Adaptive Warehouse Automation Is Your Edge in an Unpredictable Environment

Welcome to the latest edition of Robot versus Wild. I am Josh Komenko. I am joined by yet our trustee pal, David Rabinovic. Hello, David. Hey. How are you doing, Josh? We're good. We're good. Thanks for joining, our webinar today. We have a lot to cover. I guess before we get started, I still still see peep see people rolling in. We had over a hundred and fifty people register, which is great. As usual, we record all these so you can access them via our website or after, after the call. And, and this is part of a new series for us, robot versus wild. And the intent of the series is to really talk through, about how to scale your automation program beyond initial deployment. Right? Now it's fitting. We have David Rabinovic joining us. He's our VP of deployment, for the whole company. So he really is the tip of the year around getting our technology out there, initially, but also then helping our customers scale. And and David came up with this idea of a warehouse as a living organism. That's what we're gonna be covering today. Okay? So let's get going. So just my typical setup here just to give you an indication as to what we're doing here. We know that there's a lot of technology out there to deliver automation, in your, in your warehouse distribution center, or manufacturing facility. And we believe that all of it is wonderful and and really can sort of, deliver productivity, throughput gains. But we believe that some of it is a little bit more, future oriented than others, notwithstanding a lot of the froth in the market. We fundamentally believe as a company that horizontal, transport, which is really what we focus on today, is is technology that can be deployed and is mature enough to be scaled today. Notwithstanding, maybe what you see or hear in the market, there are other technologies that are deployable and deployed today, but we still think they're not ready for scaling, prime time. And that's really what the focus is of, of this webinar series is scaling your automation program. So just a little bit of background from our friends, at Gartner. The current state of automation adoption is really advancing. Right? You've got three percent fully deployed, thirty percent in their first deployment, and thirty one percent beginning implementation. So, you know, you're talking about the overwhelming majority of the market is fully engaged at, at deploying automation, and then they're heading into that heading into that next step of scale. So if you look at that green part, right, the thirteen plus the thirty plus the thirty one, so that's, sixty one plus thirteen. So that's, seventy four. Right, David? I think that's good math. Seventy four, give or take. So they've deployed. Right? And so they've used teams like David, what we have here at Vecna, maybe maybe another company, a deployment team. And and they've rather they've done an initial deployment. So so now what? How do you contemplate, scaling your automation program? That's, that's the focus here. And then just to cover some of the common profiles to automation, that we see, and this is an amalgam of different, sources. This is not just, from Vecna. It comes from different sources. You know? And and so common pitfalls to scaling automation is poor requirements definition, maybe on submitting the need for flexibility in your solution. I think David will cover that today a little bit. Overlooking support factors, it's not just just drop the robots in and they work. I wish it was that easy, but I think support is a key aspect to any program, and, having a vendor that can provide that support maybe in twenty four seven, three sixty five, is impactful. Underestimating the impact, of the, of the deployment on aging scopes or cultural factors within your environment. Goal alignment. I think, our friend, Mick Clark, discussed that last month's last episode talking about goal alignment within an organization. And then maybe even failure to forecast changing warehouse landscapes over time. The warehouse today, different than what it was two years ago. Right? In terms of the work you're doing, how many employees you have, maybe the needs of the businesses have changed. So those are sort of some of the common pitfalls that we see. So for today, when we're gonna hand it off to David here, we wanna focus a little bit more on this idea of your warehouse as a living organism or or an ecosystem, perhaps a better term here. And we have this this this graphic, up here to to sort of maybe drive the point home. So, David, let's start with you. Hand it off to you here. Where do we get this idea of a warehouse as a as a living organism or ecosystem? Where did this come about? Yeah. Sure. Well, first off, I'm Dave Rabinovich. As Josh said, I'm VP of deployment at Vecna Robotics. I've been in this industry for, twenty five years. So I started, in the AGV industry. I was, doing that for probably about, twenty three, twenty four years and, came to VECMA about a year ago. So much more AMR oriented. So this leads into, like, our our foray into distribution centers. The beginning of my career with AGVs was heavy, heavy on manufacturing, newsprint, automotive, you name it. And then probably in the last, like, five to ten years, we really started seeing, the industry of automation, like, getting into warehouses. Right? I think, as the supply chain in the US started changing, there there's been more automation inside the warehouse. And I I noticed how different, warehouses really are to manufacturing sites. Right? So if you can go to the next slide, I think it's a a great way to talk about it. Hope you're not hungry because this might make you hungrier. But, manufacturing, right, like, it is very predictable. You know? It's a