Vecna Robotics Podcast
Summary
We interviewed Michael Berman, the Chief Legal and Safety Officer at Vecna Robotics, all about their flexible armor space autonomous mobile robots. Whether you're an ops manager or other leader in distribution, you should be learning more about robotics as it is everywhere these days. Vecna Robotics is a great place to start as they are solving a key industry problem: labor availability. Typically, they have seen automation projects fail when there is a lack of commitment and planning, simply trying to automate a little without changing In this interview, a supply chain expert discusses the benefits and challenges of implementing warehouse automation and robotics in distribution centers. They emphasize the importance of understanding the entire automation process and committing fully to it in order to see real improvements. The operator must have a strong vision and involve key stakeholders, such as IT and floor staff, in the planning process. AI should never be responsible for safety, as it can have errors and cannot be audited. The key to a successful implementation is having a full Therobot named tigers promises to revolutionize warehousing operations by using artificial intelligence (AI) to automate routine tasks, reducing the need for human workers to perform dangerous and monotonous tasks. The robot features a simple but independent safety system, allowing humans to remotely monitor and control the robot to ensure safety. The Co-founder believes that automation is inevitable and will elevate the role of human workers to higher value tasks. The use of AI enables more complex tasks to be automated, such as Daniel welcomes Michael Cisternino, VP of Product Management at Vecna Robotics, on the podcast to discuss the advancements in automation and robotics in the warehouse industry. They discuss the benefits of integrating robots into warehousing, such as increased efficiency, precision, and safety. Michael also shares how people can prepare for future automation with Vecna Robotics, including identifying repetitive workflows and scheduling a site visit. They also touch on the importance of correctly sizing automation for peak versus non-peak times and invite
Transcription
Ben Hopkins
[00.00.07]
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to another episode at the Warehouse Underground podcast, Real Talk or Warehouse DC and FC professionals of all levels around the globe. I'm Ben, I'm the host of the show, and joining me today is Michael Berman. He's the chief legal and safety officer at Vecna Robotics. They're doing some really cool work. And the flexible armor space autonomous mobile robots. For those of you keeping score at home, everyone wants to learn as much about robotics in this industry as they can. Why? It's everywhere. It's in the magazines, it's in the trade shows. It's all over social media. And so if you're an ops manager out there or any type of leader in distribution, and you want to learn more about robotics, which you should, this will be a fantastic show for you today. So we're not necessarily going to try to sell you an Amr during this show, but we want to take you behind the scenes and. Have you understand what good looks like, what you should know ahead of time. What are some do's and don'ts? What are some mistakes that operations make? To really find out what you need to know about robotics and AMS and Vecna. And Michael Bearman is a perfect guest to talk to about that. So with that, I will bring him on the stage right now. Mike, sir. Thank you very much for joining the Warehouse Underground podcast. Great to have you on. How are you today, man? Doing great. Thanks
Michael Bearman
[00.01.28]
for having me on the show, Ben.
Ben Hopkins
[00.01.30]
Yeah, you got it. So it's much easier talking with you now in this setting than the last time we did the exploratory call. I was driving in and out of the hills of Tennessee on a business trip and cutting out. So I'm happy to be nice and stable and face to face. It's a much better situation. So really pumped about
Michael Bearman
[00.01.49]
this. Absolutely filthy Tennessee. You're beautiful. So but great. Great to be chatting face to face.
Ben Hopkins
[00.01.55]
Yeah. Absolutely. Right. So I talked a little bit about Vecna in the intro. And we'll get into robotics and armors and all that. But before we do though, can you just tell the audience a little bit about your background in the industry and what a day in the life is like for you now in your current role at Vecna Robotics? Absolutely. So I'm one of the co-founders of Vecna Robotics, have been been here with since the beginning, and kind of one of my roles is to be able to go and actually do safety audits at all of the sites where we deploy robots. And so I'm able to go to those every single warehouse and all the different locations across the country and just review the implementation, understand how the robots are working. Any safety adjustments that need to be made? A lot of times that's, uh, moving, adjusting, uh, the, the pedestrian paths, uh, kind of where the robots interrupt other
Michael Bearman
[00.02.52]
vehicles. And I joke around every time I go, I've never seen a manual truck without a dent in it. And so I recognized that, uh, that there is kind of that reality of, of those impacts of manually driven vehicles. And so we believe that introducing automation is a great way to improve the safety of a warehouse.
