Skandi Network's Central Platform Architecture: Running Europe’s first temperature-controlled life science distribution network
Executive summary
An alliance of European healthcare-logistics specialists set out to build the first international GDP-compliant, temperature-controlled distribution network dedicated to life science goods. Each partner ran its own TMS, WMS, labelling standard, status codes and telematics. Connecting them peer-to-peer would have required thousands of point-to-point EDI interfaces — and still would not have produced network clearing, a shared transport plan, end-to-end temperature evidence, or a single view of any shipment.
Skandi Network selected MIXMOVE to deliver its Central Information Platform System following the EUROTEMP tender. Every partner integrates once with the central platform — in the protocol and format its existing systems already speak — and MIXMOVE converts everything to one canonical data model. Partners keep their domestic TMS and WMS; the network itself runs on MIXMOVE as its shared operating platform.
- One integration per partner instead of a quadratically growing web of peer-to-peer interfaces — the architectural decision everything else follows from
- End-to-end Track & Trace on a single network shipment ID — a consequence of one canonical event stream
- A single end-to-end temperature curve per shipment, across every partner, vehicle and cross-dock chamber — the GDP audit evidence the network was founded to provide
- Automated clearing and periodic settlement between partners, traceable line-by-line to the source scan events
- Network expanded beyond the founding partners, including the ETP 360 pan-European network across 10 countries (2024)
Customer overview
Skandi Network is an alliance of European companies specialised in healthcare logistics, formed to create the first international GDP-compliant, temperature-controlled distribution network dedicated to life science goods. Founding partners include BHS Logistics (Denmark), Eurotranspharma (France), Movianto (UK) and Rangel (Portugal and Spain), with Eurotranspharma and Movianto part of the Walden Group.
The network exists to solve a problem no single carrier can solve alone: moving temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical and life-care products across European borders under active temperature control, with unbroken GDP evidence from consignor to consignee. By pooling line-haul capacity and cross-dock infrastructure, the alliance creates a mutual benefit for customers, patients, shippers, transport companies and the environment — active temperature control at network scale, without every partner building pan-European coverage on its own.
A network of independent companies, however, is only as strong as the platform that connects it. That is where the partnership with MIXMOVE begins.
A network of independents, and no way to run it as one
Each Skandi partner arrived with its own operational stack: its own TMS and WMS, its own label format with routing baked into the barcode, its own status codes, its own telematics vendors, its own invoicing. Every one of those systems worked — domestically. Cross-border, the network had no common language.
The arithmetic of connecting partners directly is unforgiving. Point-to-point integration grows quadratically: every partner must build and maintain interfaces with every other partner, across roughly eleven standard message types per pair. For a network of fifteen partners, that is 2,485 endpoints to build, test, monitor and keep in sync — before a single shipment moves.
The GDP dimension raised the stakes
Pharmaceutical distribution under GDP guidelines demands proof that temperature conditions were maintained at every step — pickup, hub storage, line-haul, hub storage, delivery. Vehicles are typically bi-temperature; readings are captured every few minutes on vehicles and in every cross-dock chamber, from multi-vendor telematics hardware. Without a central platform, that evidence lives in fragments across partner systems — and an auditor’s question about one shipment becomes a manual reconstruction across several companies.
The tender conclusion was clear: the network needed a Central Information Platform System sitting above every partner’s existing systems — not replacing them — to orchestrate execution, evidence and settlement across all of them simultaneously. MIXMOVE was selected as the vendor.
SKANDI 360°: one platform, one integration per partner
MIXMOVE delivered the central platform the tender described. The principle is simple and strict: each partner adapts its data interface to the central standard once — for both directions — choosing the protocol and format combination its existing systems already support (REST API, sFTP/FTPs, AS2 or webhooks; GS1 XML, EDIFACT, JSON, XML, CSV or flat files). The platform performs canonical conversion to a single internal standard built on GS1 XML Transport Instruction. Partners see only their own format on the wire.
That single decision turns a quadratic integration problem into a linear one: N partners means N interfaces — and it is the mechanism from which every network capability below derives.
Four MIXMOVE platform components carry the deployment: the Access Point (multi-channel intake, data conversion and harmonisation), the Event Pipeline (graph-based tracking that correlates, sequences and deduplicates events from every partner), the Digital Twin API (the canonical record of every shipment, consignment and loading unit, built on GS1 SSCC identity), and the Network Topology (partner depots, gateways, lanes, calendars, lead times and routing — the shared transport plan).
