Deidre Cusack of Dematic shares key lessons from business mentors, and how she sees automation and customer behavior evolving supply chain.
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Danny:
- Well hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I'm Danny Gonzales, and today I'm joined by Dee Cusack who is the chief technology officer at Dematic. Dee, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.
Dee:
- Happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
Danny:
- Well the pleasure's all mine here. I'm very excited. For the audience who's watching, we had a very lively pre-recorded discussion that we're going to wrap in, and I'm excited to get into it. For those who are unfamiliar with Dematic right now, who's Dematic, and what do you guys do?
Dee:
- Dematic is part of the KION Group. Dematic has actually been in existence for 203 years, and we are essentially the engine that goes behind ecommerce. We do supply chain automation, started in the early years with simple machines like conveyors and racking and so forth. Today we really are a very complex solution provider, full integrator in the supply chain automation space with obviously a big impact on software and robotics and all the latest technology. That's what we do.
Danny:
- Excellent. Well ecommerce has done nothing but absolutely exploded. It was a huge growth trend before this thing called Covid came along, but then certainly afterwards it's just been this massive explosion. I'm sure that we're going to get into some more of the insights and different things that are happening in the industry with that a little later on in the episode. Right now I would love to get to know a little bit more about you. I'd like to know more about Dee. Dee, tell me, how did you get into this space? Take me back. Is this something that you said, “Hey,” —maybe when you were a kid? “I want to go into supply chain; I want to get into the technology space.” How did this all come about?
Dee:
- I'd love to say that I had this vision when I was four, but that would be stretching it a little bit.
Danny:
- You were six. Okay, I got it.
Dee:
- No, but I started my career in R&D. I have a couple of engineering degrees, and I've always been interested in how to apply technology into markets, and particularly market niches to help a business grow in a rapid and profitable way. I started my career in R&D. I then went into business development, and then more on managing entire businesses, P&Ls that were global for a variety of different markets. I did that for about 20 years and decided to come back to my roots a little bit more. A friend of mine, a colleague of mine that I used to work with called me up and said, "Look, there's this wonderful company that I'm working with called Dematic; we'd love for you to come in and look at some of the opportunities." And so the opportunity to go and lead the technology in a meaningful way, particularly with the software that the company had and to really develop a strategy to help the company grow in a sustainable way but also bring our solutions to the next level was really compelling for me. As I started to learn more about the company and the industry, I started to get more and more excited about it. And just coincidentally, you said ecommerce exploding, I joined Dematic just about the time that the lockdown started with Covid. I can tell you, it's been an exciting ride, really trying to keep up with the pace of the market but also the changing demands in the marketplace since being part of Dematic. I just can't say enough good things about the industry, the company,

Pieter Krynauw shares his career history and how ThruWave is applying millimeter wave tech to save retailers millions in fraudulent returns.
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Danny:
- Well hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. I'm Danny Gonzales, and today my guest is a company called ThruWave. I have Pieter Krynauw who is the CEO. We met at MODEX in 2022, and so I'm super excited to have you join me today, Pieter.
Pieter:
- Hey, thank you. Nice to be with you guys.
Danny:
- Well this is exciting. You guys have some really interesting technology. There's been several awards that you guys have won over the last several years. For those who aren't familiar with who you guys are, who ThruWave is, give me a little bit of a high-level of who you are and what you do.
Pieter:
- Yeah, sure. At a high level, we're a small start-up based in Seattle. We've just developed some amazing, ground-breaking millimeter wave ocular vision technology that can sense through cardboard, plastic, at very high speeds making it a great solution to inspect packages that move along a conveyor. We construct a 3D digital image of what's inside a cardboard box or a plastic tote providing the ability to verify quantity, condition, content for our supply chain customers. We use simple hardware technology like this, and then it's all software to analyze and support our customers.
Danny:
- Excellent. That's pretty cool. I remember we demoed it; I think we did some video content there. It seemed like it was very interesting technology. We'll get into that here in a little bit more in the episode, but right now we're going to pivot, go to one of my favorite sections just to learn a little bit more about you, Pieter. I want to learn about your background, how you got to where you are, hear your story a little bit. Take me back; how did you get into this space? Was it something that, did you go to school for engineering? What was that?
Pieter:
- Yeah, it's a long journey and a longer story. I grew up in South Africa. After college I moved to the UK, probably had a plane ticket and £100 in my pocket. Might've been a little bit more, but it didn't feel like a lot at the time. I had some software and computer networking training at the time. This being the late 90s, I was able to find a really nice job at a small data company in the UK, and I had the opportunity to work with just some fantastic customers, a wide variety of customers in the UK which was really fantastic for me as a young person, young professional. I returned to South Africa after about two years in the UK, did an MBA, and I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity with Honeywell. We had a large contract with South Africa's largest petrochemical company, so I jumped straight into the fire. I worked myself up, sideways, up again, into various positions in South Africa, the Middle East, China, and into the US working in a variety of roles, mostly in process automation, industrial process automation. Honeywell then acquired a material handling company a few years after I got to the US. I went over shortly after to lead that business. That's the short story of how I got into the supply chain space.
Danny:
- Excellent. Through that journey—obviously we got the short, we got the abridged version. Totally get it. I'm sure there's a lot of things that probably,

