Some Important Confusing Words

1.) You use this one a lot.

Difference between Affect and Effect

2.) PSST: don’t forget about England, too.

Difference between Great Britain and United Kingdom.

3.) Dracula or Vampire

4.) I didn’t even know this mattered.

Difference between Sex and Gender.

5.) There can’t be a difference?

Difference between Boat and Ship

6.) I’m a kitchen failure.

Difference between Broth, Soup and Stock

7.) I’ll just call everything a butterfly.

Difference between Butterfly and Moth.

8.) #science.

Difference between Mass and Weight.

9.) Both are gross. I know that.

Difference between Lobster and Crayfish.

10.) It’s strange that people get these confused.

Difference between Coke and Pepsi

11.) This is always a tough one to figure out for some reason.

Difference between Race and Ethnicity

12.) Bet you didn’t learn this in college.

Difference between College and University

13.) Super important distinction, people.

Difference between Ghost and Ghoul

14.) And Twister is a movie.

Difference between Cyclone and Hurricane

15.) Each of these animals can, and will, kill you.

Difference between Crocodile and Alligator

16.) Wait…What

Difference between Pill and Tablet

17.) Oh, so this is why climate change is more important.

Difference between Weather and Climate

18.) To me, they’re both are disgusting.

Difference between Shrimp and Prawn

19.) Oh no, more maths!

Difference between Speed and Velocity

20.) Tip: avoid both.

Difference between HIV and Aids

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Scrum Values and Scrum Processes

Introduction 

SCRUM is a loose set of guidelines that govern the development process of a product, from its design stages to its completion. It aims to cure some common failures of the typical development process, such as:

• Chaos due to changing requirements – the real or perceived requirements of a project usually change drastically from the time the product is designed to when it is released. Under most product development methods, all design is done at the beginning of the project, and then no changes are allowed for or made when the requirements change.

• Unrealistic estimates of time, cost, and quality of the product – the project management and the developers tend to underestimate how much time and resources a project will take, and how much functionality can be produced within those constraints. In actuality, this usually cannot be accurately predicted at the beginning of the development cycle.

• Developers are forced to lie about how the project is progressing – When management underestimates the time and cost needed to reach a certain level of quality, the developers must either lie about how much progress has been made on the product, or face the indignation of the management.

SCRUM has been successfully employed by hundreds of different companies in many different fields, with outstanding results.

You will find many similarities between scrum and Extreme Programming, but one of the major differences is that scrum is a fairly general set of guidelines that govern the development process of a product. For this reason, it is often used as a “wrapper” for other methodologies, such as XP or CMM (Capability Maturity Model) – that is, it is used to guide the overall process of development when using these other methodologies.

ScrumValues

 The scrum values are derived from the Agile values of software development.

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools – processes and tools are helpful, but they will do you no good if the team does not communicate and collaborate in a constructive fashion.

• Working software over comprehensive documentation – documentation is important, but what’s most important is to have working software.

• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation – you are not just looking to get a contract and get money that way – you are solving the customer’s problem.

• Responding to change over following a plan – if the requirements or perceived requirements changed, so should the plans and design.

The Scrum Process

General Scrum Process

The scrum process has 3 main phases.

Planning

In this phase, the project is planned and high-level design decisions are made.

Sprint Cycle

The sprint cycle is an iterative cycle of about 3-4 weeks, in which the actual development of the product is done. It starts out with a Sprint Planning Meeting to decide what will be done in the current sprint. Then the development is done. A sprint is closed with a Sprint Review Meeting where the progress made in the last sprint is demonstrated, the sprint is reviewed, and adjustments are made to the project as necessary.

The sprint cycle is repeated until the product’s development is complete. The product is complete when the variables of time, quality, competition, and cost are at a balance.

• Develop the product further – implement, test, and document.
• Wrap up the work – get it ready to be evaluated and integrated.
• Review the work done in this sprint.
• Adjust for any changes in requirements or plans.

