EP 157: DCL Logistics

In this episode, I was joined by the President of DCL Logistics, Dave Tu. DCL Logistics is a 3PL that has a 40-year history of evolving and adapting to keep up with the ever-changing distribution environment. Dave and I discuss the history of DCL, what they do, their proprietary software, and how they utilize Universal Robots.

Kevin Lawton

Key Takeaways

• The story and history behind DCL Logistics are really inspiring and one that helps you learn the importance of being able to adapt your business to a changing landscape. Originally started as a software distribution company for Silicon Valley, Dave’s father was quite the visionary as he was able to evolve in the business as software became less of a physical product to distribute. He was able to see that e-commerce and models like Amazon would be very popular and create high demand. Through this foresight, DCL Logistics has been able to continuously evolve over the years and provide great 3PL services to many different businesses.
• One really interesting thing that stuck out to me from my discussion with Dave was our conversation around their proprietary software, eFactory. At the beginning of our conversation, I asked them why they saw the need to create their own software and Dave replied that it was for the internal customer who is their employees. This is a really amazing way to look at creating a solution like this. He discusses how the user interface was just not very friendly and creating a better system allowed the employees to be much more productive because it was easier to find information and the format was easier to digest. Not surprisingly, this resulted in better customer service experiences as well because the information is so much easier to obtain and access.
• Through my conversation, I learned that Dave used to spend his summers working in the warehouse putting labels on discs in the early days of DCL. The interesting contrast is that they have now started to utilize Universal Robots in their operation now which takes away from some of these monotonous tasks. We have had Universal Robots on the show before so it was very interesting to hear how a distribution application is working. They are utilizing the robots for small piece picking and finding great success with them as they look to the future for utilizing them in different tasks as well.

Listen to the episode below and let us know if we should get Dave’s father on the show.