Zimark Podcast
Summary
Zimark has developed a smart pallet tracking solution for warehouses and 3PLs. The company's VP of Strategy, Hila Herzog Manor, has a background in high tech startup product development, while CEO Karen Levy comes from a logistics background. Zimark solution can be used by any company that needs to track pallets moving in and out of their warehouse, and brings the most value to industries where shipping reliability and inventory accuracy are crucial, such as automotive, pharmaceuticals, and food For businesses who have warehouses, Zimark helps reduce operation costs and increases their ROI. They offer three main solutions: Forklift Vision, Shipping Control, and Smart Pallet Tracking. Forklift Vision uses cameras mounted on forklifts to automatically track pallet movements and eliminate human errors. Shipping Control ensures that the correct pallets are loaded onto the correct truck, reducing chargebacks and disputes. Smart Pallet Tracking is the overall name for their suite of solutions, and it also provides a visual timeline of: Our companion app is already being used by several customers from industry leading 3PL's, manufactures and it integrated with WMS, TMS and other cloud solution. It has helped reduce damage, save time and increase the compliance with endless personalized solutions. Zimark is a company that specializes in smart solutions for logistics and supply chain management. They have developed a companion app that is being used by several customers from industry leading 3PL's, manufacturers, and it is already integrated with WMS,Keep it real. For today's episode, Joe takes us back to his conversation with Roei Ganzarski, CEO of Autonomous aerial vehicle company, REVELO. Roei discusses how they are creating planes that will revolutionize air travel and cargo delivery. They also talk about the state of automation and Roei's philosophy that automated technology should expect human error and be designed to catch it early.Happy new to the warehouse underground and to America as a whole. Tim chats with Zimark and its CEO Hila Finkelsoum about their company's values and software that optimizes and streamlines operations in warehouses and retail stores. The solution provides accurate real-time data, which helps with forecasting and decision making, leading to cost savings and efficiency gains. The product roll-out will be throughout 2021 and beyond, depending on the market. Please sign up for the community of The Warehouse
Transcription
Ben Hopkins
[00.00.06]
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to episode number 42 at the Warehouse Underground podcast, Real Talk or Warehouse DC and FC professionals of all levels around the globe. I'm Ben, the host of the show, and with me today is Hila Herzog Manor. She's the VP strategy at Zimark smart pallet tracking for warehouses and three pls. Now these guys have been at all the trade shows. If you've been to a major trade show, you've probably seen their booth. They're all over LinkedIn. They're offering a very cool and innovative new solution for warehouse operators everywhere in terms of tracking ability. So I'm excited to chat with her today about Zimark's history, what it's doing and how they've been received so far in the industry. I think you guys will find their solution very cool and very innovative. So with that, I'll bring her on the stage right now. Mila, how are you? Hi. Thank you very much for joining the podcast. And, uh, what's up? What's going on these days?
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.01.06]
Wow. Pretty good and very, very excited to be on the show. Uh, yeah. Following. Yeah. And, uh. Yeah, Yeah,
Ben Hopkins
[00.01.14]
well, I mean, I've been following you guys too. Like I said in the intro, you're all over the industry right now. Everywhere you turn, you see Zimark and you see what you're doing and you have an innovative solution. And we'll get all into all that on the show. But before we do that, though, uh, and I had a chance to talk with you before we did this episode, like I do many, of many of the guests. Can you tell the audience a little bit about you and your background? Because it's it's interesting. It's unique. It's not standard, I would say, for the industry. So tell us, uh, tell us a little bit about your history.
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.01.50]
Yeah. So my my personal background is not in logistic. Uh, it's more in, uh, high tech, um, startups seeing, um, a lot of product strategy. So my background, what I've been doing for many, many years is I look at a specific market, uh, potential customers and their needs to see where their pain points are, uh, what they need in order to make their lives better, and then, uh, develop a product, come up with a product to bring them the value. And, you know, the the help of that, what that need that was discovered, that was identified. So. Yeah. So that's what I've been doing in. You know, different industries. You know, I've been doing it. I've did it in health and finance and so many. And now for the past few years in logistics. Yeah, yeah, I like it when people can bring a fresh set of eyes to an industry. They can have a different perspective, they have a different background. I think that's really needed. And you get rid of that groupthink when you when people see things differently. I think sometimes you can arrive at different solutions that maybe you wouldn't have had before. So, uh, cool, cool background. Always good to meet different people in the industry with different backgrounds. So, uh, very, very unique. So let's talk about Zimark. So
Ben Hopkins
[00.03.10]
high level, you know, how did Zimark come to be and what is it all about? I talked a little bit about it in the intro, but what are you guys doing and how are you serving people in the industry in the market.