Closure

In this phase, the product’s development is brought to a close, and the product is released.

The Scrum Team

 The scrum team consists of 2 groups – the interested team, which consists of people who are interested, but who will not be doing the work, and the working team – people who are interested, and will be doing the work on the project.

A team typically has no more than 6-9 working members, although scrum has been successfully used with more members. If there are more members than manageable, the project should be broken into multiple sub-projects, each focusing on one, self-contained area of work (one for QA, one for documentation, etc.). There should be people to act as bridges – that is, to attend the meetings of more than one scrum team, and act as a communication bridge between the teams. Members of teams that are closely related/involved with each other should sit in on the other teams’ SCRUM meetings.

The leader (Scrum Master)

 The team’s leader is called the Scrum Master. He should be one of the members of the working team – that is, he should be one of the people who is actually doing the work on the project. The SCRUM Master measures progress, removes impediments, and leads the team meetings.

Commonly Used Terms 

Sprint

The product is developed in a series of 1-to-4-week iterations, or sprints. Before a sprint is begun, a Sprint Planning Meeting is held to determine what features are to be implemented in that sprint. The sprint has 4 major steps:

• Develop the product further – implement, test, and document.
• Wrap up the work – get it ready to be evaluated and integrated.
• Review the work done in this sprint.
• Adjust for any changes in requirements or plans.

 Product Backlog

A prioritized list of all the desired changes to the product being developed, put together by the product owner. See Figure.

Sprint BackLog

A list with items that will be completed in the current sprint, taken from the product backlog. See Figure

The SCRUM Sprint Cycle

Daily Scrum Meeting

A 15-minute scrum meeting is held every day. The scrum Master asks the three questions, and all members of the team and interested parties take part and give feedback. The meeting should be held at the same place every time, so that people know where to go.

Unit Testing

A unit test is an automated test that ensures that the functionality required for a certain area of a project is implemented, and that there are no breaking changes that have not been taken into consideration.

Impediment

Impediments are things that get in the way of the progress of the project. The scrum Master is responsible to look for and remove these obstacles so that they do not slow down or impair the project.

3 Questions

The Scrum Master asks the developers 3 important questions at every scrum meeting:

1. What have you accomplished since the last meeting?
2. Are there any obstacles in the way of meeting your goal?
3. What will you accomplish before the next meeting?

Product Owner

The person who commissions the project, and defines the requirements and priorities for the product.

Sprint Planning Meeting

A meeting at the beginning of a sprint where the sprint is planned. Items from the Product Backlog are selected to be completed in the sprint, based on the priorities set by the Product Owner.

Sprint Review Meeting

A sprint is closed with a Sprint Review Meeting where the progress made in the last sprint is demonstrated, the sprint is reviewed, and adjustments are made to the project as necessary.

Learn more about – What is Agile? What is Scrum?

What is Agile? What is Scrum?

In software development Agile is a set of values and principles formulated by a group of the industry leading figures in 2001.

Scrum is a concrete software development model that can be traced back to 1995 and was created by two of the original signatories of Agile Manifesto. Scrum supports Agile values. Note that Scrum is for project management, it is not a development methodology.

The early approach to software project management usually referred to as “waterfall model” implies a sequence of clearly defined steps necessary to complete any project: define, plan, organize, execute and then close.

This represents a very neat, simple and above all convenient abstraction from the project management theorist point of view. When one stage follows another it is possible to define clear inputs and outputs for each stage, isolate and identify techniques and tools that are most useful at every phase. This is a clear example of reductionism in tackling project management complexity: keep splitting the whole into smaller bits until you get to understand each bit in isolation and then hopefully you will master the mechanics of their totality.

