An IoT Architecture for Enhancing Safety in Supply Chain Systems

Supply chain processes are used for controlling the delivery of goods from suppliers to consumers. With the globalization of the economy, delivery distances are on the increase and might involve thousands of kilometers across countries and even continents and different means of transport including land, water, and air transport. The task of the supply chain process is to guarantee the quality and safety of the goods at transportation time to prevent potential damage, deterioration, and decay. This requires real-time monitoring and observance of several conditions (e.g., temperature and humidity) to which the goods are exposed. To address the problem, this paper discusses the implementation of an IoT system and relevant metrics for monitoring, in real-time, the conditions that goods face during transportation. In the prototype that we have implemented, we use conventional low-cost cost widely available technologies, namely, temperature and light sensors connected to a Raspberry Pi device that sends the sensors' data to a database server. We then analyze the data with the help of a web application that we have also implemented.