Enterprise-capable Transport Management System
3rdwave Completely Links Global Logistics, Finance
Uniface Magazine, Issue No. 41, November 1998

UNIFACE systems house, Blinco Systems Inc., has built an enterprise-capable integrated transport management system that realized Pacific Great Lakes Logistics' vision of the "virtual transportation office."

Pacific Great Lakes Logistics (PGLL) is a provider of worldwide transportation management services. When in the mid 90's, in the words of Chairman and CEO Thomas F. Coakley, Jr., the company decided, "To get out of the labor-intensive aspects of our business, such as stevedoring, and to focus on integrated logistics," some IT-related conclusions had to be drawn.

To achieve its stated objective of becoming, "a sophisticated, technology-based contractor facilitating the movement of cargo anywhere in the world, by any mode of transportation," PGLL realized that a substantial amount of computing power would be required. Based on this premise, the company went looking for a solution.

Several unsuccessful attempts later, an easy to-use system that can change as business needs and situations change, was finally put in place, thanks to a UNIFACE-based 3rdwave Logistics’ solution from Blinco Systems Inc.

The Business Need

A typical PGLL project might involve a customer with 100,000 tons of steel to ship from Europe to three separate locations in the US, explains Coakley. "In order to do what the customer wants, we have to put together the services of a set of suppliers, by choosing from a vast number of potential carriers and modes of transportation."

Clients outsource to PGLL in order to get a more reliable, easier-to-use and less expensive service than they could achieve themselves, taking advantage of PGLL's high-volume business and logistics expertise. PGLL negotiates with multiple carriers ­ some of whom are not particularly good at planning, tracking or reporting ­ and combines their various offerings to provide a streamlined and unified service to the customer, at a single price.

Customers expect PGLL to provide comprehensive tracking information. When customers inquire about steel coils, type XYZ, bound for the number two plant in Decatur, Alabama, they need a straight answer. "Before, we were trying to achieve this through a largely manual system," says Coakley. "You'd sit down with the project folder, a cup of coffee and an Excel spreadsheet and try to come up with an answer."

PGLL realized it needed a system that would help it meet the challenges of giving the customer a near-instantaneous response to cargo-tracking queries. "We have to offer customers a very clear understanding of where their cargo is going and when it's going to arrive. We need to access status information at any point in time on a monthly, weekly, daily or hourly basis."

To provide this information reliably, PGLL needs to track its subcontractors. Better tracking is also an aid to quality control and to job pricing, as Coakley explains, "This is a messy business. It's hard to secure services, and even harder to ensure a quality service from our vendors. Every job is unique, and there are always unpredictable variables impacting the cost ­ a truck doesn't show up, or it shows up but can't carry as much as was promised, or something gets damaged in transit."

PGLL needed a system to help it predict the unpredictable. It also wanted its new system to help monitor, measure and reward the performance of its own employees, and to aid by evaluating and ensuring overall quality management.

The 3rdwave Solution

PGLL had a vision of its system for some time, but early attempts to develop it, with four different consulting firms, proved unsuccessful. On each occasion, the solutions implemented were soon rejected by their intended users because they were too difficult to use or too difficult to understand.

In 1996, Coakley decided to call in a top professional services company, Arthur Andersen and Company, to help identify the right system. The choice fell to Blinco Systems Inc., a systems house specializing in international supply chain and logistics management.

"With Blinco's experience in the transportation market, we felt confident that they could deliver a custom solution in an acceptable time frame. And they were right on target ­ I'm completely happy with the project," says Coakley.

Rather than offer packaged solutions to clients, Blinco uses a toolset called 3rdwave to build component-based solutions. Developed in UNIFACE, 3rdwave allows Blinco to assemble components into solutions that meet the specific needs of each customer.

Why UNIFACE?

David Blinick, President of Blinco Systems, explains why UNIFACE was chosen as the development environment for 3rdwave, and for the customized solution that Blinco built for PGLL.

"As a third-party systems provider, we need a flexible product that will support a variety of operating environments. Customers often have their own preference about networks, databases, and operating systems. What's more, they want solutions to work across all the systems they have in place."

