By John Edwards

April 1, 2007—Mike Nicometo is a cool guy. He has to be. As global information systems director of Cool Chain Group, a third-party logistics provider located in Bremen, Germany, it's Nicometo's job to ensure that a variety of perishable goods stay nice and cool as they travel by road, sea, rail and air. "We're building a global network of freight forwarders dedicated to temperature-sensitive products," he says.

Temperature control is at the heart of Nicometo's work, and RFID promises to become an important tool in his company's mission to assure customers that their products will never be exposed to excessive heat or cold. Nicometo believes that sensor-equipped RFID tags—with their ability to continuously and seamlessly monitor an item's temperature throughout its journey from grower to customer—mark a major improvement over existing temperature-monitoring technologies, such as digital data loggers, time temperature indicator (TTI) labels and chart recorders.

Ensuring that shipments stay at or near a specified temperature is a priority for companies operating in the cold chain.

Specialized RFID monitoring tags promise to revolutionize the shipping and handling of a wide range of perishable products—from food to pharmaceuticals. By shifting environmental monitoring from trailer-, container- and warehouse-mounted devices to individual pallet tags, RFID will give suppliers and distributors continuous and accurate readings throughout the distribution process. "It will permit in-transit monitoring of goods at a level of granularity that's much better than the single-point, whole-load environmental logging devices that are in common use today," says Chris Hook, a cold chain technology analyst at Deloitte Consulting.