Unknown:
0:37
Blythe, welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers and freight. I'm your host, Blythe Milligan. We are proudly presented by SPI Logistics, and we've got another interview for you from manifest, the future supply chain and logistics right here in Las Vegas. And we've got a fellow podcaster here, returning guests, third time on the show. I think maybe third time you might be the first three peat guests.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:05
Okay, I'll take that awesome Kevin Lawton with the New Warehouse Podcast. He is gracious enough to join us and tell us about all things warehouse robotics, because this is a topic that is so daunting to me. I don't know if it's daunting to you.
Kevin Lawton:
1:21
Yes, it's becoming more and more daunting, because there's just so many things going on. So tell us what is first. Let's give people like, insight into you. Like, how did you how did you start the podcast? Like, what got you into podcasting? Specifically, something, warehousing, yeah, so, so I started in the warehouse, started working in the warehouse, and didn't have any formal education around supply chain or warehousing, and I honestly thought in the back of my head like, Oh, this isn't long term, right? This isn't long term. And now, you know, 13 years later, I guess it's long term, but I wanted to learn more about the industry. And at the time,
Unknown:
2:02
there was just not much that I found, like, very engaging or interesting. This was, you know, maybe seven, eight years ago, and, yeah, I just there was not like, you know, content creators, like, like us. And so I had done some some blogging in the past, in my past, and it's kind of like, maybe I'll do a blog, but that was very time consuming, I thought. And then I came across, like podcast, the idea of podcasting, so I'm like, let me do a podcast. So it was just kind of for me to learn. And then I guess it resonated, started to get a little traction. And yeah, and now you know, we're recording this year, in February, March. Our will be six years since we released the first episode. So awesome, yeah. So now is podcasting your main focus? Yeah. So podcasting is definitely the main focus. And then I also teach as an adjunct professor in in supply chain. So, funny enough, I didn't get a supply chain education, but now I'm giving one, and then I do some consulting, advisory work too, as well. Yeah, that's awesome. And so you're here at manifest, and you have, like, you're one of the few podcasters, like, with your own booth, like we're, we're very happy manifest, you know, gave us this booth. But I want to move up to where you're what you're doing, what, and tell us what you're doing. You have a booth on the trade show floor. Yeah, we have a booth, Booth 1439 and basically we'll be set up there. I'm not sure when this is airing, but we're we are doing a live stream from the booth tomorrow morning, Tuesday. So we'll be streaming live to LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and then we'll be doing some other podcasts at the booth, and also at other people's booths as well, so trying to capture some of those solutions and the demos and things that are going on. And then I think Wednesday afternoon, we're going to have some some fun with some little social media clips, maybe some trivia, something like that, and give out some T shirts and then, and we'll be in here too for a little bit on Wednesday morning as well. So, so podcasting don't stop for you. Yes, yeah, when we come to the conference trade show, it's like back to back to back. Let's jam as much content as we can. So we'll do, probably do about like 20 interviews while we're here. Wow, that's insane. I thought I'm doing six today, and I thought that that was crazy. Yeah, close to you that the stamina is nuts. Now for the topic of this episode, because with manifest, they have such a strong focus on robotics, and this was one of the first places that I was able to see that part of the logistics process under one roof. But if I remember correctly, you said in a previous conversation that we had is something like 90% of warehouses don't have any kind of robotics. Yeah, yeah. I think, I think it's a very interesting thing, because you come to trade show conference, you look online, right? LinkedIn feed, YouTube, like there's all this video, all this conversation about robotics and automation. But the reality is that, you know, there's still in the warehouse space. I mean, the penetration for actual robotics and automation is still still fairly low in in comparison to, like, how many operations there actually are. So there's still a huge, huge opportunity in the market to get into that. But I think one of the challenges is, certainly, is like barriers to entry, right? The barriers to entry are, cost is one for sure, but I think there's also. Maybe like a little bit of a knowledge gap too, where people aren't quite certain whether, you know, they're really ready for robots, and you know, they may still be, like picking on paper and things like that. And you know, how do I go from, you know, kind of these old processes systems, into something