Jim Liefer of Ambi Robotics shares his view of prioritizing customer desires and workforce quality of life when implementing ai and robotics.
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Danny:
- Well hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. I'm joined by Jim Liefer who is the CEO of Ambi Robotics. Jim, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.
Jim:
- Absolutely. Thanks for having me here, Danny.
Danny:
- Well I'm excited to jump into our episode, learn a little bit more about you. Learn a little bit more about Ambi. It sounds like you're a robotics company, based on the name. I'm just going out on a limb there.
Jim:
- We are an AI Robotics company. That is absolutely right.
Danny:
- So tell me a little bit about—what exactly are you guys doing? What are the problems that you're solving today?
Jim:
- Yeah, so Ambi Robotics is an AI Robotics company, as you guessed. We are developing solutions that empower people. Primarily we are in the world of supply chain at the moment, so we are enabling those humans to work smarter. If you think of it in the way of right now the work that they do out there in the parcel world, in that industry, and also in the fulfillment world for retail operations, they are moving packages and parcels around. Our technology allows them to become robot handlers instead of package handlers. That is what the technology does, and that is where our focus is today.
Danny:
- Excellent, alright. Well sounds good. Sounds like a lot of the companies that we've talked to, there has just been such a huge acceleration of automation, robotics technology to solve a lot of the challenges that are going on now that were honestly present before the pandemic, but certainly accelerated afterwards exponentially with the, you mentioned specifically in the parcel or warehousing. Ecommerce has exploded. Then there's nobody there. The labor has dropped.
Jim:
- Yeah, it's a couple of things. The way that I always think of this is that all of us consumers, we're on this path anyway of moving from brick-and-mortar shopping into ecommerce, going on our phone, having something arrive at our door basically. Then when the pandemic hit, it just accelerated that 5 or 10 years. I also, the way that I've seen this at least here at Ambi Robotics is that during that time where everyone was sort of in their bunker during the pandemic, there was a lot of progress made, a lot of progress made on the AI side, a lot of progress made around robotics and configurations. As you've said, Danny, there aren't humans anymore, so it created this moment where the customer sort of has to find this solution because we can't serve the need anymore. That's the journey through the pandemic as I see it.
Danny:
- Oh, sure, absolutely. I'm excited to jump into that a little bit more as we get a little bit later in the episode. Right now—it's one of my favorite parts. This is when I want to get to learn a little bit more about you. We get to learn more about Jim. Jim, so tell me. How did you get into this industry? How did you get into this space? Take me back.
Jim:
- Okay, well as you can see I have a few years on me, so we'll go way back.
Danny:
- You don't look any older than 25. Come on, man.
Jim:
- So I actually started as a computer operator for a bank. I also was mainframe systems operator, had the overnight shift. I was the sole operator, by the way, for this bank. I had this huge amount of responsibility on me to make sure that all the systems were working every day when the bank opened. Eventually I moved from that heavy set of responsibility into the...

Bob Kuniega of Lanco shares how the industry's lean practices wax and wane, and how manufacturers need to improve their recruiting methods.
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Danny:
- Hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. I am joined by the president and CEO of Lanco Integrated, Bob Kuniega. Bob, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.
Bob:
- Very welcome, Danny. I'm glad to be here.
Danny:
- Alright, well I'm glad to interview you. We met, we were at the ASSEMBLY Show. We were talking about this before, in Chicago in 2021. My dates are all—with all the Covid stuff, time has just gotten all messed up. But yeah, it was the ASSEMBLY Show in Chicago. I think we met you guys there. You guys have some pretty cool technology and solutions. I think you guys were showcasing a solution with a partnership you had with I think Stäubli at that point. And so anyways, caught our interest, started talking, and here we are. For those who aren't familiar with Lanco, could you just give me a quick high-level of who you guys are and what you do?
Bob:
- Sure, great. So Lanco, we make custom automated assembly and test machines really for the assembly and the testing of small to medium parts. Been around over 35 years; we have over 8000 machines stationed around the world. What we do is we work typically with an end customer who has a product and wants to get it to market and wants to automate the assembly end or test processes. We're doing the concept. We're doing the design. We're doing the build and then the eventual validation and certification and tests that the product is meeting form, fit, and function. We typically, because of the size of the products we handle and the expense of our solutions, we're focused in on a couple markets. It's medical; it's consumer electronics, automotive, some commercial industrial so a lot of these specialty applications that can warrant the complexity and the cost of these automated systems.
Danny:
- Sure, absolutely, okay. Well I'm sure that you guys have experienced quite of—like a lot of companies in this space, in the automation space, just quite a huge boom relative to Covid. I know there was a lot of, the industries were moving towards a lot of automation anyways, but certainly basically gas got thrown on that fire.
Bob:
- Yeah, absolutely right. Covid, while it was an unfortunate thing for the world, it was a boost and a refocusing, I would say to our business. We were fortunate early on to build a number of very rapid solutions for Covid test card kits, so more the self, home versions. That really shifted our market segmentation and what we're working on. But as a result of that and as a result of supply chain disruptions and rebalancing, especially in this market in the Americas, you've got a lot of manufacturers who have decided they're not going to go to a low-cost country and then have that disruption, so they're forced to build local to their customers. But then depending where you're at, probably now anywhere in the world, it's tough to get people, and it's expensive to get people. That whole shift, that was the gasoline that put on the whole industry. And in general our end users have really lost this ability to do the integration themselves, so they're looking for us and our partners, our manufacturing partners to put it together and give them the solution they want in the end, which is produce their product to serve their customers.
Danny:
- Yeah, totally makes sense. That's a story that we've seen and we've heard play out constantly. What's interesting, too, is as things shift,