The label problem, sidestepped
Multi-partner networks historically stall on labelling: every partner prints its own format with routing encoded in the barcode, so cross-border shipments need re-labelling at gateways or politically costly label renegotiations — and any routing change invalidates labels already printed. The SKANDI approach removes routing from the label entirely. The label is a stable URL to the shipment’s Digital Twin, encoded as a 2D barcode on GS1 SSCC identity. Routing is queried live from the platform, so plan changes never invalidate a printed label — and customer-printed labels are accepted without re-labelling, provided they carry a unique scannable identifier. A Master Transit Pallet-ID extends the same model to film-wrapped consolidated pallets: scan the parent, and every child unit inherits the scan.
Eleven scan events, one temperature curve, full settlement
Every partner maps its domestic status codes to eleven mandatory network scan events — from out-for-pickup through gateway and controlled-temperature chamber scans to IOD, IOND and IOTEMP. Those eleven codes drive every KPI calculation, every customer-visible status and every clearing trigger.
Temperature telemetry flows in through data aggregators that abstract the multi-vendor hardware fleet, so the platform integrates one standard temperature interface per partner — not one per hardware vendor. The Digital Twin assembles readings from every leg into a single end-to-end temperature curve per shipment. When a deviation exceeds the pre-defined window, affected colli are flagged unfit for consumption pending pharmacist survey, and a quarantine status is propagated to all relevant partners in real time.
On the commercial side, the platform maintains each partner’s tariff structures — transport, storage, cross-dock, services and tolls, with fixed and special pricing per consignor — prices every consignment as it completes, runs periodic settlement across all consignments and transit chains, and generates detailed invoices with structured electronic invoicing and a full audit trail: every settled line maps back to the events, scans and tariff version that produced it.
Why the architecture is the headline — not one of several features
Every result here traces back to one driver. A single integration per partner is what makes unified track-and-trace, consolidated temperature data, and automated cross-border settlement possible. Together, they form a causal chain that shows the full scale of the impact.
Key capabilities deployed
Every capability listed is live in production across the network.
Implementation & approach
MIXMOVE works alongside each partner’s existing systems as the network’s orchestration layer — while operating as the standalone central platform the network itself runs on. Every partner’s domestic TMS, WMS and telematics remained in place. What changed is that each of them now speaks to one platform, in its own language, once.
Onboarding runs in two phases. Phase 1 is portal-based and minimum-viable: one key user per country or site, documented training, shipments created and labels printed directly in the portal, first shipments shadowed by the central operations team — typically four to six weeks from kick-off to go-live. Phase 2 is system-to-system integration: partner systems and capacities are inventoried and documented, the protocol per direction is agreed, domestic status codes are mapped to the eleven mandatory network events, the label strategy is defined, and the telemetry feed is connected — followed by hyper-care and KPI baseline tracking, typically eight to twelve weeks.
The operating model around the platform is equally structured: hosting on Microsoft Azure with a 99.95% availability SLA, Cloudflare WAF and DDoS protection, point-in-time restore, a bi-weekly release cadence across QA, staging and production environments, a service desk on working days with a 24/7 hotline for urgent priorities, and governance through monthly KPI reviews and quarterly platform roadmap reviews with partner key users.
What the deployment has delivered
Customer voice
We have chosen MIXMOVE for their proven expertise in the global supply chain and their proven technology to manage complex transport network operations. They use an advanced cloud-based technology with API connectivity. The MIXMOVE solution offers a capability to connect different systems and different tools (TMS, WMS, telematic systems…) seamlessly to the platform. This is what we needed, first to allow all members to be connected, and second to allow all external stakeholders, such as logistic service providers, to plug themselves into the platform and use our network.
What the deployment proves
The Skandi deployment demonstrates something no single-shipper case can: MIXMOVE operating as the shared platform of an entire logistics alliance — independent companies, competing interests, one operational truth. Execution, evidence and settlement run from the same canonical event stream, across borders, under the strictest temperature-controlled compliance regime in logistics.
For logistics networks and alliances anywhere in Europe, the pattern is transferable: partners keep the systems they have, integrate once, and gain capabilities — network clearing, end-to-end evidence, comparable KPIs — that no amount of bilateral integration can produce.