Ben Hopkins
[00.03.11]
Yeah, I myself, I've never seen that either. I've never been to a facility other one that other than one that was brand new. It was just opening. That's really the only place you're going to find equipment that doesn't have some some nicks and some dents in it and all that. So yeah, absolutely. So now you can go. So I went to the Vecna Robotics website, which Is really cool, by the way. Like, I hope people get a chance to check out your website because I thought it was really, really well done, but also like what Vecna is all about. And you know, I know you got lots of different customers out there, but but what is the problem that you're solving for them? I mean, how are you providing value to the different customers out there with your with your organization?
Michael Bearman
[00.03.53]
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we provide automated forklifts, tigers, pallet jacks. And what we're looking to do is to help automate those, those highly repetitive jobs. Um, and what we're able to see is a pretty significant increase in efficiency and throughput at different the different places we implement automation and safety to ends up just being kind of a side benefit to that. Um, and so uh, we look at, uh, you know, crosstalk put away case, uh, lots of different, uh, um, that workflows within the environment in the, in the warehouse environment and look at ways we can automate that. And we're really solving this kind of a labor availability issue. Uh, there's just a lot fewer folks that want to grow up and become forklift drivers. And so it's the older generations, uh, retires. Uh, there's just fewer replacements. And so we're helping support warehouses in that, in that area and automation.
Ben Hopkins
[00.04.46]
Yeah. And I think I think being on site at a lot of facilities is, is key. Like kind of you mentioned there because when you're looking at layout, flow, traffic safety, all those things, every facility is going to be different. I mean, even if facility kind of starts the same way, it usually molds into its own sort of thing as it, as it as it grows up. And so I think no two facilities are the same, even if it's for the a big company, I think where they, they kind of build them all the same way. They always mold and the a little something different. I mean, all the employees there put their own stamp on it. And so, I mean, are you seeing that when you go out there like it should be the same, but there's a little intricacy here. There's a little nook and cranny here that could cause a potential hiccup for, uh, for a robot or or for a safety.
Michael Bearman
[00.05.34]
Yeah, absolutely. It's it's we have some customers who have sites that are exactly mirrored physically and different at different places for their, their distribution centers, and they just run differently. And, you know, things like smaller, uh, containers or larger containers, different, just small changes in the aisle with, uh, there's, there's just a very impact. So the joke is we've seen one, one warehouse, you've seen one warehouse, they're always different. And, uh, um, you know, and the leadership there always makes a big difference at each of the different warehouses. And so even though they're physically the same leadership at the site, uh, they have a big impact on how things are run, how efficient they are, how clean it is. And, uh, you know, the reality is there's no warehouse that that doesn't have things, you know, where they're not always belonging. But, uh, there's a pretty big difference between different warehouses and how they're run.
Ben Hopkins
[00.06.24]
Yeah, I think it's a lot like the human body. I mean, no two human bodies are the same, even though they're. They're the same, but they're not the same. And even your own body, sometimes it's sick, sometimes it's feeling good. Sometimes you gain in weight, sometimes you're losing weight. You know, all these things can change all the time. And I think the warehouse is kind of that, that same type type dynamic. So now let's talk about automation projects at a big level. Right. There is a little bit some operators out there. Some leaders will have apprehension when it comes to in taking command of the big automation project, because there's a lot that rides on that. I mean, there's a lot of responsibility, there's a lot of risk and everything. And so sometimes there are I mean, let's just call a spade a spade. I mean, there are and there have been some automation projects that have been taken on out there in the industry that that fail. I mean, that just that happens. I think that's just the nature of the beast. And so when that happens, though, I mean, what I mean are there is there always a single root cause? Is there a lot of variation from your seat? What are some things that cause some, some automation projects to fail? And, you know, what are some things that are making them good and succeed?