that seems super futuristic, like a robot, right? So I think there's still a ways to go, but I think that robotics and automation companies are recognizing that, and you're seeing like some solutions now come to the market that are trying to tear down some of those barriers, make it a little more accessible, a little more approachable, too, as well. But yeah, I mean, I guess to answer your question, yeah, there definitely is still a big gap where warehouses that have not gone into automation and robotics at all. And it's almost shocking, I think, with you to your point of seeing all of these different companies, robotics companies that have all of these really cool looking solutions. And if I'm a warehouse owner like, it makes me want to go and buy a warehouse, just so I can use some of these different robots for your robot friends. Yeah, it seems like a no brainer, but I imagine it's very cost restrictive. I imagine that there's very much, like, what are some, maybe some of the other challenges of adopting robotics inside of your warehouse. Is there like, an entry level robot that you can get, yeah? I mean, I think that, you know, I think one of the challenges is certainly, like you said, there's cost restrictions for some systems, but because of that, I think people just see robot and they're like, oh, expensive, right? Like they see dollar signs, basically. But there are solutions that are not as expensive, I think, as they are perceived to be, there's different pricing models too, as well, like you can rent them through, like a RAS model, which is robots as a service, right? So there's options there. But I think some of the other challenges too are that, you know, a lot of operations are just, they just haven't optimized fully, right? And there's a lot of things to be done within the operation before you can say, you know, to get to our next level of efficiency, we need to bring in robots, right? So if your processes are not dialed in, solidified, optimized, when you bring that robot in, it's not going to fix that, right? It's just gonna had a guest on my podcast one time. It's always stuck in my head from a couple years ago, and he said that if you're automating a bad process, like you're just making that bad process happen faster, you're not making it better, right? So when you fully optimize, like you've looked at WMS, for example, you've looked at, what are you using to pick how do you make your just process flow better? Maybe it's positioning inventory in a certain way to get more efficient and be faster. When you feel like you've kind of exhausted those options, then it's really makes sense to start to look at the robotics and automation and take it to the next level. So I think there's that's part of the gap there is that people have not gone through and done that work yet to be able to get to that level. And then when they come to get robotics, I mean, sometimes people will go after it, and then they're disappointed in the results, and part of it is because they haven't done those steps ahead of time. So there's a lot of people I know that are focusing on that, from consulting perspective, services perspective, to do that, but I think that there's a lot of steps to take before you can just buy a robot and just plop it in the warehouse and be like, okay, to work. We're good. Yeah. So what are some of so say you have your processes pretty much mapped out, and then after you have those processes mapped out, what does that next step look like you? I mean, there's a labor shortage when it comes to warehouse workers, so there's a unique set of challenges there. How do you know what direction to go into next? Yeah, that's, I think that's one of the other challenges, actually, right? Is that like you walk into a show like this, or a show like, like a Promat or a modax, like, everywhere you look, there's going to be some kind of robotics or automation solution, and it's all around you, right? And, and if you're not prepared, you haven't done any real research due diligence, like, you're kind of like, where, where do I even start? Right? So I think there's a lot of education that needs to be done also in terms of, like optimizing those processes. And that education, I think can take you much further, right? Because if you look at something as simple as, like moving a pallet, for example, right? There's tons of solutions that can move a pallet, so it's which is the right one for me, right? Like, how do I figure this out? What do I go after? First, you know, it's pretty interesting. In my career, I had a role and, you know, we had very little automation. We had a little bit of conveyor. That was it. And my boss told me. We need to automate unloading containers, right? And kind of like, and as this was maybe three years ago, four years ago, and the idea of automation and unloading containers like, very new at that time. And, you know, I tried to explain to him that we're not there, like, we have a lot of other things that we need to do, or we need to automate other solutions, and the technology is just not quite there yet. But I think you know, and you know to the earlier point from, like, a marketing