Everyone knows food carries an expiration date. For Toyota de Puerto Rico, so do new cars. "We pay a property tax on new cars we fail to move within 90 days from our lot to one of our dealers," says Paul Principe, administration services director for the Toyota distributor in San Juan.

That's one of the reasons Toyota de Puerto Rico replaced a manual data entry tracking system with portable bar code printers and handheld wireless terminals at the dock.

"We could spend up to two weeks from the time a car arrived at the port just to enter the data into our system," Principe explains. "Until that was done, we couldn't move the cars."

What's more, says Principe, the manual system was error prone: A vehicle identification number, or VIN, is 14 characters long, and Toyota processes as many as 26,000 cars a year.

Now, that information is entered at the port, and the inventory system is updated in real time. Errors have been virtually eliminated.

Once a shipment has been cleared by customs, Toyota may unload the vehicles. That opens a file in Toyota de Puerto Rico's inventory system.

Once the label is applied, the vehicles are inspected, scanned, and loaded on a truck carrier.

Scanning the label also alerts Toyota's staff to expect the cars. Once they arrive at the distributor's facility, they are scanned again, inspected for damage, and parked to await shipment to dealers. The system is updated and cross-referenced in real time with the needs of dealers.

Vehicles are inspected and scanned again before they leave the lot. The final scan triggers a replenishment order for another vehicle.

"We are now able to track inventory in cycles and produce detailed reports by department, area, and section," says Principe.

Handheld wireless terminals:
Symbol Technologies
516-563-2400
www.symbol.com

Portable bar code printers:
Zebra Technologies
847-634-6700
www.zebra.com