clockwork. Right? You know exactly what you're getting. You have, you know, a set number of machines. They're producing shift after shift, maybe some are on and some are off, like, on on various shifts, but but it's very predictable. You can simulate it. Right? Extremely, you know, model or something that you can model. When you go to a distribution center, completely different. You know the size of the building. You know you've got hundreds of locations that you've got a program, but where you're picking and dropping is constantly changing. What I learned was that almost every fifteen minutes, the dynamics are changing inside a warehouse. Right? So that's just, like, on a day to day basis. So simulating a warehouse, much harder. The system the reason I say it's like an organism is that we are responding. Like, that automated system responds to the inputs from humans. Right? And so as you bring in a trunk, you know, and you start unloading it, all of a sudden, there's a whole new area that's starting to fire and say, hey. You gotta come over here. And and those loads are going to new places within the distribution center. So, that's kinda what made me think about the the warehouse as an organism, right, and and living and breathing. Right? And even the warehouse over the course of a season breathes. It gets bigger during, you know, slow seasons. And during peak seasons, it gets emptier and things move faster, more turns. So we'll talk a little bit more about that and how automation is impacted and how we have to think about that adaptability. Yeah. Yeah. I like this one, David. Really sort of drives the point home. It's not, when we service both of these environments, but they they each have, unique requirements. And, and, you know, the I guess, the point of the image on the right is the amount of variability, that, that is imposed there. And I think that that maybe even underestimates what our warehousing distribution friends are under on a daily basis. Right? So, when we, when we get back to it, this idea of change, as, you know, the most important feat feature of your automation program oh, actually, you know what? Before we do this, why don't you do our poll, David? You know, we can jump in right? Why don't we do our poll? K? Put a poll together. Why don't we start our poll? Alright? So the question is, what is the most important consideration when trying to scale new technologies, in your warehouse ecosystem? K. Managing, worker turnover, that the technology can adapt to, I can't see it, but I think it's, like, adapt to, daily needs or daily changes, and the technology can adapt to these changes. And then lastly is connectivity. So, Wi Fi interoperability, connectivity, or integration with your WMS, just connectivity with within your in your environment with large or other or other. K. Leave the poll open for another, another second or two. I don't know if we could call this a clear winner, David, but, let's publish the result here. Okay. I can see, that I've published it, but I did. And it looks like that the technology can respond to the daily needs of the business. Interesting one, David. Right? One slightly more that the technology can adapt to sort of the changing business needs. Interesting. I think that really drives the point home of this slide. Yes. Absolutely. Lots of little more immediate in terms of immediate needs as opposed to maybe a long term change. You what's your feedback on this, these poll results? Yeah. I mean, I I think that's, that's spot on with, you know, the the the way that the the warehouse changes, right, compared to a manufacturing facility and how, the the system needs to be able to, you know, to adapt to it and and, deliver the the needs of the business regardless of what is happening, from from day to day, shift to shift, season to season, even longer term changes. Right? Like, how are you going to adapt to reracking? Right? That's common in warehouses. Right? Changes like that. Addition of technology as as time goes on. You're gonna bring in more technology and and the the equipment that you install, for material handling needs to be able to to adapt to that. Right. So I guess organically, David, the the audience here selected, changed in some way. There's a little bit of difference between the daily needs of the business. Right? Let's get to that and maybe some of the structural changes over time, seasonal changes and whatnot. So let's let's talk about that a little bit. Right? Adapting change. You assert here is the most important thing. Why is it the most important, and what change are we talking about here? Yeah. So, like like, shifts, what I've seen, in the industry is is that, different businesses, they might they might be shipping more during day hours. Right? And then at nighttime, they might be bringing material in, to the to the warehouse. So, obviously, trucks are arriving all day long and they're leaving, but they might sometimes, put the the trucks out in the yard. And at nighttime, they're shipping to their customers less, so they're bringing the materials into the docks. So what that creates is just a a change in the flow. Right? Because the the flow will tend to be, one direction, outbound maybe during the day and then inbound at night. Weekends also, maybe less shipping to customers on weekends. So more receiving, more stocking, building up that inventory that you're gonna need, during the week. So those are the types of things that, really need to look at, like, how how the system is designed and balanced to deliver productivity throughout the week. Because we all know, empty forks in a warehouse, nobody wants to see them. Right? So how you design the warehouse for automation, to still have minimal deadheading, that's when we're traveling without, a load on the forks, is is really