CASE STUDY
RESILIENCE360 POWERS GOOGLE DATA
CENTER LOGISTICS
The logistics division of Alphabet Group,
Google’s parent company, is using
advanced incident management tools
and real time shipment risk monitoring,
powered by DHL Resilience360, to
deliver its technical infrastructure and
enable data center growth.
For millions of people around the globe, Google has
become part of their everyday life. Many have grown up
in a world where search, navigation, translation, video
and a host of other services can be accessed with the click
of a mouse or the tap of a touch screen. It is likely that
few have ever thought about the infrastructure required
behind the scenes that fuels that effortless experience.
Yet, providing sophisticated information services at scale
requires a formidable amount of hardware. Google
operates a network of hundreds of facilities -from giant,
hyperscale data centers to smaller end-point installations
at strategic locations around the world. And the relentless
pace of demand growth, innovation and technological
changes mean that the company is continuously
expanding that infrastructure.
CUSTOMER OBJECTIVES
Building or upgrading a data center facility is a complex
process, undertaken by specialist engineering teams
working under tight schedules. Google is known for
designing and assembling much of the equipment used in
© by google.com
its data centers in-house. This requires a complex physical
supply chain, handling everything from complete servers
to components, racks and networking equipment. The
company manages hundreds of thousands of shipments
annually between thousands of origin destination pairs.
Google ships high-value and proprietary cargo in its supply
chain that can be highly time-critical. The loss or delay of a
single item has the potential to throw a build project off
schedule as well as risk exposing sensitive IP (Intellectual
Property). Hence, the business need for a comprehensive
solution to identify supply chain risks before they impact
Google’s in-transit supply chain. “We had a greater need
for information on the status of the supply chain than
many of our carriers were able to provide,” says Ilse
Schultz, Global Transportation Manager at Google. “And
we wanted the ability to act faster and be more proactive
when exceptions occurred or even before exceptions
surfaced.”
DHL SOLUTION
In pursuit of the goals around real time visibility and
predictive exception processing, Google’s logistics division
has been implementing a portfolio of technical and
infrastructure solutions towards making its supply chain
world class. One such initiative entails a network of
command and control centers around the world with
their hub in the United States.
The digital backbone of this visibility and control
infrastructure is Resilience360, the advanced supply chain
risk management platform from DHL. Working closely
with the Resilience360 team, Google’s logistics division has
built a complete model of its transportation network in
the system, and integrated network data from several
existing legacy systems to provide risk assessment and
analytics of all shipments across its network.
Resilience360 overlays Google’s transportation network
and in-transit inventory over its platform, which is linked
to data feeds from millions of external sources, collecting
near real time information on situations and incidents that
have the potential to affect transport operations. Those
events include severe weather, road congestion or local
industrial action and are filtered and prioritized using
artificial intelligence technologies. This ensures that
transportation the command center in Google is notified
promptly of the most relevant and actionable events.
The platform also taps into extensive internet-of-things
(IoT) technologies to provide precise information on the
location of transportation assets – ships, trucks and
aircraft – and even specific items. Working with specialist
telematics providers, Google logistics and Resilience360
have established links to the IoT assets that accompany
these high-value critical shipments.
CUSTOMER BENEFITS
The introduction of Resilience360 in its command centers
has allowed Google logistics to become much more
proactive in its management of supply chain in-transit
issues. “The system allows us to take better ownership of
exceptions,” says Vivek Syania, Head of Americas
Transportation Ops in Google. “Instead of responding
after a problem has occurred, we can now make decisions
about shipments before they enter the pipeline or while
they are in transit.”
Since the platform went live with their command centers
in the final quarter of 2017, the new platform has already
demonstrated its value on numerous occasions. “One of
our major hubs located in the southeast US, had a two-
month period at the end of the year, impacted by three
major disruptive events: a fire that shut down operations
for two days, a major electrical failure and a storm,” says
Syania. “Each one of those incidents affected hundreds of
our shipments, but we were able to take appropriate
action in every case, contacting our internal customers and
our carriers to make alternative arrangements that
minimize the impact on our operations.”
“Over the whole quarter”, says Schultz, “our on time
delivery performance remained at world class levels
despite these events. More importantly, we achieved an
extremely high level of stability making the last quarter of
2017 our most successful ever.” she says. “That’s
significant, since the winter months can be the most
challenging time of year due to bad weather and seasonal
capacity constraints.”
Google and Resilience360 are now working together on
the next phase of the platform implementation, which will
include the introduction of a mobile application, allowing
logistics personnel and internal stakeholders to access real
time alerts and situation updates while on the move
anywhere in the world.
CUSTOMER OBJECTIVES
nn Enhanced visibility of time- and business-critical
shipments of components and equipment used in
major data-center projects
nn Early warning of potential supply chain delays or
transportation issues, to allow proactive management
of supply chain exceptions
nn Greater operational efficiency to help logistics staff
manage continued and rapid growth in demand
DHL SOLUTION
nn Multiple internal and external data sources
integrated into the Resilience360 Supply Chain Risk
Management platform to provide full visibility of the
status of shipments
nn IoT integration using GPS data from third party
smart tags to provide real-time location information
nn Real-time incident monitoring using Resilience360’s
machine learning technologies to filter millions of
data points and alert the Google logistics team
about events that have the potential to disrupt
transportation
CUSTOMER BENEFITS
nn Faster, more timely and more accurate information
flow for logistics personnel, carriers and internal
customers
nn On time delivery increase in the first quarter of
operation. Improved supply chain stability, despite
seasonal and weather-related challenges
nn Three major incidents over two months at a critical
logistics hub managed without disruption to wider
operations
CUSTOMER’S VIEW
“By integrating multiple third party data sources into a single
platform, Resilience360 increases our operational efficiency and our
ability to be proactive when exceptions happen. That’s helping our
people manage the continual growth of the network while
minimizing the additional costs caused by supply chain disruption.”
Ilse Schultz
Global Transportation Manager, Google