Michael Giagnacova of CHL Systems shares on building relationships in business; and seeing challenges as new opportunities.
 

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Danny:
- Well hello and welcome to the IndustrialSage Executive Series. I am joined by Mike Giagnacova, the CEO for CHL Systems. Mike, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.
Mike:
- Oh, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Danny:
- Alright, well I'm excited to get into today's episode. For those who aren't familiar with CHL Systems, could you give me a high-level, like who you guys are and what you do?
Mike:
- Yeah, so we design and build solutions that move, make, and pack the products that feed our country. That's the short clip of what we're involved with.
Danny:
- Excellent, alright, well I'm excited to get into that a little bit more as I suspect you guys—there's a lot that’s been going on in that industry. We talk about food and packaging and just moving all that, so a lot of things that have been going on. But before we get into all of that, this is one of my favorite parts of the episode where we get to learn more about you. We get to learn about Mike. So Mike, tell me; take me back. How did you get into this industry? How did you get into this space?
Mike:
- Yeah, so I was kind of born into it. My father owned a company that designed and built custom machinery, one-off machines. You would come to us; you would have a need for something that you'd have to custom design and build. So at a young age I started working as a machinist, working for my dad in that industry. Then I went to night school, Drexel University, for industrial engineering and worked during the day for my father. Then when I graduated there, I went to the University of Pennsylvania. We are just outside of Philadelphia. The Wharton School had a management program, so I took that. I went through that, that application. Then from there, worked in various manufacturing jobs learning how to make products, learning how to market and sell them. Those early days of being a machinist really have, I've carried them all the way through my career. Understanding manufacturing has been a huge part of my career.
Danny:
- Yeah, absolutely. What I think is interesting is that you said your dad owned that business, right? He was creating machines, and you’ve got a lot of, I'm guessing, some entrepreneurial genes or certainly some learnings from seeing your father doing that. Talk to me a little bit about that. Is that accurate?
Mike:
- Yeah, it's pretty accurate. My dad was—he's still alive—a true inventor, a great engineer. He went to Drexel as well, so we have a family history of Drexel grads. He was a true inventor of custom technology. You just couldn't help but be a part of that. That's who we were, and so some of the technology that we would use was cutting-edge. No challenge was too big, so to your entrepreneurial thing. The greater the challenge, the more exciting it was. And so yeah, I have a piece of that in me, too; not as much as my dad, but enough to get me into trouble.
Danny:
- Yeah, that's always the rub right there. Enough to get you into trouble. Well let's talk about some of that trouble. What trouble has that gotten you into?
Mike:
- Yeah, so I'm 59. I've been in this industry since I was a teenager, and been in different management positions pretty much all my life. There's a lot of learning. You're dealing with a lot of people. How you work with people, how you learn from them, there's always an experience to learn. It builds who you are.

Hear from Vince Martinelli of RightHand Robotics about his career journey, from coffeeshop management to startups and warehouse robotics.
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Danny:
- Hello and welcome to the IndustrialSage Executive Series. I'm joined by Vince Martinelli who is the head of product and marketing for RightHand Robotics. Vince, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.
Vince:
- Yes, thank you Danny. Nice to talk to you.
Danny:
- Well I'm excited to jump into this conversation. I don't think that we've had you on the show before. I know that we were talking about it a little bit before how I think we did a quick interview at MODEX in 2020, and I think you guys were part of that. That was fantastic. But first time on the Executive Series, so we're excited.
Vince:
- Yes, thank you.
Danny:
- Before we jump into learning about you which is one of my favorite parts, if you could give me just a high-level on RightHand Robotics, who you guys are, what you guys do.
Vince:
- Yeah, so RightHand Robotics builds what we call a data-driven, intelligent picking platform for predictable order fulfillment. Now let me break that down just a little simpler, everyday language. Simply, it's a configurable autonomous picking machine, and it can move individual products in a warehouse such as from an inventory tote. It might be coming from an ASRS-type system like AutoStore into an outbound order or a box. At that junction between the inventory storage system and picking the products flowing out of the building, the robot can move items. One thing that's cool about that is an ecomm facility may have 50,000, 100,000, a million different products. Enabling a robot to pick and handle all those different things reliably is the secret sauce of what we do.
Danny:
- Wow, that's awesome. It's fantastic and super needed, obviously right now with ecomm growing exponentially, solving the big labor challenges, all kinds of stuff that I'm sure we're going to get into. But before we do that, I want to—this is the part of the show where we get to learn more about you, and really this is one of my favorite parts. Tell me, how did you start your career journey? How did you get into this space? Were you always in robotics, in product or marketing? Tell me how things started.
Vince:
- Yeah, so coming out of college, my background's in materials science, really semiconductor physics and so on. I got out of MIT, and I go into a semiconductor industry for different things. I learned a lot about designing of complex processor systems. Flash-forward another, I don't know, key moment years later—well first off, I switched from R&D side of the world to business side and product and sales and some marketing and all these things when I joined Corning and got into the fiber optics business. Again, my interest there was more about the material science of the glass and how you make these things, and it was all cool. To cross over and work there, I kind of grudgingly took a job on the business side.
Danny:
- Oh, you went to the dark side.
Vince:
- Yeah, on the dark side, exactly. That's the phrase. Found out I really liked it because there's a part of communicating to people how that technology works and what you can do with it that I found I had some ability to take these complex things, talk to the PhD guys in the research lab, translate it into ideas and things that customers could gravitate to. There I worked on new products, so one thing that's been consistent throughout my whole career is I'm always working on new products. While fiber optics was used for telecomm,