important. And then one of the things I I wanna also bring up here is, like, the seasonality. Right? So, you know, many customers, if you're in the food industry, you know, you might be doing a lot of pickles in the summertime, or you might be doing a lot of chocolate, like, right, you know, like, in Christmas time and and, like, starting in the fall with Halloween and so forth. So, you you see, like, the the inventory kinda grow, and you also see periods where it shrinks. And, like, in a manual operation, the tendency is to bring the work in and go high, right, so that your manual drivers don't need to drive around. When you automate, congestion is kind of the enemy of automation. So, there's a a different approach, which is go wide, but go low. Right? So that way you still get that distribution, but you, you know, you're not going as vertical with with your load. So interesting things that you learn, seeing how warehouse operators are solving these problems. Yep. Yeah. And, you know, I suppose there there are other, you know, examples of change here. The technology can change. Right? Yeah. You bring the technology of a sudden what you've what you've, you know, the automation, that you've brought in has to sort of maybe adapt to that, be able to to be interoperate interoperate with that. You know, and then, of course, you know, business needs. You talk about chocolate and seasonality and maybe loads and shift times. But, you know, who who here has the same business now that they had two years ago, two and a half years ago? Right? No one. It seems like every industry has, had suffered with, and had to accommodate for changing business needs. And our point isn't to sort of belabor, how hard the environment is that you're under. The point is, are you using technology that can adapt to that change? Right? That can adapt to that change. We recognize manufacturing has its stress stresses for sure. We're not discounting that. Right? But, you know, more bento box, they build for repeatability. But when you're in warehouse and distribution, you need to really handle all that's coming at you. And I think that's really what we're trying to drive the point home here, whether that's near term, you know, micro in between one shift, seasonality between seasons, or longer term as the needs of the business change. Or are you sunk with an automation program or with technology that can adapt to all of those? Right? Yeah. Absolutely. And and I think this is one of those things where, Vecna does differentiate itself, with, you know, our our CSMs. Right? Our customer success managers, which get paired with our customers. And, you know, they're they're looking at the the way the system behaves, and they're constantly communicating with with the customer. So if changes come in, maybe you're adding racking. Right? You're taking, a space that is currently block stacking, and you're saying, you know what? I gotta go vertical. I gotta rack it. And and so, that environment's gonna change. Right? You're gonna create new aisles that didn't exist before. You're gonna have some infrastructure. Basically, we're we're there to, to support that change. Right? And, I think you're gonna get into, you know, personnel changes, which is another big one, right, that happens. We do that we do that now. Great segue, David. This is great. This like, David David said, hey. Look. We have, we have we have customers structurally deal with, employee turnover. How do we convey and really drive the point home? It's a, you know, a challenge that does affect the technologies they choose. So I don't know if I could have provided a better data point here to drive home. Look at that, David. Amongst all industries, warehousing overwhelmingly according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics is, you know, north of, you know, forty five turnover rates. So, like, talk to me about when you look at a data point like that in your role for ensuring successful deployments and follow-up deployments, What are some of the what's some of the advice you could give our, our prospects and customers? Yeah. I think, the the main thing here is setting up a good, training program, making sure that, you're you're gonna be able to bring people on, and and get them trained with the right information. What I've seen happen, believe it or not, is turnover can be so fast that you have somebody that, is on a forklift that, wasn't really trained initially by, by us. Right? And then, they change, and now there's a new person, and they're being trained by people who weren't trained. So so it becomes like word-of-mouth. Right? Like, it, just kind of what people think the robots do without actually being, told how the robots perceive the environment or how they behave. So I think keeping up with training is really, obviously, a responsibility of of the operators, but that that's one of the challenges in this industry. It's very competitive for that forklift driver, because, you know, I think most of us drive around, and we see warehouses going up, everywhere. And that's that's really, great to see in terms of the, the new marketplace that's that's coming up. But I think it's also challenging for our customers because that's very competitive for the people that they're trying to bring in the door to do the work. Right? So it's almost become existential. I think your next slide even shows that. But it's, you know, it's existential to, think about automation nowadays. Whereas before, it was really just an ROI question. Now it's like, how how am I gonna ship my business? Right? And, I think, one of the reasons why I'm here to is to get that done. Go ahead, David. Go go ahead. Finish that thought. Sorry. Say that again? I I talked over you there, but I think I got your point. So what David is was mentioning