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The Challenge
The cargo onboard a ship is presented in form of a manifest. Manifest contains details of the cargo in terms of containers, consignments and packages. Jamaica Customs is the nodal agency dealing with the acceptance of these manifests. Before July 2003, Jamaica Customs used to accept manifest from shipping agents in paper format at different ports. Each shipping agent had to personally hand over these manifests. The personnel at Customs were responsible for entering the data from the manifest into the system. They were also responsible for other activities related to these manifests. In August 2003, Jamaica Customs decided to automate the submissions of these manifests and the activities related to it.
Solution
Fiscal Services Ltd (FSL), the IT systems provider to Jamaica Customs contracted TechBios to develop a web-based Manifest system that would satisfy the needs of Jamaica Customs. The TechBios project team deployed a Java based J2EE framework for implementing the website.
IBM Websphere Studio was used for developing the application. It was hosted on Websphere 5.0 application server running under UNIX environment.
The application was developed using Java Server Pages (JSP), Tag libraries, servlets, Java Beans, Java database connectivity (JDBC) and Java Mail. The data capture on the web is facilitated by user-friendly forms that were developed in JSP and using tag libraries. The business logic validation was done using beans. Servlets worked as the controllers of the application.
Result
The e-Manifest (Electronic Manifest) website went into production in October 2003 on schedule. Jamaica Customs desire to use the power of the web to implement its vision of a paperless manifest system was realized. Currently, the site is being regularly used by Jamaica Shipping agents to create, submit and track their manifest. They also use the site for transhipment and to track container movement. It has significantly reduced the need for shipping agents to physically go to the Jamaican Customs offices and has enabled Jamaica Customs to provide first-class service to the members of the shipping industry.
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