Asia Computer Weekly
August 6, 2001

GridTalk quickens Seagate's information flow

Seagate Technology International tightened the integration of its supply chain management with GridTalk for a better flow of information.

By ACW Team

More companies in the industry are responding to the need to set up network communications across the supply chain to exchange information in real time for faster project execution. These companies turn to peer-to-peer (P2P) computing for a solution.

A case in point is Seagate Technology International. The disk-drive maker recently began a trial to enable its third-party warehouse, Fritz Logistics, to respond to its production demands in less time. If the trial proves to be a success, Seagate plans to roll it out to make its entire supply chain management leaner and more responsive.

Said Teh Chit Pin, senior director, E-business, Seagate Technology International: "Seagate customers are very advanced in the use of Internet technologies and related tools. They are already running on a real-time planning mode, and they are very agile, for example, Dell."

Seagate saw the need to make its supply chain more nimble and integrated, allowing the company to better react to the demands of its own customers and the flux of the marketplace. To do so, Seagate needed to enable both its network and applications to effectively talk to those of Fritz Logistics'.

"Our entire supply chain will have to be very agile and responsive, our own suppliers must receive and act on our information at the same speed as we produce," said Teh.

"It's not enough for information exchange to just take place within our enterprise, not when our business stretches from our customers all through our operations, to suppliers, and contract manufacturers."

Last year, Seagate turned to GridNode's peer-to-peer technology, GridTalk, which lets players in a supply chain exchange information on production and supply in almost real time.

Seagate had been using an application service provider solution to manage information flow among its suppliers, but found that the solution was not enough to completely integrate the information flow among all suppliers in real time. "With GridTalk, however, we find that we are evaluating a solution that is newer, neater, and more elegant," said Teh. GridNode's peer-to-peer solution for business-to-business (B2B) integration and collaboration, combined with RosettaNet support, provides a seamless supply chain integration solution.

Seagate took three months to implement the GridTalk solution between its own network and that of Fritz Logistics' as the software was still in its pilot stage.

During the pilot stage, some of the issues that had to be resolved included getting the GridTalk solution to work behind a firewall and with proxy servers.

GridTalk was enhanced to detect whether a Seagate trading partner was online or not at any given time. When the solution has matured, the implementation time frame will be much shorter.

Since then, GridTalk has been used to reduce the time in which Seagate is able to have components delivered to its Singapore factories. Compared to the previous two hours, Fritz Logistics is now able to signal a response on stock availability to Seagate's requests within 15 minutes.

GridTalk has been a win-win solution for Seagate and Fritz Logistics as it is geared towards benefits such as productivity improvement, lower start-up costs, greater supply chain efficiency and broader network of supply chain partners. Small- and medium-sized enterprises in the supply chain also stand to gain from a technology such as GridTalk, as they can reduce the amount of inventory they are required to have on a standby basis by their customers.

"Whatever is rolled out has to be quick and nimble, as it is very hard to get two different applications, two different solution systems, and two different enterprises to talk to each other. But we were able to do just that with GridTalk," said Seagate's IT director, Lim Yiang Hwee.

As GridTalk is built on open standards, such as XML and RosettaNet, companies know that they will be able to communicate with each other seamlessly.

Lim added: "In the long term, e-business will be like the Internet where everyone can talk to everyone else, and RosettaNet will play a pivotal role. We see that is the way, and that it is coming."

He also noted that Seagate will not have a problem when it upgrades its IT systems.

"We wanted something that had an open architecture, open standards, and open components, so that we didn't have to worry about being locked into a solution," he said.

With GridTalk in place, Seagate is now in a position to begin convincing its community of suppliers that P2P is the way to go.