But as soon as the waterfall abstraction was presented it started to leak. Firstly it turned out that real-life process cannot be clearly cut into stages, often definition is still changed on what it seems to be planning, organization or even execution stage. So, in theory, the stages were allowed to overlap and theoreticians started drawing all sorts of diagrams there it’s possible to see how the definition stage gradually runs out as execution starts picking up during the organization stage. Then, again only in theory, it is possible to accurately estimate during the planning stage how long it is going to take to develop a piece of software. Obviously, in actual practice, the estimates and other plans have to be tweaked right through the execution phase which gave birth to a string of complex yet not very meaningful methods as Earned Value Management.

The chronic problems with the waterfall abstraction gave birth to a number of “agile” project management methods (Agile, Scrum, XP Programming etc) that despite many differences at the more detailed level use the same fundamental principles to tackle product development complexity:

• The project is organized as a number of small iterations through the classic project stages (definition, planning, organization, execution and closure).
• Each iteration aims at a relatively small yet semantically complete increment in product functionality or non-functional characteristics.
• Strong end-user involvement throughout the project.

Since every iteration goes through a separate definition and planning stage the time horizon for various estimation and planning activities is greatly reduced. It helps achieve greater accuracy, hence make it easier to access feasibility, measure value and costs etc.

Small increments help controlling the scope, evaluate utility of the changes and keep users involved since there is always a fresh version of fully functioning product. It is also much easier to organize a number of teams working on a large project simultaneously when increments are kept small, this really helps tackling task dependencies.

 

Agile is a methodology, and there are various ways to define what agile is. To a large extent, if it involves constant unit testing and the ability to quickly adapt when the business needs change then it is probably agile. The opposite is the waterfall method.

There are various implementations that are codified by consultants, such as Xtremem Programming, Scrum and RUP (Rational Unified Process).

Agile is a collection of practices. While there is no formal definition of the collection of agile practices, there are studies that have measured the effectiveness of various agile practices.

Broadly, the agile practices can be categories into two groups, management practices and engineering practices. SCRUM is the most popular set of management practices. XP or Extreme Programming is the best known set of engineering practices.

If an agile team only employees the management practices, i.e., SCRUM, they are likely to be unable to maintain a sustainable pace for an indefinite period of time. For example, without automated functional tests, it will take longer and longer to validate each iteration. If you don’t use pairing or Test Driven Development, you are likely to find your defects grow out of control.

Management practices enable the team to collaboration successfully with the business partner. Prioritizing what need to be done, working collaboratively against scope in priority order. SCRUM, by itself, will provide benefit immediately. Management practices tend to be the easiest to learn and put into practices.

Examples of management practices are open workspace, product owner, prioritized product backlog, iteration, iteration and release planning meetings, show & tell etc.

While the engineering practices are more difficult to learn and execute well, they are essential if a team is to maintain a sustainable pace of high quality software. Examples of engineering practices are developer pairing, test drive development, simple evolutionary design, automated functional and performance tests, continuous integration and collective code ownership.

Agile provides alternative ways to achieve the same business goals. IMO agile is less intuitive but works better in practice. The agile approach says it’s impossible to know every detail up front for all but the smallest/simplest projects and that the project should be able to accommodate surprises and updated requirements. Further, by completing and verifying software features in order of importance, touching all relevant architectural layers along the way, agile can make it more possible to have a useful product by the deadline demanded by the business side.

Learn more about – Scrum Values and Scrum Processes

Presentation Pre-Sales – Demo Company for SAP MM

Case Study – Information System at Tata Motors

Information System at Tata Motors

About Tata Motors –

Tata Motors Limited,India’s largest automobile company, with consolidated revenues of Rs.1,23,000 crores (USD 27 billion) in 2010-11 is located in Mumbai, India. The Company’s manufacturing facilities are located in Jamshedpur (Jharkhand), Pune (Maharashtra), Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh), Pantnagar (Uttarakhand), Sanand (Gujarat) and Dharwad (Karnataka). Tata Motors is also expanding its international footprint in several countries inEurope,Africa, theMiddle East,South East Asia,South AsiaandSouth America. The offices and manufacturing units are design to produce mid size cars, trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles. Close to 4 million Tata vehicles ply on Indian roads, since the first rolled out in 1954. Today TATA motors’ vehicles run in more than 70 countries with strength of 24,000 employees all over the globe.