Michael Bearman
[00.07.41]
Yeah. I think that, you know, there is definitely different reasons why why they fail. I think there's some themes to those those reasons why automation fail. Um, you know, part of it is making sure that there's good planning and understanding of what, what you're trying to automate. Um, you know, there's also risk associated with getting kind of the IT infrastructure all connected and ready to go. Uh, but I think some of the ones that we see most frequently is kind of that, that half commitment, that half step into automation. Um, and this thought that, hey, I'm just going to automate just a little bit and, and see how it goes. And then if it's successful kind of then, then then really commit. Um, and there's just a pitfall when you have kind of a half automation where you have humans doing the work and automation doing the work, where there's challenges to really see the return on investment that you'd expect. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One is, uh, you know, the humans and the robot sometimes are competing for work. Um, and, and because of that, the the robot may make it information late, or the human may get frustrated with the robots that go a little bit slower than they do. Um, and then the other aspect of, of, of that is that you actually are not making changes to the overall approach. You're just trying to automate what's been done in the past. And one of the strengths of automation is actually changing the workflows and seeing the true improvement. And so we had just a kind of the counter example was where we had a customer fully automated their their their case picking. They're able to kind of double their throughput with half the people, because instead of having, you know, a person just driving a vehicle and jumping off to pick that one particular order, they have the robots doing all the travel, and the pickers are just staying in an area, and they're spending most of their time just picking instead of writing. And so that full commitment, if you had done that halfway, it just couldn't have worked. You would have still had, you know, robots driving and humans driving in that in that same space, causing congestion and then not changing the workflow. And so kind of that, that had those half measures. I think, you know, pilots are understandable from the perspective of, um, you know, proof, proof, prove the technology, but you can't expect to see the real process improvements, the real throughput, the real gains, unless you fully commit to automating the entire work.
Ben Hopkins
[00.09.59]
Yeah. So I, I was in the Air Force before I was in distribution. Not everybody knows about that, knows that about me. And it's kind of like taking off in a jet. There's no half measure to this when if you're going to take off you, you must be all in. You are taking off. You must have a plan. You must have contingency plan. And if you do, it can go fantastic. But if you just sort of say, well, I'm going to just kind of dip my toe in it, we're going to take off, I think. And then yeah, the like doesn't work that way. And, and so I think, I think maybe it sounds like this is not quite as severe and as uh, as that, but it does sound like it's sort of a similar type of environment where you got to understand all the things that go into it well and then go all in. If you do, it can work out fantastic, but if you just sort of dip your toe in it, this is not the this is not the area of the industry to just dip your toe into something. And that's it sounds like when people have a bad experience and it's not necessarily the fault of the robotics company or the automation company, it's just really the fault of the operator for not really fully having all their ducks in a row and understanding of how it all is going to work. The type of lift that it is, is that a fair statement? I'm not trying to call out operators or organizations out there, but it seems like that may be in place. What do you see? I think
Michael Bearman
[00.11.20]
that is just a really great analogy. And I know, you know, I've never certainly been in a fighter pilot, that I've been in a small plane with a friend, and there was all these checklists to go through and bridge and before and likewise, warehouse automation, you want to have all of that planning in advance. And then when you go you got to go. You got to make that commitment. But that that pre-work is just as important. And so there's a lot of things that you want to do in the pre-work. But once you're making that commitment, you need to to actually change your your processes and your procedures and to truly see the benefits. And I think that's a fabulous analogy.
Ben Hopkins
[00.11.56]
Yeah. And let me ask this question like, because you you've been doing this for a long time and so you've met many different leaders and you've done this. So what are what are common mistakes that, that they sometimes make. And also on top of that, do you sort of have a second sense when you meet someone, when you begin to peel back the operation that I think that these folks are going to be prone to making mistake a mistake be mistake be because I've seen this a hundred times, like, what are some things that they're messing up ahead of time? I know we talked about like not understanding the overall scope, but, you know, at more granular level. What are some mistakes that you see out there?
