Unpacking Peak: How to Turn Your Current Operational Pains Into Future Gains

Hello, and welcome to Higher Automation. A podcast brought to you by Hi Robotics. I'm your host Michelle Dawn Mooney. And today, we were talking about unpacking peak how to turn your current pains into future gains as we approach the most wonderful time of the year businesses are gearing up for a flurry of shopping activity for many. The holiday season represents a significant chunk of annual revenue, but it also introduces a unique set of challenges and pressures. So in this episode, we will floor the ins and outs of managing order fulfillment during the peak season and discover how to turn your current pains of high demand warehousing into future gains. Our guests for today are experts in the field of warehouse goods to person automation, a game changing technology that has the potential to reshape the way businesses tackle the holiday rush. So let's get into it. We have two great guests as I said today. Jake Etheridge and Vince Donato are both technical sales executives for high robotics. Thank you both for being with me today. And thank you for having us. Excited to get into this conversation. Before we do, starting off with you, Jake, can I have you give us a brief bio if you can? Yeah. Not a problem. My name is Jake Etherage. As Michelle mentioned, I'm a technical sales executive, at high robotics. I have about seven years of experience within the industry designing, selling, conveyor and robotic systems. And I have a background in mechanical engineering. And I'm Vincent Donato, also technical sales executive. I've been at high for about a year now. I have about two years experience in the industry. So not as long as Jake, but I've been learning a lot from the team here. I also have a background in mechanical engineering. Wonderful. So we are talking about something that is really big for this time of year peak holiday shopping season places enormous demands on warehouse operations, and I know about that personally because I am probably the one putting a lot of that demand out there because I do a lot of shopping just for myself during this time of year. So if you multiply that, we've got some some big shopping going on. So what are some common challenges and current pains that you see retailers and e commerce companies facing during this time of year. Yeah. Of course, I'll start out with that. The the first thing you would think of is the high influx of orders that you don't normally see all year round. Everybody's doing their holiday shopping. So only shopping for themselves, but shopping for everybody else in their life. So these companies that are normally seeing a steady average amount of orders every day, are now seeing a high influx of orders all coming at the same time. All rushed to be delivered, you know, those last minute shoppers that are buying those gifts hoping to get them there for before Christmas. So that be kinda becomes an issue for them as well that they know they're getting these orders in. And they know that if they don't get them out before Christmas, the people might not want them. So you then sometimes see that the peak season goes a little bit further than you may expect because people are, you know, using their gift cards to shop. And they're returning old orders. So they're getting a ton of returns all at the same time while also having a ton of new orders coming in Remember be doing there after Christmas shopping that you would see. Yeah. To add to that, I think that, you know, from the warehouse side, you know, Vince talks about the influx of orders. But what does that actually do for you as, like, a potential warehouse manager? Right? Like, you know, we've talked on previous podcasts about the increase in labor that you may need to service these orders and the planning that goes into ensuring that you're ready for that peak season. And ideally, you know, we wanna leverage automation to overcome these hurdles and be able to moderate moderate the, toll it takes on the company during those peak season order or during those peak season surges that you'll see. Yeah. And there are so many factors take into consideration and and going back to myself being the shopper, you know, Vince, I remember you saying that it's not just getting that item, but, you know, getting it by that certain date because, I mean, it really comes down to that. If you can't have it by the deadline, then it's it's a moot point almost. So what key performance indicators or KPIs should warehouse or operation managers be really closely monitoring during the peak season and then how can they help in making improvements for the future. Right. You know, so with with your previous question, we kind of laid it out on the line. You guys an increase in orders and we have, you know, potential increase in either man hours or just personnel that you have to manage to get through the peak season. Right? So from a KPI perspective, you know, what I would personally be looking for are areas of inefficiencies. Right? So if you have a fairly manual, a a fam a fairly manual, distribution center. And, you know, you're you're leaning a lot on manual labor to get that product out the door. One of the things that you can look at is you know, okay. If you have an SLA, with whoever you're sending products to, like, are you still meeting that? Like, are you still meeting your service level agreement? If not, then you need to take into account how many times you failed to make that happen. Because that is going to directly impact the revenue that you may see, you know, especially if there's, you know, penalty charges and things of that nature coming from, you know, whoever you have the agreement with. The second thing to really take a look at is, you know, how much, capital are you spending to just handle the peak season orders and the peak season returns, you know, as Vince mentioned. You know, actually taking the the quantity of, you know, additional work and, you know, putting it to to a dollar figure is gonna be very helpful and understanding, okay, like, is automation something that I can potentially see a return on my investment in x number of years. Right? And, you know, most companies are looking for like a a a three year return on investment. In some cases, we've seen two year return on investment. And others we've seen seven. Right? And this is gonna be very dependent on, like, your company. And, you know, what your goals are, when it comes to you know, making an investment and seeing returns on it. The next thing, you know, more on the labor side is, you know, how many of your employees are showing up to work and doing the work? And, you know, taking a a good look at your team that and making sure that they're still achieving their KPIs, even with the additional workload that they may be getting due to the peak season. You know, the additional hours, the additional, the the additional complexities that you may face, you know, with the holiday season, people