perspective, right? He He saw a video of something from from Boston Dynamics, when they were first messing around with that, and that's when he was like, oh, we need to do this, right? And I'm kind of like, it's, it's not really realistic, yeah, it's not really realistic for us. Like, it's kind of out of reach at this time. So I think there is, like, a little maybe miss misconception there, and and it is, you know, make your head spin, like, how many solutions? And when you go and you walk in and you see all these things moving around, you're like, oh, that could be great. That could be great. Wait, what's the difference between this one and this one? And what's the right one for me? So there really needs to be a lot of like, due diligence, research on that end to come to the right decision. What does that look like? A lot it looks like listening to the new warehouse podcast, so it looks like No but, I mean, you know, resources like that. I mean, podcasts are a great way to learn about some of these things, looking on YouTube, connecting with people that have done it before, I think is another great way to do that. I mean, like, here, you know, I manifest if you come in and you're, you know, maybe a mid market three PL, try to connect with somebody from, like, a larger three PL that maybe has done some of those things that you want to do, and learn from them to find out, like, you know, how did you go about this? Like before? And I'm sure they'll tell you, like, you know, we did this. Don't do this right? Like, we took the wrong step here. Like, go about it this way. And there's a ton of consultants out there too that focus on this, so working with them is a good way to go about it. And I see a lot of people in the industry now too that have, that have been on both sides, right? You have people that were in the warehouse were practitioners. They did implementations of robotics or other systems themselves, and now they go and work for the end user or solution provider. So when you're engaging with some of these companies and you're starting to do some discovery, I think it's very important to understand, are the people you're interacting with, do they have that experience, right? Like, do they actually feel what you've been going through, or have they gone through that in the past? Have they really done a project like this before? And you know not to say that people that haven't are not great, but you know that that knowledge, if you're just starting from kind of the beginning, is really needed to be able to accomplish that. Yeah, yeah. It sounds like it's one of those things that it just can become overwhelming so quickly, and if you don't have somebody that has been through that experience before, or if you do have somebody that has been through that experience, and it's an incredibly valuable resource, so with maybe some of the things that you're going to see this upcoming week at manifest or maybe some things that you've seen you know In the past, what are maybe some of the most interesting high level robotics that you've seen that are also practical? Yeah, yeah, that's good question. I think here just walking through the floor this morning and yesterday morning, a little bit, seeing who's here, there's actually a couple of different solutions that are focused on inventory management, inventory control from a robotics perspective, right? So you have, here you have Verity gather, AI Corvis robotics, doing drones, right? Drone counting Nokia as well. Here they do drones as well for inventory counting Nokia, like the phone manufacturer, yeah, Nokia aims, I think they're calling it now, yeah, so they have a space here, and they're using drones for that, and then dexterity too as well, which has, like, maybe arguably the tallest robot out There, the big LEGO model. Yeah, I love it. All my Lego models. My son steals them. So I can't, like, keep them on my bookshelf, but I love them. So, so that's one I think that is somewhat low hanging fruit in a sense, because they're just capturing data, information, right? So there's not, not a huge change that needs to happen there. In some cases, maybe you need to switch around your labeling things like that. And that's one thing, I think, from an inventory perspective, that can make a huge impact on the operation overall. The other one, I think that is, you know, kind of low hanging. Root, in a sense, is it's just simply like, is there a movement that you do every day on a consistent basis? Right? Do you pick up pallets in this area and move them to this area every single day, right? In a frequent basis? That's an easy thing where, oh, this is happening. It's repeatable, right? We go from this location to this location, so we can automate that, right? So that predictability is a good place to go after that. But I think additionally, actually a good solution for that that's here as well, is with Big Joe. They have an automated pallet jack. Used it before. It's really easy to use and engages ballot. You kind of teach it where it needs to go, and then you can reprogram it if you need to reprogram it. But that movement from A to B is an easy way to start, for sure, yeah, and