Michael Bearman
[00.12.37]
Yeah, I think that, um, you know, some of the mistakes that you see are just kind of that failure to plan those, those original checklists just to make sure they understand what am I trying to accomplish? What is the the the success criteria? Um, you know, sometimes people come into it and just say, hey, I just want to see I have no success, success criteria. Um, just to just just to kind of get my toe into it. And, uh, because of that, there's just really it's really hard to understand kind of what you're trying to accomplish. And, uh, because of that, there's just it's just just difficult to accomplish. You don't know where you're going. You know, you don't know. You don't know if you've ever arrived. So that's kind of that initial those those early checklists.
Ben Hopkins
[00.13.19]
Well, but but are they I mean are they does it require coordination with their IT department. Do they need to have engineering. Is it just something that the Ops leaders can do from kind of like a floor level operations type level, like who all needs to be involved in in the planning? I mean, does it go all the way up to the to the. See. CFO and the CEO. Like you know, how does it. How does it work in terms of building that consensus and who needs to do what? Um, in each one of those different silos, I guess. Yeah.
Michael Bearman
[00.13.51]
So I think first, strong vision of what we're trying to accomplish. And then absolutely, there is a lot of stakeholders that need to be involved in this. And I think, you know, the operational leader is is a key part of this, because they're they're going to be the one that's going to be responsible. But yeah, we have to have the IT department involved. We have to have, uh, you know, the the staff, the floor staff involved and understanding how the manual drivers, there's just the entire team. And so it is a full change management operation to introduce, uh, the automation into a facility. And so having, having those, those, those team members be able to, uh, support that. And, you know, operations manager are very busy. And so it's also really important that they have a project manager who can devote, you know, their their focus to this and report up to the operations manager. And so having someone that's, that's owning the project from the, from the customer side and interacting with the project management on the the robotic implementation vendor side, uh, is crucial. And, you know, we've got all the checklists, you know. Ready and we start those things early. We have kind of that whole plan. And so if you have the right team and the commitment, you don't have to know everything. You just have to be able to be willing to get those team members involved, um, to, to to make it successful. And then, you know, just that, that second, you know, reiterate that commitment. You know, we had one implementation where we had, uh, humans and robots doing the same job, and they were competing, uh, and it was connected to a warehouse management system. And, and the, the, the manual drivers wouldn't update the WMS until they completed the task. So it's sometimes to take like five minutes after they started. And so we'd go there and it had already been picked and taken away. And so uh, kind of having that, that, that secondary understanding of like, how is this going to work? How are we going to make sure that everything's operating at the with the right information?
Ben Hopkins
[00.15.44]
Yeah, I think that's a good point. And you brought up another good point. And that is and this is my advice. Right. So we'll get into advice that we have for operators out there if they're listening. But my advice, having gone through a project like this before in the past and and you mentioned it, this is almost a full time job when it's happening. So the risk of your ops manager or senior ops manager most of your day is just. Troubleshooting and contingency planning. And you're doing this and you're going to this, and you're going to this and you're trying to serve customers. You got the commercial team. Who is when's this going to ship everything customer service the whole bit. And then you oh on the side I'm kind of good. Don't do that. If you don't have all 100% focus on this, then you need to dedicate somebody on your team that can because you'll just this will be an absolute catastrophe if you do not. So that's my advice to folks out there, like have somebody that is doing this damn near full time job when it's ongoing, and if it's if it's you, great. If not, you need that. You need to assign somebody that you trust to to do that, that, that can hold this up to, to keep it from failing. So that's my advice. Uh, I think that's
Michael Bearman
[00.16.58]
fabulous advice. Like, it's, it's, you know, an implementation could be, you know, two weeks to to to eight weeks. And it's pretty intense during those 2 to 8 weeks that you need to be having that daily interaction, that daily follow up kind of understanding, meeting with the team, you know, pushing those things, opening those gates, getting those questions answered and then just really understanding the, uh, the workflow in the, in the site. So there's a lot of times we'll, we'll create a design in advance and we get to the site to, to implement it. And um, you know, reality hits. Right. And so we're like, oh, we actually do want to avoid this intersection. It's super busy, you know, and at this specifically this time of day. And so we want to, um, you know, try to try to prevent that from becoming a bottleneck. And so being there and actually seeing kind of those initial designs implemented and walking through with them and watching them, you learn a lot. And it's operations, people that have the best knowledge and are able to give us great feedback. And so that's a big, important part of the commitment.