Producing thousands vehicles per week, operating on a back to back production cycle, Information system were a key to the operation of the facility, and hence, they had to get going, and on-line, fast. Tata Motors builds vehicles in a production environment. To meet the high expectations of customers in this market segment, the company requires flexibility and speed, business integration and automation of the process.

The Challenges –

Information system is vital in maintaining the production rate in a cost-effective, customised environment. Tata plants acrossIndiaare supported by mainframe-based information systems which then connected to the different system and applications. The result are high maintenance cost and complicated system integration. The amount of time and money that the company spend on system maintenance is very high, and the goal was to keep the IT costs as low as possible.

The company desperately wanted an integrated information system, so that the flow of information becomes fast and effective. They wanted to enter data only once as every dealer and other key employee were managing information separately with legacy-based systems, the environment produced inconsistent data, making interpretations difficult and resulting in inefficient planning for capacity and spare parts. The company wanted a centralised system where the entered information automatically sent to all the functional areas like – financial systems, material management, ordering etc without delay, caused by data interface or any other data transferring problems.

 

The Solution –

At first Tata Motors created an operational model which shows the process flow, they then used this model to find the best suit application tool available in the market to meet their business need. In addition to being able to match the processes, Tata’s criteria for the software includes global scope,  latest tools and technology, end to end full integration without any interface problems and configurable documents.

Tata put together a list of the top five vendors in the marketplace and mapped the system against its need. SAP R/3 was the best fit of all. According to the most of company’s opinion; SAP provided the best standard software solution in the industry for their requirements.

Tata then decided to go with SAP implementation. They outsourced this task to Tata Technologies as their implementation partner. SAPIndiaprovided all the support and consultation for the implementation. While the implementation process was on, in 1997 they have realised that WAN infrastructure inIndiado not support single server implementation. Hence a distributed server implementation has to be done and it took almost 2 years between 1998 and 2000. Later in 2003 they upgraded from distributed server to single server platform. At present there are around 4000 users across the country using SAP version 6.0 since 2008.

The Benefits –

Once SAP was implemented, automation of several processes helped in reducing the cost and time. Almost all the business process like material, order, logistics etc were all now sharing the centralised information system which is not totally location independent. Tata Motors later adopted some more modules and tools of SAP for better business process and functionality.

Tata experienced benefits in productivity and cost control. The number of servers and applications run on them has been reduced drastically. Some other benefits they experienced are as below –

Manufacturing: Production planning and material management became automatic

Documents:          Invoicing, orders and other documents are now generated automatically

Requisitioning: Purchasing and finding the best vendor or supplier became easier.

Reporting and Analysis: Standard and specific reports can now be generated just by a click, analysing and comparing the reports is now automatic

Decision-making: Availability of online information, analysis and better planning toots helped Tata managers to take better decisions.

 

Questions with answer –

Que 1. Point out the five basic problems Tata was facing?

Ans –

Following 5 basic problems Tata were facing –

1. Inefficient legacy systems.
2. Information was distributed over a multiple departments.
3. Process of loading and retrieving data was slow and inefficient.
4. Production rate was slow because of the ineffective information flow.
5. Cost occurred in handling the outdated legacy system was high.

Que 2. What were the basic solutions of the problems?

Ans –

There were following solutions –

1. Replacement for slow legacy system
2. A centrally stored independent integrated enterprise was needed
3. Real time access to data base and better data quality was in need

 

Que 3. Why Tata went with SAP?

Ans –

Tata choose SAP because of the following reasons –

1. SAP was the clear leader in the market for such kind of needs and solutions
2. For automotive industry it was the best package
3. SAP covers multiple modules and functionalities for different departments.

 

Que 4. Represent graphically, year-wise implementation process?

Ans –

 

 

Que 5. Briefly describe the objective of the study?

