 DPS/Real-World Solutions: Pharmaceuticals
Duty-Free Bonded Warehouse Management With DPS Extend At Collins Ltd.
Since the 1940s, Collins Limited has been managing their wholesale distribution network throughout the Eastern Caribbean. Collins operates their 75,000 square foot facility in Barbados where they house the administration, distribution, manufacturing, and warehousing departments.
The company presently operates one large retail pharmacy in Bridgetown, Barbados, where they also sell over-the-counter products. Their wholesale and distribution network provides free daily delivery to all of their customers over the entire island. Customers in the Eastern Caribbean, including the British Virgin Islands, St. Kitts, Nevis, Anguilla, St. Maarten, Montserrat, Antigua, Dominica, St. Lucia, Grenada, St. Vincent, and the Grenadines, are serviced from a duty-free bonded warehouse export facility, as are the customers in the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands.
Collins started a Caribbean Transit Store facility in a duty-free bonded warehouse to service sections of the Caribbean on behalf of selective large pharmaceutical suppliers in the early 1970s. This facility, which is operated on a similar basis to free zone areas, handles the supply of pharmaceuticals to various distributors in Barbados, the Leeward and Windward Islands, the Dutch Antilles, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, the Bahamas, and Guyana. This facility is now handling shipments for a specific supplier into the Dominican Republic and Central America.
Collins has been running DPS Extend ERP since 1996 and has worked closely with DPS to design a duty-free function unique to their business. To ensure products remain duty-free when removed from the bonded warehouse, they must be earmarked for export or passed under a special government contract. Bonded products must be separated both physically and in the computer system. Invoices that have included bond-marked products can be tracked back to their original receipt into the system. The Government Customs Department may need to audit this activity at any time, and DPS Extend's inquiry and reporting features provide the information.
The Transit Store facility provides full service for clearing incoming shipments and warehousing them. The automation process of storing, packing, shipping, invoicing, shipment documenting, and monthly reporting is provided by the company's distribution and accounting software from DPS. Geoffrey Bourne, Finance Director at Collins Limited, observed, "The accuracy of available-to-sell inventory numbers has improved our customer service, and our customers are asking how we know the information so quickly." Bourne continued, "I told everyone in our company, `If you need to know something about the business, just ask,' because it's in the system."
|