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.03.24]
So it's actually an interesting story. And it also, you know, connects to the story about my background because I met Karen Levy, um, Zimark CEO, who actually has an extensive logistics background, um, 16 years, uh, working at a zoom integrated shipping, one of the largest shipping lines in the world. And uh, zenith actually founded, um founded Zimmer in order to bring tracking solutions, uh, to the logistics industry. I met Karen, and she was looking for someone, like you said, with a fresh set of eyes, who has knowledge and bringing new products to market. And we complemented each other in the sense that she came with a logistics background. I came with the technology startup, product development background, and together we were looking at the at the logistics space, which is, you know, it's huge. At the beginning, we weren't even focused on warehousing, where we're like, okay, we have this code that we can use to track using computer vision and we can track anything. Okay. Now let's see what needs to be tracked. Where are the biggest pain points? So we were looking at vehicles and we were looking at materials. We were looking at different things. Um, and then I mean we're looking at, you know, travel airports. And after doing all this research, we saw that warehousing has a very, very big need in terms of tracking of pallets. Uh, and that's, uh, that's how Weimar came to be. And, uh, Zimmer Solutions. Uh, yeah.
Ben Hopkins
[00.04.55]
Yeah. So I funny you mentioned that. So I've had somebody on the show before that was in the pilot space, and we started talking about like, how many palettes do you think exist on planet Earth? And no one really knows the answer. It's probably in the billions, but yeah, palettes are moving. I don't know how many palettes are moving through warehouses every day across the globe, but it is not a small number that is an extremely big number. So, uh, you're you're correct on that. So in terms of customer base, though, and I have all sorts of different listeners, all sorts of different followers in this industry. And it's a it's a pretty big wide range. I mean, sometimes you have big time distribution centers that are big. They're moving tons of product, and then you can have sort of the mid-tier markets, uh, you know, smaller three place, that type of thing, and then all the way down to just a very small warehouse that supports a small company or a small operation. So who are your ideal customers? I mean, are you in a niche right there? Do you have a certain area or are you saying no, it's all the above. I mean, anyone who has a need to track the pallets that they move, we can be their customers or their a their A provider. Where do you where do you fall in on that.
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.06.11]
So we're industry agnostic. We're size agnostic. The only thing we need to know is that you're moving pallets, you're, uh, storing pallets, receiving shipping pallets. Uh, and that's all we can help with. We can help with smart tracking of pallets within a warehouse from receiving to loading. Um, so, uh, you know, we do know that we bring big value to customers where, you know, shipping reliability or accuracy is super important, and inventory is super important. Uh, and we know that there are certain industries where that's, you know, more crucial where that's, you know, if you miss ship a pallet, uh, that's more painful. So we know that the automotive industry is really big. We know that anything with great value. So it could be pharmaceuticals, it could be consumer electronics. Um, you know, food and beverage are very, very big also when it comes to inventory and shipping reliability. And we know specifically the three plus so we can provide the solutions to any warehouse that um stores and moves pallets. But we know that for three plus you know. Managing their the inventory correctly. That's their value proposition. That's their premise to their customers. And if we can help them deliver the premium service, the best service with 100% inventory accuracy and reliability, shipping accuracy index proof of low that they can show their customers, then that's where we bring the biggest value. Of course, we can also bring the value to brass manufacturers who run warehouses. But we do know that that's, you know, that's where our our products thrive and that's where we get the most excitement about our. Yeah, I
Ben Hopkins
[00.08.07]
think I think that that proof of load thing is I know you you have other value that you bring in other solutions. But the proof of load thing is, is huge because a lot of times it gets into a well, we show we shipped it in our system customer we didn't receive it. And all you have is just sort of this digital trail, this digital proof that it shipped. But if you have physical proof, right, like physical proof with a visibility or a tracking or something like that, it doesn't necessarily solve the issue, but it it helps you gain leverage over whoever you shipped it to. Right. It's kind of one of those deals where it's almost like a law case, a little bit, you know. Whoever has the most facts, whoever has the most stuff on their end kind of wins in terms of how are we going to handle this? Is it a great claim, the OS or the palate? You know, all those type of things. And, uh, and, you know, I've gone through that a lot in my career. And usually it's like, okay, well, let's just split the difference because we can't
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.09.09]
figure it out. Yeah. So either the the proof of load thing, it actually divides into two use cases. So one, there's um justified claims and the second is unjustified claims. But for both you need you need proof of what happened. Like you said, it's almost like a legal or even like a, uh, you know, you see on, on shows where you gotta investigate like a detective kind of thing and investigate what actually happened. Um, so, yeah. So the fact that if you ship something, um, that you shipped it correctly and you want to prove to your customer that you shipped it correctly, then you look for that proof of load very, very easily. You just, like, go to the Zimark, um, platform, punch in that, uh, pallet license plate, and you find a visual of that pallet being loaded to the truck, and with a click of a button, you can send it to your, uh, to your customer and prove that you actually sent it the second one. And, and and that. But the second use case, you know, there are a lot of, um. Um, there are a lot of, uh, we hear that sometimes it's actually even, like a revenue generator or in this industry, you know, those things that that actually you get you get claims and that, uh, the bottom line of of, uh, of your PNL is that, you know, you know, that at the end of the month, you're going to have X amount of dollars paid to specific, um, customers for their claims. And, um, and having proof of load can actually really significantly reduce that. Uh, you know, that figure in your PNL? Uh, so that could be huge, uh, when it comes to, you know, financial management and ROI.