Ans –

1. Centralise business process across all departments and manufacturing units.
2. Increase productivity and improve efficiency by reducing duplication of data entry.
3. Reduce the operational cost caused by the outdated legacy system.
4. Reach the customer effectively and reply to the quires quickly.

 

Que 6. What benefits Tata experienced after the SAP implementation and what future plan Tata should follow?

Ans –

Benefits –

1. SAP provided them an integrated enterprise.
2. Tata financially benefited because of the reduced cost of handling inventories.
3. Generating trade documents and analysis of reports became easy.
4. Reduction in time taken and better decision making is now possible.
5. Now Tata is using a single unified database which is easy to maintain.

Future Plan –

Tata motor is now experiencing a better work process because of the SAP automation. They have the largest implementation of SAP solution in the automobile industry.

Tata should now keep following all the new updates which SAP provides to ensure the up-to-date technology, applications and enhancements. They should keep looking for more areas of their work where automation is needed to achieve better production and functionality. Giving proper SAP training to their existing employee is an important task ahead for them. With the help of SAP, Tata should think about enlarging it’s footprint in the global market as well.

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Triangle Trade – Counter Trade

TRIANGLE TRADE

The triangle trade—triangular trading—arrangement is more often used by the export-trader. Many export-manufacturers use it these days in connection to their offshore manufacturing businesses.

Increasing number of export-manufacturers are investing in overseas production plants or moving the production to overseas countries, while maintaining the headquarter (i.e., export office) in its own country, in order to take advantages of

• lower production cost (lower labor and material costs)
• lower or free import tariff (in importing country) granted to a similar product originating from other exporting countries (less developed countries usually)

and then using the triangle trade arrangement to become competitive in their exports.

Under the triangle trade arrangement, generally, two buyer-seller relationships co-exist, which is a typical case in an export-trading. Buyer (foreign importer) buys from seller (exporter). Seller (exporter) in turns buys from third party (supplier), usually a manufacturer. Seller and the third party enter into a buyer-seller relationship. The third party ships the goods directly to the buyer, instead of to the seller.

The difference between the seller’s and the third party’s invoice value represents the profit margin of the seller.

The third party can be a manufacturer, subsidiary plant, subcontractor, or trader, which can be located in the exporter’s country or another country, the latter is common in practice.

Following cases may be involved in a triangle trade arrangement:

• Seller, who is an export-trader, buys from supplier using a transferred credit, where the foreign importer opens a transferable letter of credit in favor of the seller.
• Seller, who is an export-trader, buys from supplier on open account basis.
• Seller, who is an export-manufacturer, owns the production plant abroad.
• Seller, who is an export-manufacturer, buys from supplier (another manufacturer) using a transferred credit, where the foreign importer opens a transferable letter of credit in favor of the seller.
• Seller, who is an export-manufacturer, buys from supplier (another manufacturer) on open account basis.

Summary of Triangle Trade Procedure

(Using a Transferable Letter of Credit)

1. Buyer and seller conclude a sales contract. Buyer applies to his issuing bank for a transferable letter of credit in favor of the seller (first beneficiary). The letter of credit (L/C) provides for shipment FROM named port of shipment (i.e., Hong Kong, China; Goods from Shenzhen, China, usually are dispatched from Hong Kong, China) TO named port of destination (i.e., New York, New York, U.S.A.) and the third party’s bill of lading is acceptable. The letter of credit does not stipulate the consignor of goods.
2. Seller transfers the letter of credit to the third party (second beneficiary) in a transferred credit. The credit stipulates the consignor of goods. Other credit terms being same as the original transferable L/C, with the exception of the L/C amount, any unit price of goods, time of shipment, last date for presentation of documents, and expiry date.
3. Third party ships the goods directly to the buyer.
4. Third party presents the draft (bill of exchange) and documents to the negotiating bank for L/C negotiation (please see Summary of Export-Import Procedure for related information). Documents reach the seller through the seller’s transferring bank.
5. Seller substitutes his draft and a document for those presented by the third party, but uses the same bill of lading. Seller presents the draft and documents to the negotiating bank for L/C negotiation. Documents reach the buyer through the buyer’s issuing bank.