Ben Hopkins
[00.18.03]
Yeah. Yeah I agree. I mean, you gotta you gotta commit to that. If you do it, we'll go. We'll go much smoother. So now let me shift gears a little bit. Artificial intelligence I mean, can't do a podcast in supply chain right now without talking about artificial intelligence. It's everywhere. Right? For a good reason. Um, but AI has a place I feel like when it comes to robotics and how to optimize workflows. But I've heard you talk about this before, that it should never be responsible for safety. And, you know, in the in the vein of people want to use AI to do everything, and it should be in everything. You've put a hard stop to that and say and not safety. So why do you what's the difference? What's the difference there? And why is that so critical? Yeah,
Michael Bearman
[00.18.53]
I think everyone's had an experience with a chatbot where you ask it a question and it hallucinates and gives you an answer with absolute confidence that you know is completely wrong. Um, and you know, that's okay. In kind of a chatbot chatbot context, uh, even though we've seen some kind of embarrassing examples of that. But in a real physical world, if a robot has a hallucination and, uh, you know, it's just it's not safe with with the humans around it and drive into structures, driving to humans. And so you can never rely on AI because you don't know how or why it's doing things. There's no real auditable trail of understanding. If you can't understand why it did something, it's never it never can be relied on for safety. And so safety needs to be completely independent. AI enables a lot of great things, but you can't have it hallucinated on the field. And so you have to have a completely independent safety system.
Ben Hopkins
[00.19.45]
Yeah. And I think in the warehousing world, there are many situations that many warehouse managers will appreciate this where they've seen this play out many times. I've seen this same thing happen many times, but there are a lot where they look at it and go, wow, I've never seen this happen. This is the craziest thing. And so that happens in warehousing. Even if you have standard work and these distribution centers that do the same thing over and over and over, every ops leader, I guarantee you, has a story of something that they had to react to and something that they had to manage through, that there was no precedent for that they had never seen. And it doesn't seem like to me that a computer would like that very much. A robot would like that very much. Your AI would like that very much. It likes to rely on what's known and what's out there versus holy crap, this is a brand new thing. And that doesn't seem, um, very, very cool to me. But maybe I'm seeing that wrong. But you know what? What do you think of it? I
Michael Bearman
[00.20.46]
think absolutely right there. There is always going to be those edge cases that no one expects. And so and in some sense, you want a very simple safety system and and have it completely independent and then just stop if it doesn't understand the situation, the situation hasn't seen before, stop. And then what we have in ours is we have the ability to remotely connect in and have a human who's experiencing warehouse operations look at the situation and determine, hey, this is something I can navigate around. I can continue to do work. Or is this something where I need to call for someone locally to go and help that robot? And like 99% of the time is something that we can remotely kind of triage and get the robot going on its way. But that 1%, hey, we're very glad we had a human look at it and said, yeah, and connected with the warehouse operators and say, hey, by the way, you have a spill of of of oil all across the road. We're not going to be we don't want to be driving across that and expecting the safety systems to continue to work or um, you know, you have a conveyor that's decided that it's gone crazy and, and broken and we can't drop off to it anymore. You need to have someone come in and take a look at it. And so we're able to do that. And that's because we have that very independent, simple safety system to, uh, to stop when things are unexpected.
Ben Hopkins
[00.22.04]
Yeah, that's really cool. How does that work? So you said they they remote in. So if I'm a ops leader and I have something come up, do I do I contact them and do they respond? Do they just know that through some type of alert from the robot? Like how? How's that work? Sounds like a pretty cool feature.