Mike Willoughby of PFS discusses his winding tech career, and how he's seen the ecommerce market evolve since even before the internet.
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Danny:
- Well hello, and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I'm joined by Mike Willoughby who is the CEO of PFS. Mike, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.
Mike:
- Oh, it's my pleasure Danny. Thanks for having me on.
Danny:
- Well I am excited to jump into today's episode. So you're coming in from Dallas, Texas, and for those who are unfamiliar with the weather going on right now, we were talking about beforehand, you've actually got snow going on there.
Mike:
- We do. It's unusual. Texas is not known for having a lot of snow events, but this is our second this year. We were actually talking earlier about the one we had last year, so we're definitely not getting a repeat of that, thank goodness. Nobody wants to spend a week with spotty power and the kind of freeze that we had a year ago. So just some nice, pleasant snowflakes going on outside my window.
Danny:
- That sounds nice, not like what you guys had last year. So glad it's—
Mike:
- Definitely not.
Danny:
- And like we were talking about here, it's crazy because it's 70-something degrees over here. Whatever you got's coming over here, so we'll see what happens.

- Have fun with that.
Danny:
- Thank you. Alright, for those who aren't familiar with PFS, what do you guys do?
Mike:
- Well, so PFS provides order fulfillment services, to put it simply. We provide for our clients a premium order fulfillment solution, so if you think about brands that care a lot about their unboxing experience, what it really means to get, say, a Chanel health and beauty product or a high-end luxury jewelry item, you're probably not expecting that to come in just a plain brown box with a bunch of air pillows around it. You're probably expecting that it's got some boutique-caliber experience. We do that for our clients. It's a very non-Amazon kind of experience where you would equate that with, if you were going to a boutique and you were going to shop that boutique, you're going to carry that package out. You're probably spending a decent amount for the product itself, and the experience that you're going to have when you actually receive that product yourself if you're shopping in the store, you want to have as much of that as possible if you're going to receive that package on your front door delivered by a courier.

We provide a fulfillment experience across both the way that we manage the order as it comes into our systems, the way that we process payments, ultimately the way that we take the product out of our fulfillment centers, package it appropriately for each brand that we support, and then tender it to a carrier to get it to your doorstep and then provide the customer service that goes along with that, if you have a question about your product. And we want to do that in a way that reflects the brand, that we are not in the way of that at all. You're never going to see the words PFS on any kind of packaging, on an invoice, your interaction with a customer service agent. Our intention is to be on-brand and reflect the brand that we've been entrusted to support. So that's what we do.
Danny:
- Excellent, very cool. So yeah, very different than a traditional Amazon experience where the experience is the big piece of value, right?
Mike:
- Right. Well, you know with Amazon it's all about efficiency, and they do an amazing job of creating an efficient tra...

Chad Zollman of TGW Logistics shares major milestones of his career, and the challenge of making business decisions as markets regularly shift.
 

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Danny:
- Well hello, and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I am joined by Chad Zollman who is the chief sales officer at TGW Logistics. Chad, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.
Chad:
- Thank you, appreciate it.
Danny:
- I am excited to get into our conversation. So we were just talking before; you are in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and it's very warm up there right now.
Chad:
- Yes, absolutely. It's swimsuit weather for sure.
Danny:
- Excellent. Before we get into the first part which I love is getting into learning more about you personally, but for those who aren't familiar with TGW, can you give me a little high-level of who you guys are and what you do?
Chad:
- Sure, so TGW is a global systems integrator for our customers. We focus on our core industries which would be fashion and apparel, grocery, and industrial and consumer goods. We actually design, implement, maintain highly automated fulfillment centers inside for various customers in various regions. And that's not only in North America; like I said, we're global. So what's unique from a TGW standpoint, I think is we have manufacturing that sits in Austria and Germany, so we have, on top of your traditional conveyor, your automated storage and retrieval systems that we manufacture, we also have a robotics company as well. Palletizing, depalletizing, automated picking solutions, et cetera, all within our realm and sphere that we offer to our customers.
Danny:
- Excellent, well it sounds like quite a nice footprint. So the manufacturing and the integration side, you bring engineered solutions, bringing all that together.
Chad:
- That's right.
Danny:
- Excellent. We'll get more into that because I think there's a little bit of interesting stuff going on with supply chain right now, and as we get into fulfillment and ecomm and retail and all these things. I'm suspecting you've been affected by this a little bit. I'm being a little facetious, obviously.
Chad:
- Right.
Danny:
- Let's jump into you a little bit here. How did you start your journey? How did you get into this space?
Chad:
- Clearly through my college courses because I have an economics degree, but actually I came in through a family friend. He got me into the automotive supply chain area, so it was in the 3PL industry. I actually started in one of the initial lead logistics operations for General Motors in working for Ryder. That was more transportation-based, so really optimized transportation design and execution. Then that particular solution morphed into just-in-time delivery, and that's where the warehousing portion came in. Really started working on, from a design perspective, warehouse layouts and effective solutions for just-in-time delivery, and then made my way through the 3PL industry.