COUNTER TRADE

Countertrade is a generic term that describes various techniques for the conditional exchange of goods and/or services between seller and buyer. In layman’s parlance, countertrade is “You buy from me and I will buy from you”. As the trade reciprocation entails a requirement to buy in exchange for a right to sell, it is indeed a form of non-tariff barrier.

Countertrade provides a means of trade with countries using a blocked currency—currency that is not readily convertible into other currencies—or lacking the foreign exchange, thus removing the difficulties and risks in a trade financing and paving the way for a successful deal that otherwise would fail. Countertrade also provides a means to preserve foreign exchange reserves by eliminating the use of hard currency.

Countertrade is thriving in modern international trade. In early 1970’s, countertrade was used by about 20 countries and now, more than 100 countries are using it. A wide range of goods and services are transacted on countertrade, for example, oil, airplanes, automobiles, mineral, machinery, agricultural products, shoes, wine, and advertising time.

Barter

Barter is the direct exchange of goods and/or services, of approximately equivalent value, between parties without the use of money or credit.

Offset

Offset is found most often in the large-scale capital goods, such as commercial aircrafts and military hardwires.

Offset is either direct or indirect. In a direct offset, part of the cost of the export product is offset by buying the agreed amount of goods—components or materials—from the importing country, which the exporter incorporates in the export product. Other direct offsets include coproduction, licensing, subcontracting, and joint ventures.

In an indirect offset, the import goods are not used in the export product.

Compensation or Buyback

Compensation or buyback is normally found in the exports of plants, machinery or technology, where the exporter is compensated by, or obliged to buy from the importer, the goods produced by such plants, machinery or technology.

Counter purchase or Parallel Barter

The seller is obliged to buy from the buyer goods and/or services that are usually unrelated to the goods and/or services sold by the seller. The counter purchase involves two separate contracts and the deliveries can take place within a period of one to five years.

Clearing Agreement

Two countries agree to buy particular types and quantities of each other’s goods within a period of time, using a designated clearing currency. At the end of the period, the country that buys more may settle the shortfall either in hard currency and/or goods, or issue a credit to the other country in the subsequent clearing agreement, if any.

Type of import export costs

COST FACTORS OF EXPORT-IMPORT GOODS

1) At exporter’s premises

1. Materials, labor and overhead
2. Custom packaging
3. Inspection fees
4. Licensing fees
5. Royalties

2) Trade/Agent

1. Buying agent’s commissions
2. Trader’s markups

3) Consigner Bank

1. Bank charges and commissions
2. Overseas agent’s commissions
3. Freight forwarder’s charges
4. Documentation charges
5. Insurance premiums
6. Export license fees
7. Certification fees
8. Consular fees
9. Advertising

4) Transportation till port of shipment

1. Road freight (cartage, drayage) and/or rail freight
2. Routing costs (canal and inland waterway links)
3. Uninsured damages
4. Theft and pilferages
5. Handling charges
6. Demurrage

5) At port of shipment

1. Brokerage fees
2. Export levies

6) Via Air

1. Insurance premiums
2. Air freight

7) Port of shipment to the ship

1. Theft and pilferages
2. Overtime charges
3. Handling charges
4. Warehousing
5. Loading fees
6. Demurrage
7. Wharfage

8) Shipment on the way

1. Insurance premiums
2. Ocean freight
3. Lighterage

9) On the way (special costs)

1. Uninsured damages (e.g. war and acts of God)
2. Pilferages

10) Before reaching

1. Lighterage

11) Ship to port of destination

1. Theft and pilferages
2. Quarantine charges
3. Overtime charges
4. Handling charges
5. Unloading fees
6. Warehousing
7. Demurrage
8. Wharfage

