Yamaha Gets
Up to Speed on
GREAT
SUPPLY CHAIN
PARTNERS
10+ 2 Filing Rule
With the help of Questa Web, a vendor of global trade management software, the company devises a sys-
tem for filing data for each factory and vendor in its supply chain.
una Kim didn’t waste time in responding to the new Importer Security Filing
(ISF) rules of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The director of import
and export for Yamaha Corporation
of America knew she had to move fast in
order to get all of her suppliers on board with
the regulation, which took full effect at the
beginning of this year.
Yamaha, a maker of musical instruments
as well as audio and video equipment, has a
complex supply chain, with some 18 factories and nearly 40 overseas vendors. In
addition, the American operation, based in
Buena Park, Calif., must coordinate activities with corporate headquarters in Japan.
Kim had a number of options for complying with the ISF, also known as the 10+ 2 rule,
which requires importers to file detailed
sourcing data about all shipments 24 hours
before they are loaded aboard a vessel at the
port of origin. She could rely on a vendor’s
information system while doing the filings
herself; let the vendor prepare and file entries
J
based on supplier information she provided
via electronic data interchange (EDI) or
extensible markup language (XML), or outsource the whole process, from data extraction to filing.
Allowing a customs broker to do the filings was a non-starter; with transaction fees
ranging from $10 to $65 per entry, the cost
would be prohibitive for an importer of
Yamaha’s size. Doing the job in-house
made sense, both from a financial and legal
standpoint. After all, if an ISF filing is incorrect, it’s the importer who gets blamed.
Customs brokers were already handling
Yamaha’s standard entries, but Kim liked the
level of control she could assert by managing
the ISF directly. At the same time, she wasn’t
about to develop her own proprietary software application. The challenge lay in finding
an existing system that could conform to
Yamaha’s complex requirements.
Kim ended up deploying the ISF appli-
cation of Questa Web Inc., whose global
trade management software Yamaha was
already using. As a result, many elements of
the company’s GTM processes, including
product and client files, landed-cost calcula-
tion and inventory receipt, were fully auto-
mated and integrated with the enterprise
resource planning (ERP) system. Now it
was just a question of devising a solution
that could draw accurate information from
disparate suppliers on a timely basis.