I worked for another organization, CEVA, for about 19 years or almost 20 years in various capacities, but eventually that led me to where I am today with TGW because the more the supply chain industry evolved, while the 3PLs were providing excellent solutions and there's a lot of benefit to operations excellence and lean practices, we had more and more customers asking for ways to reduce their headcount, so really looking into automation. And the more my team kept working on solutions for these large customers, the more we saw the need, the want,

Tim Vargo returns with Stryten Energy to discuss the interwoven world of automation, infrastructure, domestic manufacturing, and the evolving energy industry.
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Danny:
- Well hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I am joined by Mr. Tim Vargo who is the CEO of Stryten Energy. Tim, thank you so much for joining me on the Executive Series.

- Great to see you again, Danny.
Danny:
- Well I'm excited to jump into this. For those who aren't familiar with Stryten Energy, tell me a little bit about who you guys are, what you do.
Tim:
- Sure, happy to do so. So Stryten Energy is a company that has 13 different manufacturing plants in North America, in the United States, over 2 million square feet. We supply a variety of energy storage needs across several different platforms. So we have multiple chemistries solving multiple problems, and really excited about our future given all the challenges we're having with energy storage today.
Danny:
- There are certainly a lot of challenges.
Tim:
- That's for sure.
Danny:
- I think you guys have a lot of work cut out for you, but a lot of great opportunities. Let's talk a little bit about—we can go into a little bit of the pandemic. What I think is interesting is just hearing from companies about how things have really altered that future for you. Some, it's completely changed it. Some, we're still the same. What was that effect for Stryten?
Tim:
- Our company is one of the essential manufacturing companies in the infrastructure of our company for both the military and stored energy. Our plants never closed. Our plants were open every single day from the beginning of the pandemic until now. We've had virtually no lost work days from a plant perspective. The demand for our products has been exceptional across the board in every segment that we serve. Our challenges have been, through the pandemic, two-fold. We all had to learn to work from home. That turned out to be a lot easier, I think, than everybody thought. Frankly, it's a little harder to get people back to the office now because everybody likes to work from home, me included. I think we're all sensitive, though, to the need to make sure that we're continuing to build the team. Communications are always a little better in person than they are just, how many Zoom calls can you do in a day?
Danny:
- Exactly, yeah.
Tim:
- Having said that, our other challenge is just getting a workforce that is robust enough to handle the demand for our products. Like all manufacturers around North America that I'm aware of, we're all short-staffed. We could probably all make more products if we had the employees to staff all the shifts and all the machines that we have. All of us are accelerating our plans to automate certain functions in the plant, so it's not an automation play that's designed to reduce the number of people we have, but I think we've all recognized we're probably not going to get too many more people. Yet our demand is very robust, so we've got to figure out a way how to automate and use the people that we have to make more products. So that's pretty exciting stuff in addition to the products that we're making have huge demand and a really, really bright future.
Danny:
- Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about the bright future, too. One of the things is that, this whole idea of going with net-zero carbon emissions by 2035. What is Stryten's role in that and your stance on it?
Tim:
- Sure. I'm going to focus just on the United States.