that's when it to your earlier point, when you were talking about documenting your processes. That would be an example of, you know, what a typical, you know, worker, a is doing these things throughout the day. Is that a safe assumption that that's one of the processes that you would map out and then try to figure out how robotics will fit into that particular process? Yeah, exactly. So you want to map out your processes, right? And understand, okay, where do we have the same thing happening over and over, right? So, you know, the pallet movement is an example, right? Maybe you have, like, you know, a packing area. You're loading up pallets with packages that are going to go out, and then every day, when that pallet is full, that pallet is going to go to the loading dock, right? So you can easily, you know, use an automated pallet jack or something to come pick up that pallet when it's ready, take it over to the loading dock, right? Because if you have a human doing that, right, they're essentially just doing travel time, right? If you look at, you know, lean and 5s principles like, that's, it's waste, right? So, so where is that waste happening from a human perspective, and then, how do we address that? How do we automate? How do we come up with solutions to do that movement that's, you know, consistent on a regular basis, if you're doing something that's like, one off movements or things like that, it's going to be really hard to find the ROI of the system. Last year, when I was at this conference, there were these skates that you put on the bar. Remember shift robotics, I think so. Is that something that is realistic for a warehouse to implement? Because it seems like that would be a really easy entry level, even though I was not that graceful on them. No, no. I thought maybe like twirls and stuff, yeah? No, the knees, yeah, I feel you there. Definitely. I think that, uh, I haven't heard anything from them lately. I was wondering if they were a little bit of a smaller booth. So I didn't want, I didn't know if maybe they, you know, yeah, I think they had an interesting approach, right? Because there's, I mean, there's a couple different ways to look at automation. It's like, how do we do something that a human doesn't necessarily want to do, or is just like repetitive or, how do we use something like that solution to to make that human more productive, but also more comfortable, right? So, and I was addressing like, getting them to move faster through through the warehouse, I think that is an interesting concept, but I do think there was, there would be a challenge getting employees like to adapt to them right and use them on a regular basis. So I think that's, I think that's also one of the points on automation robotics, is that there is a huge, huge change management aspect, right? Because there's a, there's a bit of, like, a psychological shift in the mind, right? I mean, I remember we were testing in an operation. I worked there. We we brought in a robot to move these carts around in our manufacturing area, and it was just, just a test. Didn't really think much of it. We brought the demo unit, and within an hour of that demo unit, somebody, somebody somebody rolled up to me on the forklift, and they're like, Oh, they're bringing that in to take our jobs, right? And I'm like, no, no. Like, we're just trying something, you know, it's not to take jobs like, you know, we're trying to move people like, you know, we don't need somebody to just push carts around all day, right? We're trying to make it easier and, and that was something like, I was like, wow, we should have, like, talked about this, that this is going to be an operation. It's going to be around, how do we address this with the employees? And I think that, you know, you need to be clear in the the why, right? Because I think when you start to bring that in the mind, does go to like, oh, this thing is going to take my job, right? But in reality, in most cases, I think, you know, and I've talked to companies that have brought robots in and stuff and and, you know, they're very proud of the fact that, you know, they they haven't let anybody go. They've been able to move them into more meaningful positions, do higher value type of work saves their fat too, yeah, and it makes them. Comfortable, right? Like a lot of employees, like, when they start working with them, they're like, they have great feedback, because they're like, Oh, I'm not walking as much, like I'm not pushing around a heavy cart, like I'm not lifting as much. So there's a lot of benefits there, but you need to navigate that very, very like, cautiously, right? And be, be a little gentle, I guess, you know, and not just like, you know, one day, you know, all these robots are just showing up, and employees are like, what's going on? Like, you know, it's a robot revolution. They're taking over all these things. And, you know, making sure you have that change management process really planned out is is so vital to the success of the solutions as well. I love that you brought that up because I remember talking with six river systems, and I was on one of their webinars, and