calling in sick or taking time off, you know, take a look at that and see how badly that impacts your ability to get product out door. Hearing how automation can provide solutions. I wanna dive a little deeper and get more specific with exactly how this works, how does goods to person automation specifically address the challenges and current pains that we talk about that company's faced during this time period. There's plenty of ways that goods to first and systems can help address these pains, and really finding a flexible solution that's gonna be able to meet whatever your company's needs are during that peak season. Because, obviously, right now, we're speaking about peak season in terms of holidays. But, you know, every industry has their own different type of peak season, whether that might be, you know, the summer months or the Christmas months. But The important thing is you need to be able to basically ramp up your operations to be able to meet these new peaks that you're experiencing. And as Jake was referring to, a lot of the times, that is labor. So, you know, you can't really force your workers to work longer hours to get that extra production a lot of the times, you need to be able to bring in more labor to be able to keep up with that work. Using a good separation system, you're kind of able to cut back on that because it's not especially in today's age, it's not that easy to find labor for warehouses. So by using a goods to person system, you're able to ramp up You're able to ramp up your warehouse operations without having to increase your workforce where a lot of the times this workforce for the peak season might just be temporary labor that it's just gonna come and go. So it's not always great to know, bring people in, then have to let them go so soon. So by using goods to personal automation, that's kind of, you know, artificial manpower just to help you boost through that. And what we typically see a lot of right now is that people are starting to realize it and they wanna offer these flex solutions in the goods person space. Companies are starting to offer strategies where you can essentially lease their technology in the goods to person space to ramp up your goods to person system during the peak season. So, normally, when you're purchasing a system, you're gonna have this designed to reach your average daily throughput that you'd see in your warehouse. And you don't wanna spend extra money to be able to reach these peak seasons that are only a couple months out of the year. So now that companies are offering the ability to kind of lease more robots or just, you know, temporarily increase the throughput of your system just for those peak months. Really can, can help that peak season pains that you really see. And Vince, you hit on flexible automation because flexibility is a huge part with everything that we're talking about here, especially for companies who are selling during this peak season of the holiday season. So Can you dive a little deeper and give us a little bit more kind of information about exactly what does that look like and maybe more examples of how businesses can best leverage flexible automation to their advantage during the holiday season or really any time of the year. Yeah. I'd say that when we're looking at, you know, a flexible automation system, you know, as as Vince mentioned, adding robots to a system for a temporary duration is definitely a way to increase your throughput. Right? But I think, you know, from a more, like, you know, ten thousand foot view perspective of of truly flexible automation system is going to allow you to do the things that you need to do, not just next year, not just through peak season, but for, you know, maybe ten years. Right? You know, these systems are built to last, and they're intended to go into a distribution facility and sit there and work, day in, day out, for ten, fifteen years straight, right, until that equipment needs to be replaced. But that's the thing is You know, what does replacing that equipment look like? You know, there are concerns, you know, in the in the in the robotic space that companies, you know, may not be around by the, you know, in ten to fifteen years. Like, if you go out and you purchase a system, you wanna make sure that you're not stuck with this particular solution that's going to, you know, potentially you know, die one day. Right? And the thought is is that you want to leverage as many goods, that are standard, in today's world that you would expect there still to be standard in fifteen years from now. So, you know, we're talking like pallet racking. That's been around forever. You know, maybe you should look at leveraging a robotic solution that will pick totes or cases directly off of pallet racking, versus some type of proprietary storage system that, you know, can only come from a particular manufacturer. Right? That's that's true flexibility. When you have that ability to just be able to say, okay. It's standard pallet rack. I have, you know, an x number of different, providers out there. Source it from whoever is least expensive, and who can meet my lead times and get me the the product or get me that material so that way I can have it installed have the system commissioned for my peak season. You know, that's that's true flexibility right there. And then to add to that, you know, what if you start to lean on goods to person? Your company begins to grow and you start to outgrow your space, or the system that you've installed becomes, you know, inadequate to meet your needs. The other side of the flexibility coin is, you know, the expansion aspect. You know, how quickly is it to to expand? How easy is it to expand? Can you expand while you are in production or like when you are distributing product? You know, these are questions that you need to ask yourself if you're trying to look for a truly flexible solution. And then, you know, to even pivot there, And what if you reach the limitations of the building that you're in? Can you take this system and move it from one location to another? Right? And there are some robotic companies out there that you have to be careful with because they require significant amount of foundation work to the concrete floor. Maybe you have to add in a drop ceiling, you know, fire suppression system, and these are significant investments. And it's gonna lock you into that building or that lease, for the life of that particular, you know, material. So you know, if you're looking for something that's flexible, the, you know, the other flip of the coin here is, you know, you wanna be able to potentially knock it down, take it somewhere else, and then grow upon it from there. Or, you know, if you need to, take it down and at least be able to resell some of the components of that particular system at the end of its life. You know, this is all hardware. Right? You know, we're not gonna we're not gonna stay here and pretend that, you know, these robots are gonna last forever, and