Jawa Furni Lestari launched elec­tronic Chain of Cus­tody sys­tem or e-COC on July 10, 2009 in Jogja. PT Jawa Furni Lestari invited col­leagues to wit­ness the ben­e­fits of the e-COC sys­tem. The invited guests were also pro­vided sug­ges­tion for improvements.

This sys­tem con­sists of data­base frame of trees used by Jawa Furni indus­try as the main fur­ni­ture mate­ri­als. “Using this data­base, one can trace back the ori­gin of the furniture’s mate­ri­als to the tree trunk. Unique num­bered labels are attached to the trees and logged tim­ber. “Of course all are done elec­tron­i­cally and in a sim­ple way,” said Cahyo Kus­woro, the e-COC soft­ware designer.

The cer­ti­fied for­est main­tained by Wana Manung­gal Lestari Coop­er­a­tive in Gunungkidul Dis­trict was cho­sen as the pilot project. Jawa Furni pro­vides three com­puter sets to the coop­er­a­tive to store the tree data. “This sys­tem is capa­ble of bridg­ing the eco­la­bel cer­ti­fied forests and the tim­ber indus­try,” said Oki Widayanto, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Jawa Furni. The Chain of cus­tody doc­u­ment reca­pit­u­la­tion prob­lems occurred until quite recenlty– from the for­est site, sawmills and to the fur­ni­ture indus­try– has been sig­nif­i­cantly addressed.