they mentioned how whenever they onboard a new customer, they make sure that that's part, that that's part of the process is, I guess addressing the human psychological component of this robot is going to take My job, and how do I work with it, instead of seeing it as an adversary? Now I got time for you know, a couple more questions here. I do want to know what is the most incredible warehouse robotic item that you've ever seen, that you're like, wow, like the Amazons of the world or the Walmarts of the world, that they have that level of robotics interesting. So, an operation itself, or like a solution itself. What's the difference? Well, the operation, you know, being like a warehouse that has robots in it and stuff, maybe different solutions, or just a solution that I really like in particular, well, it may be the solution you really like, yeah. So I got a lot of friends. I don't want to upset anybody my favorite child, but I would say lately, one that really caught my eye recently is a company called hummingbird systems. So they're utilizing drones, but what we've seen in the warehouse is that drones have been primarily focused on, like, inventory counting, data collection, right? So using computer vision, they have cameras on them, right? Yeah, exactly. But hummingbird systems is using drones for picking actually, really interesting. I think, I think, you know, they have potential, definitely, very early on. I think the market is like, a little maybe, kind of like, it's very different, like, from anything you've seen, right? So, it's a drone. This drone is tethered so, so there's a wire, basically, that's going along the top of the picking shelves, and it's connected to the drone, so it's consistent power, right, which you know, with some of the autonomous drones, the battery life doesn't last that long, so you have to swap batteries, or it has to land the charge. So this has consistent power for picking and then it has a little arm that extends out. And when your products come in, you put, like, a special label on them, and it's a super strong kind of magnet. I forget the scientific term they use, but and it latches on and it and it pulls the arm back, and then either drops it in a box or something underneath, or there's another robot underneath that will drop it into which will then take it to the shipping area, wherever it needs to go. And I think that that is a really interesting approach. And I think that, I think that people are gonna be, like, skeptical about it, right? Because they seem like maybe it's a little slow, or how is that really gonna work? Like in scale, but that is, like, a very unique approach that has caught my attention, I think. And I think the founders, they have a good track record history, so they're co founders of locust robotics and quiet logistics so, so they kind of know what they're doing. Yeah, right. So that's the other reason I'm kind of, yeah, that's not a bad start to go. Not a bad, yeah. So, yeah. So that's one for sure. And then actually, I was gonna answer the question. I caught my eye up here on the Big Board, robust, AI, I think is very cool too, which I would say, hummingbird is like, like, very experimental. I would say, right? Well, robust is definitely something that's like, I think, really accessible for people right now, they have something called Carter, which I think is, so it's a cart, right, which is the perfect name for cart, right? Carter. So it is autonomous and also manually movable, right? So, so it is basically on a robot. It's a pick cart, put items to it, or take items off of it. You can send it autonomously to go where it needs to go, or, very simply, it has a handle, and I haven't played with it in person yet. I'm very excited to play with it here, because I know it's here. You just. Engage with the handle, and it automatically switches to manual mode, and you just can move it real quick or move forward, whatever you want to do. And I think that's a real interesting solution for people that are maybe just looking to get started in automation and kind of easy, easy, accessible, gives them more comfortability working around them. And, you know, real flexible solution, yeah. Well, that's, I mean, this is one heck of an episode, because we covered a lot of ground in a very short amount of time, but I feel like we accomplished then you that's why you're a podcaster, because you brought it back to the entry level of how someone can get started, yeah? So we got to cover the whole audience, right? You have to, you have to go over the whole ecosystem. So Kevin, this was fantastic. Where can folks follow you? If they're not already following you, you should be following him. Sure the show all that good stuff. Yeah. So new warehouse, we're on any podcast platform where you find us. We're doing more on YouTube too. So you can follow us on YouTube as well, or just head to the new warehouse. New warehouse.com Here's our website. Kevin, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Great. Pete. I hope you enjoyed this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. Subscribe to the show. 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