Maersk had released a redesigned refrigerated-container monitoring platform by 3 December 2019, giving cargo teams a virtual assistant called Captain Peter to flag conditions needing attention. The company’s announcement, carried by Container News, says the tool monitors temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide levels. Its cloud-based data can be shared and configured to customers’ needs, giving businesses shipping perishable goods a revised interface for following their cargo. [S3]
The underlying service, Remote Container Management, was not new. Maersk’s February description said it already exposed a refrigerated container’s location, temperature, humidity and power status. Captain Peter was then being tested with selected customers, with notifications about deviations and delays planned for the new interface. The December announcement establishes release of the redesigned platform; the February plan should not be read as a guarantee that every proposed notification channel or feature shipped unchanged. [S2][S3]
Maersk’s earlier explanation sets out a response to a detected problem: the customer can alert the supplier or arrange for local surveyors to check the shipment. For the person receiving a warning, a sensor reading is a reason to investigate, not an inspection of the goods. The operational implication is to assign someone to receive the alert and someone able to arrange a check. Those are response decisions, not additional functions established by the interface announcement. [S2][S3]
Cloud-based sharing could help a cargo team put the same readings in front of the people handling a problem. That is an inference from the December description, not evidence that response times or cargo losses fell. Neither the February description nor the December launch announcement specifies an alert-to-response deadline or demonstrates that a notification automatically changes the container’s settings. [S2][S3]
Source documents
- Maersk to introduce a virtual assistanthttps://www.freshplaza.com/north-america/article/9070213/maersk-to-introduce-a-virtual-assistant/
- Maersk launches new visibility tool “Captain Peter”https://container-news.com/maersk-visibility-tool-captain-peter/