here, was just sort of the this is what the crew will hold unless there's some major political changes or structural changes in, in the workforce in some way, shape, or form. You know, this is what we're all content with, which is six or more percent annual warehousing growth, to twenty thirty at very least. But, at worker growth. So US worker population growth flat between now and twenty fifty three. Right? So something doesn't work. The math doesn't work. Hello? We have over a million additional warehouse workers by twenty thirty. So but I think there's a there's additional points here I wanna drive home. Yes. Training, very important, really difficult to run. Maybe even having a, a vendor that can help you with that is important. And I and we see it, every day that that perhaps it's a little bit underappreciated, and not and and what we mean by training is training about how to create human beside robot. Right? And and human beside automation, really important. The other point, which is the flip side and certainly, of course, very self serving for me to say so, but I'm gonna say it anyway, is, is technology that is adaptable and works safely within heterogeneous environments with other technology and humans. That's really important. And then I think lastly, and overwhelmingly self serving for me to say, is, technology that can work in conjunction with labor when when when finding skilled workers is really hard. Right? And and not having to to drop a a, a huge upfront capital investment in order to fill some of those those structural warehouse worker gaps I'm showing you right here. Right? So while some of you, through fifty percent of you, are thinking about sort of the daily needs of handling change, David and I are looking out here for you years into the future. Structurally, this the the warehouse worker issue is not gonna go away. And thinking about automation will change, in particular, the three areas we've mentioned to to work better with with, with your existing work workers is really critical. Yeah. Alright. I mean, I think about this as, like, the the Amazon effect. Right? Like, the we're all at a point now where we want product within two days. Some markets are getting their products in a day. Right? Like, you order something on Amazon, you get it in a day. So I think all of the marketplace is looking how to deliver their products quicker to be competitive. That's causing us to build, build, build warehouses outside of our big metropolises. And when I drive around I live near Philadelphia. But when I drive around and I I go an hour or two outside of Philadelphia, I'm I'm kind of in the country. Right? So, and that happens a lot in in many parts of the country. So, not a lot of, people out there, to service those warehouses that we're building, to service our populations in the cities. So it's really an interesting, change that's happening, like a paradigm shift inside of our country, right, with the supply chain. So Yeah. And and the warehouse is struggling to keep up. Let's just call it spade to spade here. We're all in that that supply chain world that we're trying to keep up with the immediate needs and the standard been set by the Amazon world. And so that that begets a lot of challenges that we have to overcome. What I am asserting today, and I'm assert on behalf of this company, is that we believe the future is cobotic, and the near future is deterministic, not AI driven. Right? In the warehouse, for technologies in the warehouse to solve the problems that you have today, Notwithstanding maybe what you hear or the AI washing that you hear for maybe some of some folks in this market, we believe that the safest route, most the least, technology obtrusive, high value route is the deterministic, technology like we have today. It does leverage AI in certain ways, but we don't see if the future the near future to solve your problems in the next two to five years, maybe even ten years, where, where you're gonna be deploying an army of, of humanoids. We just don't see it. There it's cool technology. Right? And, and I love that it works in a trade show. But when you think about the variability, the safety concerns, the human elements, the cultural concerns, in your warehouse environments, David and I firmly believe in a company as well, that the future is Cobotic and how you deploy, automations and systems that will work in conjunction with skilled labor. Dave? Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I I think it's, like, one of the things that, is so different about manufacturing and warehouses. Right? And in manufacturing, material handling with, you know, whether it's AGVs or AMRs doesn't really matter. But it you're basically picking from machines, dropping two machines, and you're driving around with very little, traffic in most cases. Right? Whereas when you get into, like, a distribution center, there's a lot of humans on the docks. Right? There's, a lot of equipment inside the racking. There the the way that the product is being, placed is not always, consistent. Right? So there's no machinery where you have to feed, the equipment. So sometimes, loads spill over, not meaning that they fell over, but but that they're they're, bulging be beyond, like, their normal, contained areas into the aisles. And so you need adaptive technology like AMRs and the distribution centers that that can kinda see that, things are taking up more space, and we need to drive around them. I was, you know, like I said earlier, I've been with BECNA about a year. So I've toured many, many of our installations, and I I was just blown away to see, a load that actually had fallen over, from the racking, and our equipment is continuing to drive around, basically diverted its path and continued on its mission. I know my old company with that