Florian Pestoni of InOrbit discusses the challenges of creating company culture, scaling robotics companies, and adopting industry automation.
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Danny:
- Well hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I am joined by Florian Pestoni who is the CEO and cofounder of InOrbit. Florian, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.
Florian:
- Yeah, Danny, thanks for having me.
Danny:
- I'm excited to get into your story. So for those who aren't familiar with InOrbit, if you could give me a little high-level, who you guys are and what you do.
Florian:
- Yeah, we're a data platform for robot operations. So essentially when you roll out autonomous robots or smart robots into the world, you still need to keep track of them. You still need to manage them. So we provide the infrastructure in the cloud to manage all these robots, everything from knowing what they're doing to stepping in when necessary.
Danny:
- Alright, excellent. Well that sounds interesting. It sounds like it's a very needed thing, especially as there is an exponential amount of robotics companies that are coming out, and there's all kinds of unique and different applications. I suspect that there's a nice challenge that poses that you guys are solving, and we'll get into that here in just a little bit. But before we do that, this is the segment where we like to dive in and get to know our guests a little bit better. This is where we want to know a little bit more about Florian. So Florian, if you could just give me some color on your background. How did you get into the technology space? Take me way back.
Florian:
- Yeah, I'll tell you Danny, it has not been a straight line.
Danny:
- It rarely is.
Florian:
- I think in the curves is where something interesting happens. Maybe a little bit about myself, I'm originally from Argentina, born and raised, studied there. Came to Silicon Valley essentially pursuing the best technology. Worked at research labs and then eventually got closer and closer. into the business. Did an MBA here at UC Berkeley. I went from big companies to start-up, back to big companies. Usually a lot of people will either pick one track or the other. But to me, it's always been just different ways to have an impact. I've worked at some of the very well-known companies like Microsoft and Atlassian and the company now known as Meta as well as a lot of those start-ups that you probably never heard of with various degrees of success, as start-ups go. I think what's been the common thread throughout all of that is really technology with a global impact. I had the chance to work on products, for example on video, on the internet when it was relatively new, when it was still being proven out. Being able to reach a billion people with my products was really fantastic. But then I've also worked in really new technologies like, for example image processing, cryptography, all of these foundational technologies that we're now seeing in spaces like the one I'm in, in robotics.

So what's interesting is some of the things that I did very early in my career without being able to foresee where they were going are things that I'm utilizing these days in this new space of robotics. Then in terms of robotics in particular, the way I like to say it is I blame my cofounder for getting me hooked on this. He's had over 12 years of experience working in robotics. His name is Julian Cerruti. He worked with a research group called Willow Garage that was extremely influential. He started telling me about this recurring problem that robotics companies had,

Bruce Buscher of Jervis Webb shares his career history and Daifuku's journey navigating the labor shortage with AGVs and AMRs.
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Danny:
- Well hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I am joined by Bruce Buscher. He is the vice president of sales of the Smart Handling Group of Jervis Webb. Bruce, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.
Bruce:
- Thanks for the invitation. Glad to be here.
Danny:
- Well I'm excited about this for multiple reasons. We met at the assembly show in Chicago; this was in October-ish. I'm blanking on my time.
Bruce:
- Yeah, the 26th through the 28th.
Danny:
- Oh, perfect, yes. And we had a great conversation, and we got to talking. I was like, man, Bruce, you need to come on the show. And it just so happened that it worked out for our filming that you were going to be here. And so I'm super excited to have you in person. I think you are the first person that we've had in person since the pandemic and all that, so it's nice to have people back in the office. Now granted, we were doing a lot of this before too, and remote's way easier. So we were accustomed to it beforehand. But nonetheless, always love it when somebody can come in, in person. Thank you for coming in. So first thing is, for those who aren't familiar with Jervis Webb, if you can just tell us who you guys are, what you do. I know you've got Daifuku on your shirt. Maybe you could explain a little bit about just the company and the division specifically that you work in.
Bruce:
- Sure. Yeah, the company is Daifuku Corporation. They're a Japanese-based company headquartered in Osaka, Japan. Jervis Webb is a division, airport technologies division of Daifuku Corporation. Here in North America the Jervis Webb group is made up of two pieces: airport material handling equipment as well as automatic guided vehicles. My responsibility for Daifuku is the automatic guided vehicles for North America, and we cross over in the markets. We cross over in the automotive market. We also sell AGV systems for parts of airport baggage handling systems and things. The acquisition between the two, there's a lot of history between Daifuku Corporation and Jervis Webb going back actually to 1952.

Daifuku Corporation became a licensee of the Jervis Webb company for our chain conveyor products to sell in the Japanese market to Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Subaru, and the other Japanese auto manufacturers. Then about 15 years ago the Webb family had decided that they wanted to exit the material handling business, family-owned, and at the time Susan Webb was the only family member of the Webb family that was active within the company, but there were 31 or 32 shareholders, Susan being one of them. She got outvoted by the rest of her cousins, nieces, and nephews, so the company was sold in December, 2007. And Daifuku Corporation actually purchased the company after a long-standing relationship going back to, like I said, 1952. It was a very good fit for Daifuku and a way for them to expand their business and footprint here in North America.
Danny:
- Yeah, that makes sense. Sounds like you got quite the storied history there with the company. So before we jump in a little bit more about specifically what you guys do and some of the challenges you're seeing, I want to get to know you.

Renan Devillieres of OSS Ventures explains their highly-successful business model of uniting the disparate cultures of manufacturers and tech companies.
 

