extremely high temperatures. Using only food-grade components, Timestrips® are ideal for use in sensitive areas such as food packaging and kitchen appliances. The technology can be integrated into products or packaging, as well as the more traditional applied label format and the company is working with clients across a hugely diverse range of industries.