Ben Hopkins
[00.10.56]
Oh, yeah. I mean, you look at one of the common things is chargebacks, ops managers out there with no chargebacks. You send to this customer, they charge you back because you you didn't have it labeled right or whatever. But you're right. Like these these claims and these proof of load are way, you know, not wasted, but they are money out on the PNL and a lot of operations just they don't even really try to set this as a goal. They just sort of accept it as a cost of doing business. And the reason why they accepted it, that is because they don't necessarily have the tools. They don't have the toolkit to fight it, to research it and all that. But if they do, if they do have the tools where they can go in and do that, then now. Yeah. I'm not willing to just accept this as a cost of doing business. No. Right. I'm going to go in and I'm going to have this as a metric, a KPI. We're going to try to reduce this every year because we got the we got the tools. So I think you can really help people help people do that. So
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.11.49]
I think this is justified. Even if the claim is justified and you miss something, then that will help you just mitigate it much, much smoother and better. So instead of going into a conflict with, uh, with your customer or having to like, go through, we've seen customers go through hours or surveillance footage looking for proof or PayPal trails and all that. So at the end, see that? Yeah, we actually made a mistake and we shifted, uh, we shipped the wrong pallet, but it's after hours, maybe days sometimes of investigating and getting into conflicts with your customer who you want to maintain good relationship with. So yep. And you and
Ben Hopkins
[00.12.30]
your and your and your customer knows on their end to oh they've got Zimark. Right. So like I better have my stuff together, my ducks in a row when I go to them to say that we didn't receive this pallet, I'm going to go talk with my receiving manager to make sure it's not sitting on the dock somewhere, because these guys are going to have it together, right? They're going to have
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.12.49]
to just accept my claim and say, yeah, okay, that's fine. Yeah. We'll pay.
Ben Hopkins
[00.12.54]
Yeah. And some and to the people out there that say, well, this doesn't happen that often. I mean, it's something like. But it adds up though. I mean, if you're talking about moving thousands and thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of pallets out of your DC per month, maybe more, well, a 1% or a 2% that that is. And you look at the time and the laborers people are, are spending to go in and research and investigate and just customer service involved. There is a there is a cost to this. If you are truly honest about looking at it all and tracking it all and measuring it all, and so it's not something that people should just have to accept anymore. And I think they have the tool to do that. So. All right. So let me ask this. So we talked a little bit about your your the the suitcase demo. So when you go into sites and they want to see what you do, what you provide, which you guys are very well ingrained in the sites. We'll talk about that in a moment. But tell me about the suitcase demo. So when you show up at a place and there are considering what happens during the suitcase demo and what can customers expect and how has that kind of been received from them? Yeah. So our our suitcase demo is like our signature, I think, for, uh, for Xena. And it's a cool story. It actually started about a year ago when, um, after visiting, you know, over the past few years, visiting dozens, maybe hundreds of warehouses and talking about the solution just as the way that we're talking about it now. But I'm actually at the warehouse and I'm looking at their pallets, I'm looking at the forklifts at their dock doors, and I'm telling them, well, imagine you put a camera here and you do this and you do that. Um, and then I just realized, well, I gotta show them something, you know, I just don't want to be talking and then just waving my hands in the air. So I approached my product team and I told them I came with a brief. I came with a request. I said, I want to have a demo kit where I can fit in a suitcase. I can give it to our sales, uh, team. They can just take with them wherever they go to into a warehouse. Um, they need to be able to set it up. I don't want to have to have someone from, you know, from tech or delivery or operation. It should be very, very plug and play. Set it up within half an hour to an hour and just run a demo at the warehouse. First of all, they were like looking at me at like, are you serious? You know these. This is like, you know, heavy. This is technologies like it doesn't work that way and, well, work that way. Um, needs to work that way.