Michael Bearman
[00.22.20]
Yeah. So the robot, actually, if it's not able to move for like 10s, it will alert our team back into in in the Boston area and we will be able to have a camera view to look at what the situation is. And we also have a view of all the sensors. And we're able to, um, give it either the okay to proceed or give it a little hint to move a certain direction, or we actually we generally have a chat with the with the customer operations. And so if we aren't able to resolve it remotely, we'll send a chat message to the local staff and we'll tell this people, hey, this is exactly where it is and how it needs to be handled. And like kind of a typical example of something that needs to be handled, uh, locally as if there's a broken pallet. So sometimes we'll pick something up and, and the robot will push it and we push maybe six inches before we say, hey, there's something wrong with this particular pallet. So the person will come on and look and they're like, oh yeah, that's clearly a broken pallet. So we need someone locally to come in and take care of that. and and and then local staff takes care of it. But a lot of things are. Pay there stretch rep on the on the floor. That's that's blocking. That's that's fine. We can proceed over the stretch wrap and things like that. And so it's something that we think makes a big difference, because not only do we know exactly what's happened when we contact the local staff, we know exactly where the robot is. So they don't have to go walking around the warehouse looking for it. But it keeps, keeps that that the operations continuing and moving and making progress. And then, hey, stopping when there's something that needs, uh, either our assistance remotely or local assistance. Yeah.
Ben Hopkins
[00.23.55]
That's cool. It's like, um, like a mars. Like a mars rover. You can control the Mars rover from from Earth. You know, you control the robot from Boston.
Michael Bearman
[00.24.05]
So luckily we have less lag than they do on the on the Mars. So we don't have to wait three minutes for our commands to get there so we can do a little bit more complex. And we're, we're seeing we're seeing what's going on in real time. So it's a it's a great way to improve. Uh, um, uh, you know, make sure that the robots are operating safely but also efficiently if it's, you know, the safest thing is something that never moves. But we want these robots always moving, always doing work. Uh, and so that's why we're, we're always looking at that and making ways for the robot to, to progress.
Ben Hopkins
[00.24.37]
Yeah. Really cool. Yeah, really really cool. So let me ask this question to you. I put yourself I'm I'm operator. So I work in operations as a day job. Um, not a lot of people know that, but I do. So put yourself in the operator's shoes. If, if, if I want to explore this with a potential robotics provider. Uh, so what sort of questions should I ask them about safety testing, how much human oversight it does or doesn't require? Like what? What are the questions? Some good questions that I should be asking. So if I was to go buy a used car, I go to a visor to say, hey, you know what? Should I ask the car salesman? Because I'm not an expert. So if I'm interested in this, I'm not an expert. What are some things that that I should be asking some vendors out there?
Michael Bearman
[00.25.27]
Yeah. So at a very first level, you want to make sure that they comply with the safety standards. And so armors have safety standards. Uh, our 150856 they need to comply with those. That's kind of the basic first level, and we'd expect everyone to have that kind of at the second level is whether they can fully reconstruct any incident that that does occur. Um, and so there are always going to be incident. Anyone that tells you that they don't have any incidents, they're clearly not operating in a real environment with manual drivers. Um, and so, um, you know, what is the process, process, procedure when an incident occurs, can they create a full recreation? Can they tell you exactly what happened? And that way you can become, uh, the site can continuously improve and make sure, hey, um, you know, recognize maybe this is a blind spot we need to put a mirror up on, uh, because, uh, our even though we have a stop sign there, our manual drivers aren't stopping, and they're just blowing through and an incident occurs. Um, and so being able to have that confidence of knowing exactly what happens when every person says, I think that's a critical thing, because only when you understand it can you make those improvements and, um, truly trust kind of those safety systems and so that that. That's what I would put in there is, hey, what happens when there's an incident, can you recreate it. And um, and how do you improve. Yeah, I think yeah. It's always good to have, uh, somebody in your corner. Always good to have somebody who knows what you should be asking. Knows where the you know, where the weak points are and those type of things. So I appreciate that. I think I think that's all fair game. So now neither one of us has a crystal ball. There are some people that claim that they do have a crystal ball, and they know exactly how the future of the supply chain industry is going to go. I have my doubts on that. But what do you think? I mean, just just your opinion. I mean, there's no right or wrong answer to this. I mean, how is this all going to evolve? I mean, how do you see this, this evolving and rolling out over the next two, five, ten