Yards Moving Forward - GL Group

Golden Cage for Valuable Goods
In any supply chain, there is always a certain amount of shrinkage. But enough is enough.
Today, the TAPA FSR standard for protecting high-tech products en route is proving to be
successful worldwide.
Aloss of 60 billion euros in merchandise per year. This
was the sorry balance reported by the producers of
high-tech goods in the nineties. These valuable products,
such as PCs, printers, mobile phones and laptops, were
either lost while in storage or disappeared during the transportation
process. Only ten years later, this picture has
changed radically. The losses for high-tech goods have been
reduced by up to 30 percent, thanks to the Technology Asset
Protection Association, also known as TAPA.
The founding members of this initiative were the global
players of the industry. Starting in the USA, the leading representatives
of Compaq, Intel and Sun got together with their
logistics partners and formulated their objectives: develop a
set of instruments for limiting the effects of criminal acts such
as theft, vandalism and terrorism on the goods in transit.
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To this end, the initiators of TAPA developed specific measures
for the storage and transport of their goods and stipulated
these procedures as a minimum standard. This culminated in the
so-called Freight Security Requirements (FSR). From this time
on, the logistics partners of the high-tech producers have been
under an obligation to comply with these TAPA FSR standards.
For the logistics providers, this first of all means increased
costs. For instance, TAPA FSR standard involves the regular
and continuous surveillance of the storerooms. Trained personnel
are needed and the warehouses must be protected by
fences and monitored by video cameras right around the
clock. Particularly sensitive areas in which valuable goods are
kept in intermediate storage must be declared as restricted
zones. In this way, the TAPA founders considered, unauthorized
persons would be denied entry and any illegal access