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Danny:
- Well hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. I am joined all the way from France. I have the CEO of OSS Ventures, Renan Devillieres. Did I get that right, Renan?
Renan:
- Excellent.
Danny:
- We practiced that many times. Sorry, my French is not that great. Thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.
Renan:
- Thank you for having me.
Danny:
- I'm super excited about it. Again, I hope I didn't butcher things too badly. But hey, before we get into the episode, I want to know a little bit about OSS Ventures. What do you guys do?
Renan:
- Sure. So we are a venture builder. A venture builder is a special kind of investment fund. Instead of investing funds in companies, start-ups, technological start-ups that already exist, we invest a meaningful amount of money, time, and resources in companies that do not exist yet. We provide the ideas. We provide with the partners, and we create companies out of nothing. And we are specialized in manufacturing.
Danny:
- Interesting. That sounds really interesting, and we're going to get more into that here in a little bit about, specifically, some of the challenges that you're solving and maybe how you're doing this because it sounds very intriguing like a different business model. But before we get into that, I want to learn a little bit about Renan. So tell me. How did you get into the manufacturing space? How did your career start?
Renan:
- At the start of my career—I was a nerd, so I was good at math. I did a school in France where they pay for your studies which is really good but then you have to give back up to two years in public service. I was an economist at the OECD, and I was studying industry at 20-year timeframe, the whole world. After two years doing that I told myself, I cannot go on not dealing with reality anymore because it was all so virtual and so long timeframes. And so I told myself, I like the subject. I like the topic of industry. I'll try to go work in a factory. And so they got a very young guy with a mathematics degree, a theoretical mathematics degree trying to go work in a factory. And I think I sent something like 50 letters, got 50 no's from factories. But I got one yes from the McKinsey & Company consulting arm specializing in factories. They were saying that I was good enough to give some advice to factories. So I did just that, and that is how I started my career in manufacturing. After four or five years working for McKinsey & Company, I went on to lead planning and then quality and then be a site director. And so the eight first years of my career, I was deep down in manufacturing, and I loved it.
Danny:
- That's awesome. That is fantastic. That's pretty cool. That's a great story. Sometimes you hear people that come in; they didn't start from day one. What's kind of interesting, it sounds like you jumped into it, and you found a love for it. I think what's interesting is the–– and I shared that a little bit with you in a different light, that I never thought that we would be working in this space. This was several years ago. Having come into it, it's awesome. It's pretty amazing. But what I think is interesting in your story, you said you sent out, you said 50 letters?
Renan:
- Yeah.
Danny:
- And you got the one response.
Renan:
- Yeah.
Danny:
- And then that opened the door.
Renan:

Joe Yanoska, CIO of TRG Solutions, joins us to discuss the vital importance of transparent and accessible data in supply chain and ecommerce.
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Danny:
- Hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. I am joined by Joe Yanoska, who is the chief information officer at TRG Solutions. Joe, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.
Joe:
- Thank you very much. Happy to be here.
Danny:
- I am very excited to jump into today's episode and learn a little bit more about you and about TRG Solutions. First off, tell me a little about TRG. Who are you guys? What do you guys do?
Joe:
- Well, we're a managed service provider in the enterprise mobility and payment space. Really the easiest way to think about us is if it scans a barcode, we can help you figure out what devices are right for you. We can help you source them and deploy them out to all of your locations. And then while they're in the field, if they experience a need for repair, you can ship them back. We can repair them, and then certainly at the end of that life cycle, if they need to be securely destroyed or whatever, we can help you with that as well. And then certainly, if you want to replace them, we will help you do the whole cycle all over again. So really being experts in that space and trying to help our customers use these however they need to, whether it be warehouse management, point of sale, whatever, we're there to show you what devices work best in your environment and then can help you manage that entire lifecycle.
Danny:
- Great, awesome. So before we get more into the business and challenges and all that stuff, this is a special segment where I like to go in and learn about my victim—I mean my guest on the show. Joe, tell me a little bit about: how did you get into the industry?
Joe:
- Well for me, I started from the technology standpoint. I went to college to be a developer, an engineer, software engineer, and spent some time at Key Bank out of the gate. Then my second stop was at American Greetings where we spent a lot of time trying to save the world one greeting card at a time. One of the interesting things we got into there was personalized greeting cards. We really started to figure out the logistics of, obviously, taking something online, personalizing the card.

But once you've taken that order, you've got to print it. You've got to kit it. You've got to ship it, and hopefully that it's all right. If you think about Christmastime, you might be shipping out hundreds of cards to somebody or shipping them to everybody on their list on their behalf. There was an operation there to figure out how all that worked. And then that dovetailed into my time here at TRG Solutions where we really help people in those areas, especially around any of the mobile devices that are required to help any of their supply chain needs from, again, warehouse management to shipping to retail. You have all these touch points that need to happen along that way, and really these are the devices that are helping you collect that information, get it into your ERP systems so companies can manage their data, their inventory, all that stuff, as seamlessly as possible.
Danny:
- So you're specifically, maybe some sort of RFID scanning. You said anything that basically has a barcode, essentially.
Joe:
- Barcode, RFID, anything that you're able, helps you figure out where–– whether it's a product, whether it's luggage from an airline, whether it's whatever, it's got a barcode on it. And usually you want to know where that is all along the wa...

