GLOBAL LOGISTICS:China-based Liam Casey says Ireland's position between American and Asian time zones makes it an ideal spot for knowledge management Ireland is slap bang in the middle . . . Using time zones is a huge opportunity for Ireland, reports CLIFFORD COONANfrom Shenzen

LIAM CASEY is a difficult man to keep up with. He rushes through downtown Shenzhen, barely pausing to look at the whizzing traffic in this southern Chinese city, which appears to be in as much of a hurry as Casey is.

In just 30 years, Shenzhen has evolved from a fishing village to a city of 10 million. Southern China is the engine that has driven the country's remarkable growth of recent years, and while the economic miracle of the early 2000s is probably over, it is still hard to detect any slowdown in the pace in Shenzhen, which lies just across the border from Hong Kong.

Shenzhen and the Pearl River Delta were the initial beneficiaries of the reform process, embodying former supreme leader Deng Xiaoping's dictum: "To get rich is glorious." It was in the south that the country's first shares since the 1949 revolution were issued.

Guangdong accounts for 12 per cent of China's GDP, and has a population of 100 million.

The province, and the city's rise, is mirrored by the rise in the last 12 years of Casey's company, PCH, which manages global supply chains, mostly for consumer electronics companies. Casey is proud to say he arrived in Shenzhen with just his ticket, not a business plan.

The former Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year is aware of the economic slowdown - in China, it's a slowdown to 5 or 6 per cent growth, not a contraction - but it doesn't make much difference to his business. Like many companies in southern China, he is innovating his way through the recession.

"We have 950 companies on our books that we have dealt with or visited, and none of the 100 with whom we deal with regularly have closed. Lots of companies have closed around here, but the recession has gotten rid of a lot of the bad ones," says Casey.

The government believes 20 million migrant workers have lost their jobs because of the slowing economy, many of them in cities like Shenzhen and Dongguan, as the export market suffers from the global recession. There have been riots at factories over unpaid wages and the government is keen to keep a lid on any dissent that might threaten stability.

Casey says this makes it more important than ever to focus on innovation in supply-chain management, and this belief has recently made him the first foreign businessman to grace the front page of the local government-owned newspaper, the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone Daily, and has made PCH the subject of a case study by Stanford University.

PCH employs 700 people in several countries, including Ireland, where the company has its headquarters, and the US. Around 120 work in the office in downtown Shenzhen and another 450 in the packing facility in a special economic zone.

Casey is legally required not to reveal the identity of his customers, but suffice it to say some of the world's biggest brands are represented at the packing facility, which we visit at 9.30pm when the late shift is coming on.

All employees, most of them young women, are frisked coming on and off shift - these are high-value goods they're working with. Soon the plant is humming with activity.

These are the workers behind Casey's idea of doing things in a "disruptive" way.

"If you put a disruptive technology together with our disruptive supply chain, you get disruptive commerce. The reason it's disruptive is that you can take a product from a production line in China to a consumer anywhere in the world within three or four days," he says.

An order drops into the system from the US for a widget, a power cable or a set of headphones, and 30 minutes later that product can be in a box and en route via FedEx, UPS or DHL to anywhere around the world.

"We take a company's concepts and ideas and turn them into real products and ship them wherever they want in the world in the fastest way possible," says Casey.

"A key to what we do is high-precision logistics. It means that companies don't have the products sitting in a warehouse in the United States. There is so much opportunity now if you're nimble. Factories say their order books are down, but we can take advantage of that by bringing the companies business, and they appreciate that," says Casey.

Despite China's image as a solely manufacturing base, Casey is a big believer in China as a creative place, citing the Olympics opening ceremony as an example of the creativity that exists in China, and which he is trying to harness. He says it's working and business is up.

PCH started with component sourcing, but Casey spotted early on that China was changing, factories were improving, and it was time to go up the value chain.

PCH also designs packaging in some instances, although many of its clients have very tight specifications for their packaging.

Currently he is working on his "26/7" model, which means he offers clients around the world service 26 hours a day, seven days a week. "In this global economy, we see a time zone advantage in [AN EXAMPLE OF] a guy who turns on his computer in the US at 8am, has a question, and calls Ireland where it's 4pm, and is dealing with someone whose first language is English and who is awake and alert. It's now midnight in China so you will not get the same response.

"The same thing works for Asia; Ireland is slap bang in the middle. And this is what we're good at in Ireland, knowledge management," says Casey, sipping a coffee in a Starbucks where we have taken air-conditioned refuge from the muggy Shenzhen air.

The company has high-skilled knowledge managers and customer service people dotted all over Ireland. "Using time zones is a huge opportunity for Ireland," he says.

The journey across Guangdong province from Shenzhen to Dongguan is a trip through a giant industrial estate.

Again, it's hard to find any anecdotal evidence of a downturn, but the chances of seeing thousands of angry workers on the streets are slim at best - this is China after all.

Manufacturing has contracted for a fifth straight month, with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression cutting exports, but there are early tentative signs that things might be turning a corner - the purchasing managers' index seems to be rising from record lows and the government's massive fiscal stimulus plan is beginning to bear fruit.

In a luxury apartment complex, David Hsieh is hoping to change the way people think about "made in China" - both consumers and manufacturers.

The London-based shoe designer, who studied part of his degree at the University of Ulster in Belfast, is trying to bring a bit of flair to shoe manufacturing in the region.

China exports 10 billion pairs of shoes every year, and a quarter of them come from Dongguan.

Hsieh says the economic downturn means it's time for Chinese shoe companies to start being innovative in design, and move upmarket. He worked with shoe designer Jimmy Choo, before he was famous, in a basement in Hackney in London, and has also spent formative years with Adidas, Clarks and Benetton.

"Most companies here just get the pattern-cutter to come up with the design, but for me that's a mistake. The design philosophy is not mature in China, and many brands are happy to copy foreign shoes, or modify them slightly, then put them out at a cheap price," says the Taiwanese designer in his studio near Dongguan's famous "bar street".

He has been dealing with around 20 companies, trying to convince them of the need to compete on design, not just price, and so far four companies have taken his ideas on board.

"Most companies think that the way forward is through innovation, but they are a bit afraid to change. There is still a product-driven mentality, and I have to tell them they can get a better margin with original products," says Hsieh.

"Increasingly they understand that the factories that will survive this difficult time will be the ones who have a successful brand."

He is teaching design at the university in the provincial capital, Guangzhou, trying to inculcate a sense of its importance.

"I hope that one day we have China brands, not just copycat brands. In apparel you see this happening, but it's early days for footwear. Shoes are all made in China but there are no good China brands - it's a pity," he says. "But slowly, they are seeing the added value that creativity brings."