Little Cost, Big Benefit

Duong Pham – 1301549

SCLT 3384 – 18106

Sugar Land Campus

Professor: Thomas Hollis

Assignment 1

Little Cost, Big Benefit

        The article “Little Cost, Big Benefit” is written by Toby Gooley, who is Senior Editor of DC VELOCITY, talks about the needed software of Grayling Industries in moving inventories and supplies across the US-Mexico border. Toby has more than 20 years experience at Logistics Management and work as an Export Traffic Manager for 10 years; so I believe all the facts and problems, which she brings up about Grayling, are the similar problems of most trading companies have to face.

        Grayling Industries is the mid-sized company serves protective liners for IBCs, bulk bags, chemicals for asbestos and many more. Its headquartered in Alpharetta, but most of its products are assembled in Juarez, Mexico. However, materials and supplies need to be shipped from different locations: Asian, Europe, US, and Mexico. After the products have finished, 80 percent will be shipped back to the US and sold to customers. Approximately, 600 full trailer loads of finished goods and untold number trailer loads of raw materials across Rio Grande every year. The company has to face with losing or missing the shipments. As the result, some urgent materials can’t come on time, or being stored somewhere in the broker’s warehouses due to the lack of tracking information of shipments. In bad situation, it has to stop because of running out inventory. “Making matters worse, purchase order and delivery information was slow to arrive, and more time was lost in rekeying and reconciling that information before Grayling's accounting system could pay suppliers.”

Most of the information based on the interview with Carlos Rubio, Grayling’s director of finance and operations. He shared some really true stories and problems that help people know more about the important roles of SmartTurn software to Grayling’s success. The article starts with multiple issues, such as: all different kinds of supplier, information is not update, unorganized shipments, over cost expenses, and out of control time consuming. Rubio has realized that he needs to make a change to manage shipments crossing border and optimize the time consuming. There is 2 big steps that help Grayling reach its achievement: implement software and handle inbound and outbound shipments.

Grayling needs software, which can able to track inbound and outbound inventory, inform supplier’s requirement, and provide Grayling and partners real-time updates. Moreover, the program would have to be simple, affordable cost, and easy to use. The company considers about SmartTurn, which cost $500/month with unlimited on numbers of user, no fee charge for upgrading and maintenance, security perfectly, meets all software’s requirements of Grayling.  The program works fantastic for the first couple weeks. It helps control, modify, and update all inventories for both Grayling and its partners. Reducing the cost and time for managing inventory and shipment. In addition, SmartTurn take a big role in handling Graying’s shipments. It will notice the users for what urgent in production line, so that the suppliers can ship faster or Grayling can use materials as soon as they has arrived. As the result, Grayling’s production improves in a short time follow by the increasing of benefit.