years in terms of warehouse employees, distribution center employees, robotics and artificial intelligence. You know, as we continue to to look to the future, we think, I think, that fewer people are going to be wanting to do these kind of dirty, dangerous, dull jobs, kind of the repetitive jobs. And and so I think automation in some sense is inevitable. And what we've actually seen is that the folks, the team members that get to work with the robots, they get to upskill their their expertise to become, you know, robot assistants. They get to understand automation and technology, and they're able to provide much higher value in the value chain. And so there's kind of that excitement. And so I think that that's that's some of the future is to realize it's not a war between kind of human workers and robotic workers. Uh, we're big believers that there is always going to be humans in the loop as far as participating and assisting. And we even some of our remote operators who are previous warehouse workers. And so they have kind of that expertise for being in the warehouse where they can now be remotely assisting robots. And so we think that that's continually going to be a continuous trend. And then kind of the cool thing with AI is it just continues to enable a lot more, um, intricate or difficult things to become possible through automation. And so we've recently automated, um, auto hitching and hitching with our tigers. It wasn't something that we could before, but with the help of AI, we're now able to do that in a very reliable, effective way. And so it's something that's made a big difference. And so we've had some of our previous sites that actually had to, you know, manually unhitch or hitch or always leave the carts attached. They'd be able to go to that kind of asynchronous, um, auto hitch carts and let them go and, you know, double the number of trips that they're making. And so it makes a big impact to not always have to have someone there. And it's, you know, when you automate that, it makes it safer as well. I know that, you know, one of the risks that that warehouses have is, uh, even if manual drivers is someone not looking backwards in the hitch and having an instant occur. And so it's going to continue to enable more and more and better automation as we as we go forward. So I think that's a little bit of the future. And I but I still think that there's always going to be a need for those humans to work with the robots and work within the warehouse to do those things that humans do best.
Ben Hopkins
[00.29.47]
Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think I agree with you on that. So. Cool. Now let me ask this if I want to work with Vecna Robotics. So if I want you to come in and do implementation at my sites, what can I do now? What do I do now to get ready for for the for the future, with with you, with Vecna Robotics? And then what is it kind of look like, taste like, smell like during, uh, implementation phase. I mean, what can people expect for that, um, in terms of getting ready for the future?
Michael Bearman
[00.30.21]
Yeah. So the first thing to do is to identify kind of what workflows are repetitive. So if it's something that happens, you know, once a day or, you know, seven times a week, it's probably not a great workflow for automation. So something that's happening with with regularity that's predictable that, that that there's, there's high value for something that you want to always be happening. Um, you know, if you're if one of the benefits of automation is that, you know, you can have it run during lunch breaks or run overnight when there's not a non employees there. So those type of things that you think of, hey if if I can continuously do that that's a great candidate for automation. Whether it's uh you know cross docking or put away or case pick, those are, you know, things that are happening with frequency, uh, kind of the next thing you want to do is to talk to an expert just to, to understand, uh, we have a lot of discovery calls where we just have, um, you know, providing us the CAD of the warehouse and kind of your throughput statistics, and we're able to kind of help you identify, you know, good things for. For for automation and what might work what it would look like. And that's a great. Kind of initial step is talking to someone, the expert to help you identify those. And then always I think the third thing is to always have a side visit. Um, so the cat. Is one thing. The raw numbers on the page is another thing. Uh, so just do a site visit where you actually look at the the warehouse together and look at the different workflows, look at how the manual traffic is going. Um, makes a big difference in actually having a successful, uh, solution and a project. And then kind of the, uh, an interesting, uh, fourth thing is, um, uh, you know, there's a lot of warehouses have kind of huge swings between peak and non-peak. Oh, yeah. Uh, as far as throughput and, uh, there's a tendency to want to size to, uh, your peak number, um, which is, uh, one of the nice things about automation is you don't have to. Um, and so if you if you do size two peak, you'll end up having way more robust than you did. So half the year or three fourths of the year, they're going to be idle. And you're like, ah, why am I paying for all these robots that I'm doing it? Yeah. Um, and so, um, there is that opportunity with automation to kind of flex additional robots in, during peak and not have them all sitting there all the time.