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.15.25]
It would need to work that way. Uh, it took, uh, months of development, but then at the end, uh, we now have two suitcase demos for two flagship products. One is the shipping control solution. Um, which we can talk about in a second. The other is the forklift vision solution. Uh, two sets of demos, which we set up at the warehouse again within one hour. And we can run a live demo of, you know, a live operation at the warehouse and see your pallets being tracked in real time by your forklifts and, uh, and your pallets, and it just, uh, it's amazing. It actually replaced, um, a pilot program that we used to have. So if you wanted to, um, you know, you wanted to try out the Zimark solution before that, we would actually put up and integrate the full solution in your warehouse, which would take 2 or 3 weeks sometime, and then you would run it for a few weeks. So the whole thing would take sometimes like a month and a half and not within two hours. Um, so it's just, uh. Revolutionary.
Ben Hopkins
[00.16.29]
Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Uh, like a warehouse world. Uh, operations people out there. They live in a physical world, right? Like they live in a virtual world a little bit with the systems and the software. But it's also very physical. Unlike maybe in a front office where most of the work happens there. And in a warehouse world, it's it's racking, it's lifts, it's movement. And so they're conditioned by that. So if it's something that they can visually see and experience and those types of things versus just someone telling them about that, imagine this. You know, imagine in your mind, if you will. Now if they can if they can
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.17.04]
see it. Yeah. And the effect is just immediate, immediate within a few minutes. I don't even need to finish the demo. They just see a few movements of the pallet they see of the pallets. They see it update on the screen in real time and they're just like, wow, it's it's magic. I don't need to scan anything. Which is basically that's our vision for the industry. Our vision is to make manual barcode scanning a thing of the past. Think about it. And it's, you know, 2026. There's no need to be scanning manually scanning barcodes. The idea is that everything will be tracked automatically. Uh, even if, you know, you don't need to have, like, a full on robotic warehouse. It's a normal warehouse where you have your operators driving the, um, the forklift, moving the pallets, but they just don't need to do that. You know, repeat a task, um, of scanning, which is just, you know, it's it's human prone to to to mistakes, errors. Um, yeah. It's also just like, you know, as if and and and and fatigue, uh, to, to, to to do that repetitive work and it also impacts your ROI at the end. You know, if you need to be scanning you need to be validating rip proofing. Don't even get started about cycle counts, which is, you know, if you don't need to scan things manually, everything is scanned automatically. Then you don't need to perform cycle counts. It's done automatically, just like in a robotic warehouse. And that's where the huge saving is that,
Ben Hopkins
[00.18.32]
yeah, the less friction. If we can remove friction from operations like it's it's yeah, it's it's good. And, uh, I'm all for that. Yeah I would love to see that in the future. So now now you mentioned you mentioned some of this. So we'll get into kind of the nuts and bolts of Zimark now. But can you just talk about. So shipping control forklift vision and smart pallet tracking. Those are the main three things I think you mentioned. But how do they all work right. Like when you're explaining them and the value that they bring. What can I expect as a as an operator when you give me the pitch for, uh, these, these three main, uh, flagships.
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.19.10]
Oh, so smart pallet tracking. That's the overall name for the suite of solutions that we offer that mainly compose right now of our two, um, flagship products, like a. I mentioned one, the second one shipping control, which basically at the end give us the full solution from, like I said, from receiving to loading. So we'll start with forklift vision. Forklift vision then it's a solution where we mount a camera on the forklift. Uh, and then that camera tracks each movement of each pallet automatically. So from the minute the forklift picks up the pallet at receiving pallets away, then, you know, many times the pallet gets moved around the warehouse because you want to, you know, you want to move it to a different rack. You want to reach something that's decided or behind it and you move it. And then many times, like we said, you know, humans, they make mistakes, they get fatigued. Maybe they didn't scan it when they moved it. And then when you want to pick it, then it can't find it. So everything is tracked automatically. Um, and until the pallet is picked and takes it and is taken to the staging area. So, so that's forklift vision. Uh, and of course everything is computer vision based. Everything is documented. So you also have visuals of of the pallet in each location. So if you want to at the end you want to have like a timeline of the pallet, you know, what was the condition. What did it look like when it was it receiving when it was stored let's say. And um, you know, in rack A3 and then it was moved to rack uh, before or whatever. And then when it was taken to, uh, to staging. So that's, uh, forklift vision.