technology would have just stopped. Right? And those are the kinds of things that, you know, really set us apart, like, in with AMRs over AGVs in this kind of market. Which means I've just checked the time. We're running a little short, David, but I think no one said it better than Elon Musk. Right? It's sort of self reflection about overly automating his, his, facilities. And I love this. Humans are underrated. Right? And I think you basically just just said that. And I think this reinforces and granted this is in a in a manufacturing context. Got it. But I think the outcome is still the same. Right? We're we need humans to do the jobs that human do best, and our assertion is let robots do, do the jobs that they do best. Yeah. This is a really important one. I just wanna touch on this real quick. Humans are definitely underrated. Right? I mean, you when you have a robot, we put lots of sensors on them. We don't even come close. I've been in this industry twenty five years. We don't come close to the types of things that humans can see and perceive and do. Right? But where we're really strong is those repetitive tasks. Right? I did studies for major, warehousing companies where they were literally traveling, hundred fifty to two hundred miles every hour with people driving forklifts. So due to math, they're driving at an average of, like, three to four miles per hour when you consider picking and dropping and everything else. That's a lot of forklifts just driving around, doing things that are very repetitive, where you really wanna leverage that, human intellect and capability, are doing those really difficult tasks. Right? Like, still, like, maybe the the high reach operations or stacking and case picking and building, like, something that looks like a Tetris thing that, you know, the the human mind is capable of perceiving how to stack all these products and make a good load, for your customer. Right. And I think it's dreamy to think about humanoid robots being able to do that, but, I won't belabor that point. I just think that that's much further out than than one would think. Alright. Let's, let's try to wrap it up quickly here. I think we've we've talked a little bit about we pulled people on the connected warehouse. And so when you get to scale, you have a small proof of concept. You don't really worry about this all that much. But when you get to scale and you're you think about a larger ecosystem, connectivity is super important here. And so we have some elements on here that that we we accommodate as a company. But I just wanted to come up with a visual here. You know, your ecosystem is busy and it's very connected. That is certainly a consideration and could be an obstacle to scale. Why don't we conclude with this one, David, because we gotta wrap it up. We are making an assertion here that that, you know, AMRs are better for that ecosystem, that wild ecosystem that we talked about, over the last half hour. Why don't you bring it home for us here, David? Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I kinda talked to this just a a few minutes ago, but, you know, the, repeatability of the AGV, the ability to, drive products from point a to point b, obviously, it's there. Right? But when things change inside the environment like they do on a daily basis in a in a warehouse, you know, AGVs will will stop. And AMRs with our increased perceptive, sensors and our algorithms that allow us to drive around, maintain speed, are are basically behaving a little bit more like humans. We we've come a long way in perceiving the environment and trying to create more human like behavior in how we drive. Right? Just like a human would, they're not gonna stop because there's a pallet in front of them. They're gonna continue their mission, and that's what we're trying to do as well. Yeah. Along with paneling some of these other pieces discussed, like connectivity and adapting and and, considerate of how humans operate. I mean, there's a whole series of benefits there, that we'll get to over the course of the year. So with that, I just wanted to remind everybody, all of our webinars going back two years are all available on Resource Hub on our website. There it is. And for those of you that are interested in this AI topic and our, our assertions that we made about fifteen minutes ago, Our founder, Daniel Theobald, actually published a few papers or articles on this topic, and they're all available in our newsroom. So same website. Just go down to newsroom, they're all there. Please follow us on LinkedIn. This is where we put we put tidbits and little recordings and things, and we remind everybody about the the next webinars that are coming up. Please follow us on and we put a lot of great content out there. And then with that, I just wanted to thank you, David, so much for spending the month with me to to noodle on these ideas, share some of your your vast experience, and, and present to our prospects and customers today. So thank you very much. Yeah. It's been a pleasure, Josh. And, thanks everyone for for attending, and don't hesitate to contact us. We love talking about warehouses and automation. I certainly do. I know Josh does too. So, I think have a question have are you gonna have buffet or or or bento sushi for lunch? It's a big question. Maybe we'll leave everybody hanging. We don't know. We'll we'll leave that mystery for another day. But, with that, I just wanna remind everybody, our next episode, robot versus wild episode three on March first. Remember the last Friday, of every month, we bring you, insights and on in this case, on how to scale your, your automation program, for the future. So on behalf of everybody at Vectorn Robotics, so long. Have a great rest of your week and weekend, everybody. We'll see you in a month.