12) Customs Clearance

1. Import duties and taxes
2. Bank charges and commissions
3. Import license fees
4. Brokerage fees

13) Transportation

1. Road freight (cartage, drayage) and/or rail freight
2. Routing costs (canal and inland waterway links)
3. Theft and pilferages\
4. Uninsured damages
5. Handling charges
6. Demurrage

14) At Importer’s premises

1. Warehousing
2. Interest charges
3. Advertising

FCL, LCL, CY and CFS

FCL, LCL, CY and CFS

FCL	Full Container Load full carload
LCL	Loose Container Load loose carload
CY	Container Yard
CFS	Container Freight Station

FCL versus LCL

The word carload relates to the rail car. The FCL and LCL are differentiated, in practice, on whether the ‘whole container’ or ‘not the whole container’ is intended for the consignee.

The FCL means the load reaches its allowable maximum (or full) weight or measurement. In practice, however, the FCL in the ocean freight does not always mean packing a container to its full payload or full capacity. For example, an exporter books a 20′ container that is intended for a consignee at FCL flat rate of US$1,500. If the consignment occupies 500 cu. ft. and weighs 5,000 kgs. Only, the case is still FCL and the exporter has to pay US$1,500.

If an exporter intends to pack a container to the full capacity or full payload with the consignments of two or more consignees for the same destination, the case is LCL and the carrier will charge the LCL freight rate on each consignment. In the LCL arrangement, the shipper is required to deliver the cargo to the carrier’s container freight station for containerization, thus there is no guarantee that the two or more consignments from the same exporter will share the same container. In some cases, the exporter is allowed to pack the container at their premises in the LCL arrangement, and then the carrier uses that same container to pack in more cargo from other shipper(s) to make a full container load at the container freight station.

CY versus CFS

The CY and CFS apply to the manner and the location of the cargo delivery and receipt in a container service. The CY is the delivery (or receipt) of a whole container from (or at) the shipper’s or the forwarder’s (or the consignee’s) cargo yard or premises. The CFS is the delivery (or receipt) of loose cargo from (or at) the carrier’s container freight station.

The container freight station (CFS) is operated by the carrier for the receipt, forwarding, and assembling or disassembling of cargo.

Normally, the container freight station is a customs clearance center.

The CFS service may be necessary under any of the following circumstances:

• The kind of cargo and quantity of order does not warrant the use of the whole container.
• The shipper’s or the consignee’s premises are inaccessible by container due to poor road conditions (e.g. narrow road) and location (e.g. remote area not served by container).
• The overall load of vehicle exceeds the legal limitation.
• The shipper or the consignee lacks the necessary container loading or unloading equipment.

Modes of CY and CFS Container Services

CY/CY Container Service

The CY/CY (read as ‘CY to CY’) container service—door-to-door container service or house-to-house container service—broadly means that the whole container received by the carrier is packed at the shipper’s or the forwarder’s premises, and the delivery of that same whole container to the consignee’s premises.

In a related term door-to-door service, which is often used in the cargo forwarding and may involve the LCL, refers to a type of freight service available from a forwarder whereby the cargo is picked up at the consignor’s premises and delivered to the consignee’s premises.

CY/CFS Container Service

The CY/CFS (read as ‘CY to CFS’) container service—door-to-port container service—broadly means that the whole container received by the carrier is packed at the shipper’s or the forwarder’s premises, and that same whole container is emptied at the carrier’s container freight station at the port of destination. The consignee arranges the delivery of the loose cargo from the container freight station to his/her premises.

CFS/CY Container Service

The CFS/CY (read as ‘CFS to CY’) container service—port-to-door container service— broadly means that the delivery of the loose cargo to the carrier’s container freight station at the port of origin is packed into the whole container, and the delivery of that same whole container to the consignee’s premises.