Ben Hopkins
[00.21.05]
Okay? Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. Go ahead. So I cut you off there. I'm sorry. Please continue. Oh,
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.21.11]
no. No. No problem. So. And then I have, um, we have, uh, smart, um, uh, shipping control solution. So the shipping control solution is we take the same cameras, cameras. We put them at the dock door, and then the systems, the system tracks each pallet as it goes on the truck, automatically making sure that each pallet goes on the wrong truck at the right time to the right destination. So we're connected to the mass in the back end. And we, via a very simple API call. We get information of each loading guide, each manifest, and then we can compare in real time. And that's where the value is that everything happens in real time. So let's say a forklift operator picks up a pallet and drives it into the wrong truck. And it's going an entirely different direction. Even before in two seconds, before the the operator enters the truck, they get a red signal and sound saying, this is not the right truck, back up. Don't put that pallet on this truck. It's the wrong one. And Avoiding that mistake in real time before that mistake happens. And then the claims and the chargebacks and all that. Um, so that's where the revolution is at. Everything is in real time. And the beauty of it is that we don't interrupt, um, the, the operators, uh, work methodology. They don't need to slow down. They don't need to stop. They just drive in full speed, just as they did before. And the system does its job.
Ben Hopkins
[00.22.51]
Yeah. Uh, very cool stuff. Yeah, that sounds very. I wish I had a chance to see the suitcase. That sounds, uh. That sounds very, very neat now. Yeah.
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.23.02]
You know, you know, let us know whenever you want. We can you tell us where you are? We'll come with the suitcase. Yeah, we can do that again because it's in a suitcase. We can even pull it up at the office if we want. We prefer doing it at the loading area, the dock door to see it work. An actual loading of a truck. But we can pull it up anywhere.
Ben Hopkins
[00.23.20]
Yeah, I'm. I'm, like, insanely curious now to just see the moment. You just see the vision. Like a big briefcase, like from old, uh, mafia movies. Or they just click, click pops open. I know
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.23.31]
you like to think of it as, like a mission impossible briefcase, right? Yeah.
Ben Hopkins
[00.23.35]
That one like big silver. Yeah. Uh. Very cool. So now I will say this, uh. Now I have. I research every guest before they appear on the podcast, as everyone should do and see, I've. So I've been to the website and I follow you guys on LinkedIn and I'll just say that Zimark seems to be, well, well entrenched, comfortable and knowing about their customer. They are you guys are very, very comfortable rolling up your sleeves. You're very, very comfortable inside of a warehouse, inside of the distribution center. You do not feel out of place there. And it doesn't seem like the the, the ops leaders feel like you're out of place either, like it comes off as very authentic. And that seems to be something that you guys are making a point to do versus, uh, you know, we're just taking the 10,000 mile view. Here you go. No, you're in there in the trenches with them. And so is that something that is by design and the operation that you run? And then how has sort of this how is this helped you in tailoring your your solutions and molding your solutions over time for the different people that, that you apply them to?
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.24.50]
Yeah. So that's something that I personally approach that I personally, uh, brought into the Zimark. And that relates to the background that we talked about. So even before our first product is even, you know, was it was in the, in the, in it was in the making. It was just in the planning. Yeah. Um, we started visiting warehouses and spending hours and days on end in the warehouse, talking to the management team, to the operations team, uh, observing, not just talking, but observing them work, seeing how they deal with customers, how they move their pallets, how they work with the WMS, and just learning, learning what they do, um, all their operations, their processes and discovering where their pain points are. And that's when we discovered that, you know, these are the solutions that we should give them. This is where the pain points are. So it was all everything was tailored into the needs and the way, not just the needs, but the way the teams operate on the on the ground. And it's not visiting just one warehouse, because when you visit one warehouse, you're looking at, okay, this is how they operate and this is going to stay a lot of, um, you know, solution developers or product developments make is that they feel like, okay, I've worked at a warehouse, maybe, or I've visited a warehouse. I know that, you know, this is what this is how it was done. This is the need and this is how I'm going to tailor the solution. But you need to visit, you know, several warehouses, you know, potentially dozens of them. And seeing an aggregation of, you know, where the common areas are, you know, because every warehouse runs differently. We all know that, right? Everything runs differently. But there are a lot of common grounds, and you need to find those. And you see like where and then to tailor a solution. That's not going to be right just for, uh, for one warehouse, but it's going to, you know, it's going to suit and bring a value to everyone across, across the board. This is. This is something that we've done. We've done from from day one.
