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Supply Chain Secuirty: Bells, Whistles and High-Tech Seals

One GPS prototype persuades Congress to research supply chain weaknesses

September 01, 2003 — CSO — In the spring of 2002, a container of lightbulbs made its way from an Osram Sylvania factory in Nove Zamke, Slovakia, through the German port of Hamburg and on to Montreal before getting waylaid on its way to Hillsboro, N.H., by a truck driver who cruised through a few of Montreal's grittier neighborhoods and then took a long break at the first rest stop over the border in Vermont.

The extra six or seven hours between Montreal and Hillsboro probably wasn't anything too unusual, in and of itself. What was unusual was that an onboard GPS device allowed a team of researchers to learn of the delayjust one of the many security risks along the complicated supply chains that bring imported goods to the United States every day.

"It took one prototype, to a large extent, to get people in the government more aware of what we're talking about," says Stephen Flynn, a former U.S. Coast Guard commander who is an expert on the homeland security risks involved with cargo shipping.

This prototype for Operation Safe Commerce was enough of a successand enough of a failure, between the truck driver's tardiness, an improper seal on the container and a GPS device rendered useless while the container was in the hold of the shipthat it spawned $58 million in funding from Congress to the Transportation Security Administration. The pilot program, which should be completed by July 2004, is intended to analyze not only supply chains and their weaknesses but also how technology might reduce those risks. The nation's three largest port areasthe ports of Seattle and Tacoma; Los Angeles and Long Beach; and the Port Authority of New York and New Jerseyare coordinating the importers, shippers, freight forwarders and technology providers that are participating.

"Nobody has really put together a supply chain security process and done a thorough analysis of it, primarily because there are so many different people involved," says William Ellis, director of security for the Port of Long Beach. "It's just a massive undertaking."

The technology being tested, among other things, includes GPS for tracking shipments, intrusion detection technologies that monitor light and motion inside a sealed container, sensors for radioactive material and electronic seals that contain information about what the container holds and can also show evidence of tampering.

"We're hoping that through Safe Commerce, we'll find systems that work, and those systems will be applied to all cargo moving anyplace in the world," says Jim Serrill, director of seaport security for the Port of Seattle.