CFS/CFS Container Service

The CFS/CFS (read as ‘CFS to CFS’) container service—port-to-port container service or pier-to-pier container service—broadly means that the delivery of the loose cargo to the carrier’s container freight station at the port of origin is packed into the whole container, and that same whole container is emptied at the carrier’s container freight station at the port of destination. The consignee arranges the delivery of the loose cargo from the container freight station to his/her premises.

ADD, CVD, SGD

Anti Dumping Duty –

Penalty imposed upon suspiciously low-priced imports, to increase their price in the importing country and so protect local industry from unfair competition. Anti-dumping duties are assessed generally in an amount equal to the difference between the importing country’s FOB price of the goods and (at the time of their importation) the market value of similar goods in the exporting country or other countries.

Dumping is said to occur when the goods are exported by a country to another country at a price lower than its normal value. This is an unfair trade practice which can have a distortive effect on international trade. Anti dumping is a measure to rectify the situation arising out of the dumping of goods and its trade distortive effect. Thus, the purpose of anti dumping duty is to rectify the trade distortive effect of dumping and re-establish fair trade. The use of anti dumping measure as an instrument of fair competition is permitted by the WTO. In fact, anti dumping is an instrument for ensuring fair trade and is not a measure of protection per se for the domestic industry. It provides relief to the domestic industry against the injury caused by dumping.

Often, dumping is mistaken and simplified to mean cheap or low priced imports. However, it is a misunderstanding of the term. On the other hand, dumping, in its legal sense, means export of goods by a country to another country at a price lower than its normal value. Thus, dumping implies low priced imports only in the relative sense (relative to the normal value), and not in absolute sense.

Import of cheap products through illegal trade channels like smuggling do not fall within the purview of anti-dumping measures.

Countervailing Duty –

Additional import duty imposed to offset the effect of concessions and subsidies granted by an exporting country to its exporters. Imposition of a countervailing duty is an attempt to bring the imported price to its true market price, and thus provides a level playing field to the importing country’s producers.

Safeguard Duty –

Any article is imported into the country in such increased quantities and under such conditions so as to cause or threatening to cause serious injury to domestic industry, then it may by notification impose a safeguard duty on that article.

A safeguard is a form of temporary relief. They are used when imports of a particular product, as a result of tariff concessions or other WTO obligations undertaken by the importing country, increase unexpectedly to a point that they cause or threaten to cause serious injury to domestic producers of “like or directly competitive products”. Safeguards give domestic producers a period of grace to become more competitive vis-à-vis imports.

If this happens, the government of the importing country may suspend the concession or obligation, but will be expected to provide compensation by offering some other concession. Otherwise, the affected WTO member(s) can retaliate by withdrawing equivalent concessions. Industries or companies often request safeguard action by their governments.

Safeguards usually take the form of increased duties to higher than bound rate or standard rates or quantitative restrictions on imports.

High Sea Sale and Sales in the course of import

Sale in the course of import –

Many importers, acting as agents, import goods and the documents are transferred to ultimate buyer. Such buyer usually clears goods from Customs. This is ‘sale in the course of import” if the documents are transferred (i.e. endorsed in favor of buyer) before goods are cleared from customs.

In other words goods are sold when they are stored in customs bonded warehouse, before clearance from warehouse.  It has been held that goods continue to be in customs barrier when they are in customs bonded warehouse. Import would be completed only when goods cross customs barrier and not when they land in India or enter territorial waters.

Thus, sale before clearance from customs bonded warehouse will be ‘sale during import’ and will not be taxable.

Imports could be (a) direct imports (b) imports through agent (c) import by transfer of documents.

High Sea Sale –

High Sea sales (HSS) is a sale  carried out by the carrier document consignee to another buyer while the goods are yet on high seas or after their dispatch from the port/ airport of origin and before their arrival at the port / airport of destination.

As per trade practice, sale of goods when they are on high seas, that is, in transit, is recognized and in such transactions, the liability to comply with import regulations and to pay Customs duty shift to the buyer of the goods. Transport of goods by sea takes more time and therefore, there is time to enter into agreements for sale of goods when they are in transit.

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