Ben Hopkins
[00.26.49]
Yeah. I think that that is a fantastic approach that you have. And I, I have kind of mentored other ops leaders over my career, and that's a common mistake that people make. I worked at company X, it was a distribution center. It was a warehouse. It ran this way. Then they leave. They get promoted, they go to a different company and they apply that same stuff to the new place they go, and they run into some misalignment. Because if you've been to one warehouse, you've been to one warehouse. There are similarities right there. There are, but there are many, many intricacies and differences because every place has kind of been molded to to support that, that demand, right, to support that product or that customer. And if you miss that, if you miss that, and you just assume that they're all the same, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Right? And you're not going to have that. You're not going to have that understanding in that trust, I think, from people, because they'll feel like they don't they don't understand me. Yeah, this may have worked at that company down there, but but here we're different. Right. And, uh, you know, you I love that. I love that approach so much. I'm glad that you guys do that. And that will I think that will serve you well with this culture and this demographic of
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.28.02]
people. It's actually a two step approach. So what I just described was like the first step is discovering the need and seeing what type of solution and what value does it bring to or should it bring to the customer. But then there's the second part. And this comes to my background in user experience and product development. I also teach that in university. And I and I and I teach my students is that, you know, the first step is discovering the need and the what, and then we need to understand the how and to validate that we actually developed the right solution before bringing it to, to to market or while we're unfolding it to market. So after and while we're developing our solutions, we came back to the warehouses or to several different warehouses, and we show them what we developed. And we saw we saw their other we got their feedback and we saw their reactions. We actually let them play around with it. We showed them the screens. We showed them the solution. We showed them the camera, we put it on their devices, and we saw that it actually fits their operations and it made sense to them. And we listened to what they were saying. Um, and we did beta programs. So. All along. We're working and developing our solutions alongside with our customers. Uh, and they love being a part of the process as well, because they feel like, you know, you're listening to me and you're you're you're, you know, trying to give me the best, best solution possible.
Ben Hopkins
[00.29.34]
Yeah. Because there's so many instances, like if you have a warehouse manager or ops leader, they've been in this industry, call it 15 years or 20 years. There's probably been so many instances in their career where somebody just beat them over the head and said, this is the way we're going. Here's the new solution. You make this work. And internally they're complaining about it to their friend. And then, you know, we got to make this work done or understand. So they're so used to that. And so to have this new fresh approach where no, we're coming to you, we're ingrained in what you do. We know your pain points. Want to hear the solution. We want to hear your feedback. That's like a breath of fresh air, I think for people out there in this industry. And and then now it's a tough crowd, right? They have a kind of a thick, uh, outer veneer to, to get into. But once you do, though, once they let you inside and they develop that trust, it's like very sticky. It becomes very sticky right now. They they love this. You've earned that. And, uh, that that is the way to do that. So good for you guys. Man. That that is uh that is awesome. I love that approach. So now, Hila, you mentioned you mentioned the UI, uh, a little bit. So tell me a little bit about the UI, right. Like, what's the user experience like? You know what, how is it pulling the data and what can they expect? You know what? What is it? What does it feel like for them? Right. What are the nuts and bolts? How do they use it? What you see, uh, in terms of ops leaders or managers out there using the product.
