Chain Reaction Ep. 28: Cold Chain Quality: What Really Breaks Logistics

Marloes Wanrooij, Senior Cold Chain Operations Expert, confronts a persistent tension in logistics: quality and speed are treated as opposing forces. Operations teams want to move product fast. Quality teams impose checks and hold-ups. The friction is real. Marloes's argument is that the friction exists because quality gets involved too late. Bolt quality checks onto speed-optimised operations and you get delays. Build quality thinking into operations design from the start and speed follows naturally. In cold chain logistics, this is critical. Products in temperature-controlled systems have narrow margins for error. A single temperature excursion can spoil an entire shipment. Failures don't just cost the shipment - they damage trust with customers, regulatory bodies, and suppliers. Marloes has spent years inside cold chain operations where this tension is sharpest. Her insight is that quality-first thinking isn't bureaucratic. It's economically smarter. Preventing a failure is cheaper than managing one. For supply chain leaders managing temperature-sensitive products, Marloes's perspective on how to structure operations around quality without sacrificing speed is immediately valuable. It's a conversation about rethinking relationships between functions that often talk past each other.