D.W. Morgan
Solving Critical Supply Chain Challenges with Justin- Time Components

John Hoyt, Managing Director, D.W. Morgan Company’s Asia subsidiary, D.W. Morgan (HK) Ltd., believes that global logistics is as old as the global trade itself, and it has many loopholes that are yet to be fixed. “One of the biggest challenges in the logistics industry is the integration of information and technologies between customers and logistics providers—and the ability to collaborate in that environment,” explains Hoyt.

Morgan fills those loopholes with the unique combination of a global field staff equipped with proprietary mobile applications, web services and other interoperability strategies to share data with partners and a c ustom-built e nterprise s ystem. I f that sounds complicated, Morgan’s customers never know it; for them, the result is supply chain information that is simpler and easier to act upon.

Headquartered in Pleasanton, CA, Morgan is a transportation and logistics provider that has long sought to leverage technology in coordinating complex supply chains. In fact, the company was chosen as of Apple, Inc.’s original case studies in 2008 to demonstrate the potential of iOS in the enterprise. “ Our web services help us communicate with our clients effectively,” explains Binh Ly, Director of Information Technologies. “And, our worldwide mobile platform also gives us a way to share quality and operations information internally, too.”

In a global, outsourced manufacturing environment, Morgan’s clients rely on tight coordination of many third parties in their supply chain. From contract manufacturers to component suppliers, transportation and warehousing companies and distributors, there’s a broad range of constituents that need fast, accurate information. That’s where traditional Enterprise Resource Management (ERM) software approaches often come up short.

For example, in a recent assignment, a large high-tech manufacturer approached Morgan seeking to reduce costs of U.S. distribution of goods from an Asian factory. The existing system relied on brute force to make up for a lack of good data: each individual order was shipped individually by the client’s contract manufacturing partner.

While that worked, it was expensive to send every order as its own shipment.

Morgan redesigned the supply chain in collaboration with the client and the overseas manufacturer. Using its own personnel to capture data as goods were completed in Asia and then integrating that with daily order fulfillment information, Morgan was able to consolidate the goods into a single U.S.-bound shipment. Then, Morgan sorted that into individual packages for final delivery after arrival. The result is a savings of 15-20 percent for the customer.

“Our aim was to leverage technology within that solution to eliminate a lot of manual processes, both in shipment, preparation and traditional communication methods including emails. This was done in order to create data to replace manual processes during export and import,” says Hoyt.

Key to the success of Morgan’s philosophy is the rapiddeployment capability that comes with custom tools, web services and a workforce with powerful mobile apps. “From a technology perspective, our tools allow us to act quickly,” says Ly.

Ly cites another example in which Morgan created a custom scanning application that can make sense of all the different, company-specific barcodes that different companies slap on a box as it moves through the supply chain. Morgan’s solution can efficiently scan cartons to create a single, coordinated picture of all those little bits of barcode information. “We developed and deployed that in a matter of weeks,” Ly says, “and the customer was blown away at our ability to show them a view of their goods that their own systems were blind to.”

There’s an old saying that you can’t control what you don’t understand. In today’s multi-party, multi-time zone supply chain, agile use of technology is key to gaining control. “It’s getting harder in this complex environment to make supply actually meet demand,” says Hoyt. “The companies that can use supply chain savvy and technological capabilities to eliminate that complexity will save their clients millions of dollars. That’s our mission: To eliminate waste and create the efficiencies so that goods flow faster, cheaper and better.”