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.30.54]
Yeah we were. So again, UX is really close to horror. Uh, and we worked really, really hard into making the solutions as plug and play as possible. We know that integrated technology is something that, you know, a lot of warehouse managers dread. Um, and especially, you know, the integration process and the setup process. So we made it really as plug and play as simple as possible. So for instance, for the forklift solution to get started, we don't even need WMS integration. We just got in the warehouse. Um, we you know, we we, we set up the cameras on the forklifts, which, you know, depending on the number of forklift you have and could take one day, two days, um, three days, again depending on the number of forklifts you have. Um, we we add our marker to your existing label. So you continue printing and using the same labels that you've used so far, just with an added, um, with an added code that we add to it and that's it. You're good to go. You can start, um, everything gets tracked by, by your forklift. So everything is really, really slick and simple. Um, and easy to use. You continue using your mouse. You don't need to be using. You don't need to change the way that you operate. You just need. You just have that second pair of eyes. We call ourselves the smart eyes of the WMS, so we know your WMS got their data for manual scanning right now. Now they can receive the data um, uh, for from, um, the forklift scanning. That's when we do integration. But even if we don't do integration in the beginning, we just work side by side. So you get your WMS, but you also get your Zimark validation. So whenever you want, whenever you needed, you just take, you know, your WMS inventory spreadsheet. You drag it into the system and you can just check and see if your inventory is up to date and everything is accurate. And if there are discrepancies, um, where they are, or if you're looking for a pallet and you can find it within your WMS, you go to the Zimark system, you search for it and you find it within one second. Uh, so there's two levels of, of, of working with the forklift vision, with W integration and without. But both can, can bring tremendous, tremendous value. So. Yeah. That's, um. That's the way it works with the shipping control. Uh, we do recommend WMS integration. We can do it without. You can drag and drop a manifest or loading guidance for our system, but that does add a manual task in the process, which you're really trying to avoid because we want to have 100% accuracy. And we know that if we have a human involved, there are going to be mistakes. So we do recommend WMS integration. Very, very simple API call. We can integrate with any RMS. Um, and then again setup is really really quick. These are off the shelf cameras that we use. So these are not proprietary hardware. These are very very simple off the shelf cameras which also makes our solutions very very affordable because this is not expensive expensive hardware. Uh so we put up the, the equipment again, um, adding our code to the, um, to your labels the same way for forklift vision using the same code. Right. So if you have our code, you can use it for both forklift vision and for shipping control. And and then you're good to go. Everything is plug and play. And then you have for shipping control, you actually have a screen that we put up in front of the gate. So when the operator drives into the truck, they get an indication in real time. If it's green, then that's the right pallet. If it's red, it's the wrong pallet. Very easy color coding. Uh, yeah. And part of the of the UI and the user experience.
Ben Hopkins
[00.34.57]
Yeah. Cool. Green, red. You can't mess that up. Everyone knows that for good and red for bad, right? So I love that. Now, now let me let me say so if people don't follow you on LinkedIn that they should. And there's a quote that you have said that I, that I love and and that is and read this good ops or good operations and good tech should expect human error and be designed to catch it early, which I love, because that is the reality. That is the operational reality of the world of warehousing and distribution there. Human error is a part of it, right? Yes. You can go out and perform a task one time and not make a mistake, and you get that feedback a lot from other people. But that's not you know, these people are working 50 hour weeks. It's loud, it's dusty, they're tired, they're fatigued. The scanners don't work. Sometimes they get distracted because somebody else said something to them, like the reality. It's kind of like driving. Yes, I can drive to this one time and and not make an error, but over a long enough time, I might have a traffic accident or I might have a ticket or something. It doesn't mean that I don't know how to drive. It doesn't mean that it doesn't pay it. It's just a reality of kind of the world. Right. And operations. And so how do you see technology kind of in that space, like how do you see tech continuing to grow and improve to kind of help ops leaders run their operation with that just Operational reality in mind. I love that. By the way, it's just great. It really resonated with me.
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.36.30]
Thank you. So a lot of people, we hear that a lot of people, they're saying, oh, technology is going to replace people. It's going to take their jobs and we see it the other way around. We see, you know, the floor workers, the operators. There are heroes, there are champions, and we want to make them better. We want to make them shine. And you know, we hear we've I've heard it so many times when I go on a warehouse floor and I hear the operation manager, you know, talking about the operators and the mistakes that they make, and you know, how disappointed they are. And I'm talking to the operators themselves, and they're frustrated with the mistakes and they feel bad, um, and they want to be better at their job, and we help them do that. We just tell them, you know, if you don't need to worry about scanning, you can actually, you know, focus on picking up the pallet the right way, you know, making sure that it's not damaged, um, you know, not getting into accidents, you know, really focusing on driving and moving the pallets around and doing your job because then you just need to remove that task. And also not making that mistake of not scanning your pallet or scanning the right, the wrong location and all that. Um, so the way that we see it is that technology just, you know, helps. People do a better job and do it easier. Make it easier and do it faster so they can also get more done in a day. Uh, yeah. You know, at the end, you know, a lot of warehouses, they measure, you know, their efficiency by the number of moves that an operator makes. And you just, you know, you make them heroes. We make them, you know, better at their jobs. Yeah.