we're gonna find ourselves in a scenario like Irobot. But I will say that You know, it's important to think about what you're gonna do with the material that you're purchasing now. What are you gonna do with it in fifteen years? When it is time to bring that particular system to the end of its life. Just a touch on Jake's point of, you know, proactively thinking now is especially the time to that we encourage people to be thinking proactively, and really, you know, taking notes of these pains that they're experiencing during their peak season. Instead of, you know, saying, we need to fix this for next season. Now is really the time to start exploring, these different flexible solutions that you could utilize down the line. You know, it's a long process to get a good person automation system in your warehouse. You know, some from the start of just exploring and educating yourself, to actually having that system go live, oftentimes is over a year's time spent, you know, depending on how quickly you're moving on your project. So now is really the time to start thinking about your upcoming years, peak seasons. And right now, to be taking note of those different pain points and those different issues that you're having in your warehouse, marking them down, thinking about them, and going out and finding the solutions now so that you can start working on that during your off season, your average season so that you're prepared for your next peak season. I'd love to ask a follow-up question if I can with what you just hit on there, Vince, with the time frame. Can we just talk a little bit about that for a minute or two? Because what should people expect? And then let me ask you two sides of that say they already have some type of warehouse automation in place and maybe they just kinda wanna tick it up to the next level or you're starting from scratch and have nothing. What are they looking at as far as time constraints? Yeah. Time constraints vary from, you know, the different manufacturers that you're gonna be working with, and those can vary anywhere, you know, six months to a couple years depending on how that manufacturer operates. Some manufacturers are working in a made to order fashion where, you know, your system is being customized and built specific for you. And others are kind of, you know, rolling out the same flagship type of robot or system that they're gonna be giving to everybody, and they might already have those on hand. So that time might seem a little bit quicker. Oftentimes, I see that the longest time span is really with most things in life is educating yourself and decision making. That's a long process in itself. So, you know, even if you're looking at a system that you might be able to you know, sign a purchase order for getting your system in six months. There's always that extra time that you have to think about. Right. And just to kind of expand on, you know, the time frame, right? Like, what what goes into that? You know, from purchase order to go live, there's a lot that occurs. You have, you know, the actual development of the hardware, getting it to site. Right? And, you know, many manufacturers nowadays are global they're probably gonna be coming from overseas. And then, you know, after that, you have to think about how we're going to interact with your software system. And that has a completely different timeline and development phase. And one of the questions that you asked Michelle just a second ago is, you know, what if they already some form of automation in place. Well, you know, that's where integrators become a very, integral part of the solution. Because they are the ones who are experts in being able to take multiple different pieces from multiple different manufacturers and bring it together to provide a holistic solution to the end user or, you know, to you who may be listening to this podcast. But, you know, that's that's where an integrator is gonna really kinda come in and provide significant value if you go directly to, an, like, a manufacturer and you ask for their solution, in more cases than not, they're gonna either loop in an integrator or, you know, they're going to try and sell a standalone solution that only incorporates, like, incorporates their product. That doesn't necessarily mean it's the best solution for you because that might not include all aspects of your business. So that's kinda where an integrator can really help you identify, you know, a full solution. And then at the, you know, at the end of it all, once they have that solution, they're gonna be the ones who manage the project and can provide a very firm lead time on when you can expect to hit a go live date. Bottom line, people really need to start evaluating things yesterday, right? To do it as soon as possible to get these plans in place to see if they can help out in your particular company. If people have any questions today and no doubt, I think that they will. Where can they go? How can they reach out and connect? Yeah. I'd say, you know, from a educational standpoint, if you're really trying to, you know, get a quick understanding of what exists on the market. Maybe you don't have the time to really do that research to figure out every single robotic manufacturer. Go to Google and type in local material handling integrator, and that will source you handful suggestions of integrators that are based in your area that can provide you with the information that you're looking for and potentially design a system, and, you know, you can go from there. If you're looking to reach out to me directly, my name is this Jake Etherage on LinkedIn, feel free to reach out. And myself as well. Jake and I are constantly posting good content on LinkedIn, you know, great knowledge articles for you to read through. And, you know, I'm pretty open. So if anybody would like to reach out, ask any questions, whether it'd just be about the industry, about tech other technologies, our technology, or if you just wanna talk to me just for some random stuff, feel free to reach out. Jake Etheridge and Vincent Donato both technical sales executives at high robotics. Interesting conversation. As I said, I had quite a few more questions that I would like to ask, but for time constraints here. I'm unable to do that, but thank you for being here and answering some questions and no doubt peaking the interest of people out there to want possibly ask more. Appreciate you being here today. Thank you, Rick. Thank you for having us. And I wanna thank all of you for tuning in and listening to higher automation to podcast brought to you by Hi Robotics. Once again, you heard Vince and Jake said that you could reach out to them on LinkedIn and you can always go to com for more information there and be sure to subscribe to this podcast if you enjoyed today's conversation and you wanna hear more great conversations on the way. I'm your host Michelle Dawn Newoney. Thanks again for joining us. We hope to connect with you on another podcast soon.