Protection (CBP) contained errors.
The U.S. government requires
exporters to file certain pieces of information via the Automated Export System
(AES) operated by CBP. AES enables exporters to
electronically submit data that used to be included on
the paper Shippers Export Declaration, such as shipper,
destination, Harmonized Tariff System identification number, export carrier, transportation mode, and voyage or
flight number. As soon as AES receives that information, the
system validates its accuracy and completeness; it also confirms that the information meets the requirements of other
federal agencies, such as the Bureau of the Census and the
departments of State and Commerce. If all is correct, AES
then generates a confirmation message. If not, the system
sends an error message to the party that filed the data.
Xerox was initiating timely AES filings, which Genco prepared and ADSI, a third-party shipping system, transmitted
to AES. But the method used for creating the reports frequently led to mistakes. The problem was that the operation was relying on a particular screen in Genco’s proprietary D-Log Plus warehouse management system to capture the necessary information.
“The screen didn’t have enough checks and balances to
tell whether the data was correct and complete,” recalls Jim
Rubino, Genco’s senior vice president of systems. “We were
relying on people to remember certain things and to enter
them correctly. It required someone who was very knowl-
edgeable about export declarations and processes sitting at
the screen. That wasn’t a reality for this operation.” Not to
mention that any process that relies on manual intervention
is likely to introduce errors and omissions, he adds.
And that’s exactly what happened. “We were seeing
spelling errors and incomplete or missing data being sent to
AES,” Tegner says. “For example, air shipments did not
always include flight numbers.” Consequently, AES kicked
back error messages, and shipments were delayed while
Genco’s staff addressed the errors and resubmitted the filings. This also left the shipper vulnerable to possible fines.
That could not continue, of course, so Genco’s information system experts called in DMLogic, a software developer and systems integrator, to help find a solution. Although
Genco had developed D-Log Plus in-house, it collaborates
with DMLogic on installations and integration—the “care
and feeding” of the WMS, as Rubino puts it.
FOLLOW THE WIZARD
The solution was to automate and integrate the collection
of export shipment information, the validation of that
information, and the creation of the AES filing. Initially, the
Genco and DMLogic systems experts planned to build new
functionality into D-Log Plus. But, Rubino says, “We very
quickly saw that was going to become a bit invasive into the
WMS and that it would require a lot of changes to user
interfaces and to background logic.” Such changes would
also make it more difficult and costly to implement
upgrades and do other maintenance tasks down the road.
Was there another way to achieve the same objectives, but
without making major modifications to the WMS?
The DMLogic team thought there was. They suggested
using stepLogic, a tool for software developers that interfaces with a WMS but does not change it. Instead, it replaces
development tasks with configuration steps. “StepLogic is
comparable to a software ‘wizard.’ It leads you through the
various steps to set up a screen and to query a database,”
explains LeeAnn Dawson, director of information technology for DMLogic.
Genco’s Rubino describes stepLogic as a “software accelerator tool” that enables the rapid implementation of
changes with little or no programming. “That was the beauty of it. It didn’t require a programmer to figure this out,”
he says. What it did require was a “superuser”—someone
with a thorough knowledge of Xerox’s export operations—
to define the rules for retrieving the appropriate information for each input field and then put those rules into