Ben Hopkins
[00.32.43]
Yeah. And that's, that's right. At the moment that the CFO is going to come in and take a tour of the facility. You know,
Michael Bearman
[00.32.50]
he he or she's going to be walking around and that's what they're going to see. Here's ten robots just sitting here. And so then you then you get to have to answer the CFO. They they never come in there when it's peak busy season. It's always when. Yeah. When things are when assets are being underutilized is when the CFO decides to take their walkthrough of the facility. It never fails. So and then it's there. They make their assessment of what they see in that moment. So no disrespect. I love CFOs, right? I'm not I'm not I'm not bagging on CFOs out there. Good folks.
Ben Hopkins
[00.33.20]
Um, you got to do more than one walkthrough. You got you gotta do 25 to really get the full picture. So. Cool. Well, so where can people find out more about you and Vecna Robotics? Like I mentioned in the beginning? The the website is really cool. I got people should check that out. That's really neat website. It's very you know, there's a lot of, um, you know, a lot of good photos in there, videos in there, very interactive. It makes a case for robotics and everything. So. But where can people find out about you if they want to learn more about you or the or the company? Uh,
Michael Bearman
[00.33.52]
so Vecna robotics.com and, uh, you know, take a look and reach out. We have a lot of folks that are just there ready to answer questions and help you understand. Uh, we do have projects for customers or people that reach out and they'll say, hey, you're not quite ready for automation yet, and that's that's okay. And we'll help them understand kind of what are some of the things that that will help get them there. Uh, but we are always willing to chat with different warehouse users and help them understand what's what's the right thing for them. And so to come, come to our website, website Vector Robotics Comm, and certainly reach out to them and certainly feel free to reach out to me as well. Be glad to answer additional questions that folks might have. And, uh, you know, Michael and Vecna Robotics. Com glad to chat with
Ben Hopkins
[00.34.36]
anyone. Cool. Absolutely. Well, I hope people go check that out. Well, so, Mike, I appreciate you appearing on the podcast. So it's really cool chatting with you. Really always good to learn more about what's coming down the pike. You know, what's the future of the latest and greatest? And I hope more people do that. So a lot of cool, exciting things going on at Vecna Robotics. It was really cool learning about it. So, uh, I'm back anytime. It was really good having you on the show. Appreciate it.
Michael Bearman
[00.35.00]
Thanks, Daniel. It's a pleasure.
Ben Hopkins
[00.35.02]
Yeah, you got it, man. Take care. I'll see you on the LinkedIn streets as they say goodbye to almost everybody. All right, take care. Michael. Bye bye. Take care. All right, goes check out the robotics. Go to their website today. It's very cool. I have done it. And again my beerman fantastic guests. Really appreciate him coming on the show and talking more about Vector Robotics and give them a little bit of a behind the scenes look. What you need to know as an operator out there. So I really appreciate that. Check and check them out today as the warehouse underground goes. Please sign up for the community. We have 343 people, I think, that have signed up for the community at the warehouse underground comm all free inside the community, message boards and networking and resources and knowledge share and some previous live shows that we've done in their round tables and more come down in the future. So if you're in the industry, you should check that out and become a member today. Free. Check it out, see what you think, let me know what you think. And also please check out the other show that I do with my co-host Jordan. It's called the Tiger Team Show. It's all about life and warehouses and DCS and FCS, but it's like what you would talk about in the break room after HR went home for the day. You get the drift. Witty humor, sarcasm. If you need some light hearted relief in the industry, check out that show. We think that you will like it and appreciate it and understand what we're talking about right away when you check that show out. So as this podcast goes, I will see you guys next week for another episode. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.