Ben Hopkins
[00.38.16]
And I think in operations, and I've said this before on a podcast and a live event that I, that I did, you hear a lot where people want to do things that are going to make people go faster. We need to make them go faster. We need to press down on the accelerator more. But but you can get better gains if you just remove your foot from the brake, right? Like if you remove your foot from the brake, if you remove the friction in the end, in my opinion, that yields a net gain that's much more powerful, can last longer and better than just go faster, go faster, go faster. Because it's just it's just like human nature. You know, I say this to people all the time, like side conversation here, you know? Like what? How many times do you hit backspace on your keyboard every day. I like you know how to type. You know how to spell. You've been doing those since you were five years old, so why are you hitting backspace? Why are you making. Because it's like human nature. Right. It's just it's just. And so to just pretend that, oh, well, we're gonna coach our employees and they're going to be better. Yeah. Yeah, maybe. But the real solution, I think for them is like what you said, just designing the technology and the ability for them to have less friction and work and then watch them go watch and go see what they do when when they have the foot off the brake. Right. And there's less friction. So, uh, sorry, sorry for, uh, hijacking the in the interview, there was my own personal opinions about stuff. But our
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.39.37]
is one of the things that I love best is when other people explain the value of our product. Better than better than I can. So what? Yeah. Go on.
Ben Hopkins
[00.39.47]
All right, all right. So. Well. So where can people find out more about you? So I hesitate to ask this question because I know you guys are everywhere, right? You're all shows and you're doing some cool things at the shows and everything, but where can people find you? Uh, the best way to find you. And then what? You know, what do you what do you have working and cooking up for 20, 26 and beyond?
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.40.08]
Wow. 2 to 2 to a great question. So first of all, like you, like you mentioned in the beginning, we're we're in every show. You know, we were just that ex manifest. Uh, you can, you know, you can come and see us at every show and we do live demos at the shows as well. So we usually have those remote control, uh, small remote control forklifts people love to play around with. And we demonstrate how, uh, how our solutions work. Uh, of course, on LinkedIn, I'm active and our CEO, Corinne Levy. And then, um, of course, the Zimark page and our website, Z io. Um, so, you know, different channels where you can and you know, YouTube as well, and you can see the videos of our solutions, and we're very happy to, you know, once we understand that, you know, you have you're where you you know, you're working with pallets, you have the need your you know, our solutions are right for you. And we're very happy to schedule a demo, uh, what we call a proof of value, a POV at, uh, at your warehouse. So, um, that's definitely something that we look forward to doing more and more.
Ben Hopkins
[00.41.16]
Yeah. Very cool. Well, I encourage people to reach out to you and follow you and go check you guys out at the show. You know, I don't know if the the silver briefcase is going to be there and you're going to get that satisfaction here to pop open, but maybe and, um, I think
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.41.31]
the plans for 2026, uh, we have huge plans. Our roadmap is full of things that we're adding just for a computer vision based. Then we can add a lot of really amazing, um, technologies and capabilities to our solution. Um, so one of them is identifying damages. Um, in, in pallets. So we know what a pallet looks like, we can identify a palette that doesn't have a label. We know, we know that that's a huge pain that sometimes someone doesn't, you know, forgets again, human error forgets to put a label at receiving or puts the wrong label. So, you know, being able to identify it. And of course that of course damages um, and also flaw storage right now are um, uh, vision works, works on racks. Uh, we want to offer it for floor storage. That's, um, that's going to be rolling out to the market within, uh, within a few months. So exciting stuff ahead.
Ben Hopkins
[00.42.29]
Yeah, well, you guys are great. Hila. I mean, I love what you guys are doing and see, Zimark, I really appreciate you appearing on the podcast, and I. I wish you nothing but the best of luck for 2026 and beyond. I make my way to the show sometimes trying to get out there a little bit more. So I will definitely come. Stop by and say hi and see you guys if I do that. So, uh, thanks a lot. Yeah,
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.42.53]
great. Thanks for having me.
Ben Hopkins
[00.42.55]
Yeah, you got it. Thank you again.
Hilla Herzog Manor
[00.42.58]
All right.
Ben Hopkins
[00.42.59]
Bye bye. All right guys. That concludes today's show. So he'll thank you again for appearing on the podcast at Zimark. If you are an ops leader warehouse manager I would reach out to them, right? I would go research them. I would see what they got going on there. They have a great values, and the solution that they provide can really help you and can really help you run and manage operations. So kudos to them. Very good stuff from Zimark. So as the warehouse underground goes, please sign up for the community. If you haven't done so. We have over 300 people that are in the community. We have message boards, networking with some live events that are in there prerecorded, and some future live events coming down the pipe in the future. So sign up for the community if you haven't done so. And also please check out the other show that I do. It's like this show, but not. It's called the Tiger Team Show. I have a co-host. Jordan is her name. It's all about life in warehouses and DCS and FCS, but it has a sarcastic, witty, humorous slant to it. So if you're in that industry, we think that you will like that show. Please check that out today. So as this podcast goes, I will see you guys next week for episode number 43. Thank you. Bye bye.