The third-party provider relationship also made reliability a prime consideration. "Our customers typically don't have systems’ support in house. We have to support them ourselves, usually remotely, so we needed a robust environment.”

"UNIFACE is a sound product, and we also have faith in Compuware's technical support." Blinick adds that the company's confidence in UNIFACE has been justified. "Our work at PGLL has proved UNIFACE to be an extremely reliable product. In fact, we've experienced zero down time."

Blinco had considered several well-known GUI development products before selecting UNIFACE. "These products are fine for development, but not so good when you need to make modifications due to business (process) changes. And there are always business changes," smiles Blinick. UNIFACE also won out because it is a true model-driven development environment, and not just a GUI builder.

Compuware's attitude was another clincher. Compuware demonstrated commitment to investing in UNIFACE, and again, that's a commitment that has been fulfilled. "Compuware is very much a partner in our projects," says Blinick. "They have a good product, a solid operation and sound plans for the future."

The Development Project

With UNIFACE, a powerful business model, and full understanding of PGLL's business requirements, Blinco began development work for PGLL in 1996. Within 12 months, PGLL's complex business processes were fully automated and integrated. "The project is on time for a number of reasons, among them being a realistic time frame, a good client who's investing the right resources in the right place, and good technology," says Blinick.

"You can develop software very quickly with UNIFACE. From the time you have a final concept to turning it into usable software can be a matter of days, compared to weeks or months with other development tools."

The ability to implement change quickly is vital to PGLL's situation. As Thomas F. Coakley, Jr. explains, "We are driven by the need to stay at least two to five years ahead of the competition in order to be truly successful."

Virtual Transportation Office

The system is designed to realize PGLL's vision to provide its customers with an enterprise-capable "virtual transportation office" to handle all inbound and outbound traffic, with low cost and high efficiency. It lets PGLL tailor the services and the information flows to the needs of individual customers.

According to Coakley, "One customer might ask for a weekly status report to be sent on Friday. Another might just want an advanced shipping notice 24 or 72 hours before the goods are going to arrive. Whatever they want, we can do it."

PGLL collects all the necessary information from its subcontractors ­ who may need better communications ­ feeds it into the (3rdwave) system, and delivers it in a streamlined, comprehensible form to the customer. Customers can choose their own medium for communication with PGLL, whether it's fax, EDI or the web (a web inquiry facility is currently being added.)

For customers, outsourcing to PGLL is similar to having their own in-house transportation function, without the costs and hassles of running one. "The (3rdwave) system provides a single channel of communication for multi-modal transportation," says Coakley. "It's revolutionizing the customer service aspects of our business."

A positive return on investment is expected within two years of completion, but the benefits are already apparent. "We're looking at a significant reduction in the time it takes to quote a job," says Coakley. "We have an automated system to track the status of a job, and the projected cost versus actual cost. We can offer our customers far more flexible reporting. I expect all of this to lead to an increase in business, as well as making our existing business more profitable."

Internally, PGLL has noticed a great improvement in the availability of management information. "We can get at information that was virtually inaccessible before. For example, we can now measure the number of transactions performed by an individual, and we can easily monitor the actual revenue on a deal against our budgeted revenue."

Service levels have improved too, because the (3rdwave) system enshrines PGLL's best practices and makes them available to everyone. "People who are good at this job manage through intuition and experience," says Coakley. "What we've done is put in a system that helps those individuals spread their knowledge through the organization. With the help of the UNIFACE 3rdwave system, we can deliver consistent, high-value service to all of our clients."

PGLL's system has been built with hooks that will allow it to expand to support other ventures that PGLL envisages, including the provision of financial and insurance services.

For the present, Thomas F. Coakley, Jr. is pleased. "It took us 15 years to achieve our vision, but we're here now and it's been worth every penny. At last we, our partners and our customers can sleep soundly at night."

For related information, please go to:
3rdwave Global Logistics
3rdwave Terminal Warehouse Management
Pacific Great Lakes Case Study