Guy Courtin of Tecsys Inc. returns to share how post-COVID public awareness has transformed both supply chain and industrial sales.
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Danny:
- Well hello, and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. I am joined by a familiar face, Mr. Guy Courtin who is back in the studio no less for another episode here. I'm super excited about this. If you aren't familiar with Guy, he came on before. It was a couple years ago. I think we've interviewed you a few times.
Guy:
- A few times, yes.
Danny:
- But Guy is the VP of industry and advanced technology at a company called Tecsys. Not to be confused with the state, I'm sorry we have to say that.
Guy:
- We're in Canada.
Danny:
- Okay, so polar opposite. So anyways, Guy, thank you so much for coming on the show again and also to be in person. I'm excited about that.
Guy:
- Danny, thanks for having me on the show. I guess the first few times I didn't screw up, and you've brought me back. But I'm really happy to be back, and to be back in person is fantastic.
Danny:
- Well it's super—yeah, I'm super excited about this. I'm excited to unpack, get into some of these things that we were talking about a little bit in the preshow. I think there's no lack of great content here. First and foremost, for me and for our audience who maybe is not familiar with Tecsys, what do you guys do?
Guy:
- Sure. First and foremost, we're a Canadian-based company. We are a supply chain company. We solve supply chain problems. We focus on a couple of big areas, healthcare, retail distribution. And when it comes to the solutions we provide, think of us as really helping solve a whole host of supply chain problems, so warehouse management, transportation, order management, things of that nature. Really exciting from that perspective of being able to provide solutions to customers' supply chain needs. We are, again, based in Montreal, Canada, but have global presence in Europe and elsewhere. I've been there now for almost a year. It's really exciting. I think we are continuing to grow, even during the pandemic. I look at the solutions that we have are really addressing today's needs for tomorrow's desires by our prospects and customers but also from their customers. That's who we are in a nutshell, and like you said, yes we're T-E-C-S-Y-S out of Montreal, not the great state of Texas.
Danny:
- Alright, perfect. Well good to know. Well it's supply chain. I keep hearing things about this. I don't know.
Guy:
- Yeah, it's funny. It's come up a lot recently in the past two years.
Danny:
- I don't know why, but I guess there's things. So let's talk about how things have changed a little bit since the last time you and I spoke, which I'm a little gray on when we—I think I ran into you at MODEX in 2020.
Guy:
- 2020, correct.
Danny:
- You came on in 2019, I think.
Guy:
- Correct.
Danny:
- What's changed?
Guy:
- A different world, right? Entirely different world. From my perspective, I think we all have lived it, so I'm not going to rehash it. But I think what has changed—maybe not necessarily what has changed, but what has been exposed by the pandemic is, I think, what we should focus on.

Marin Tchakarov, CEO of Kindred AI (Powered by Ocado Solutions) returns to share his thoughts on the rise of AI and robotics in ecommerce.
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Danny:
- Well hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. I am joined by Marin Tchakarov who is the CEO of Kindred, Powered by Ocado. Marin, thank you so much for joining me again on the IndustrialSage Executive Series.
Marin:
- Pleasure to be here, Danny. It's been a while. Good to be back.
Danny:
- It has been a while. A lot has happened since then. Maybe for those who didn't watch the first episode when you were on—and if they haven't, they need to go listen or watch it right now—but for those who aren't familiar with Kindred, tell me a little bit about who you guys are and what you do.
Marin:
- Sure, we're a smart robotics company in the ecommerce fulfillment vertical space. We were founded in 2014 by a collection of brilliant artificial intelligence and machine learning engineers and scientists. Fast forward to 2017. We productized what today is known as SORT which is a smart robot solution that automates a manual sortation station, or as they are called, “put walls” in ecomm fulfillment centers across the country. And so the essence of what we do is, we utilize artificial intelligence that powers machine vision to singulate—that is machine-vision speak for seeing—an item set, the items within it distinct and separate from one another. And then we have a patented AutoGrasp technology that identifies where we will pick a particular item to then effect a successful scan and stow. We essentially automate via smart robotics-type, machine vision-type solution, manual put walls in ecomm fulfillment centers.
Danny:
- Excellent. Well there's no, I'm sure, lack of challenges or opportunities in the industry right there, specifically as we look at ecomm and what has happened over the last several months. Really another big thing happened and a big change since when we had spoken last. I think it was probably, I think it was February, March, or April of 2020. I'm totally forgetting the time.
Marin:
- Perhaps a little bit later than that. I want to say July or so, but yeah, sometime in 2020.
Danny:
- It was definitely—it wasn't BC, before Covid, it was after.
Marin:
- That's right.
Danny:
- Certainly there are some things that have happened since then. There was an acquisition that happened. Tell us about that.
Marin:
- Yeah, extremely exciting. We closed the acquisition by Ocado Group in December of last year, of 2020. An extremely exciting endeavor for the company in ways that it affords us the ability to accelerate our product development, our initiatives. And so we were very much on path to do ambitious things prior to the acquisition, but many of those would have been serial in nature. They would have been sequential. We would have chosen one or two to do at the same time, if that, and then sequence them out in our future. Now, with the backing of the powerhouse that Ocado Group is, we can focus on a few things at a time. We have four key focal areas for Kindred in front of us. In no particular order, one is to invest in our technology stack to improve our capabilities, to enhance our capabilities to handle a variety of items. In other words, to enhance and expand our item set capabilities. It's extremely exciting.

Patrick Moorhead, CMO of Pricefx, returns to share about the evolution of digital pricing software, and where AI may be leading the industry.
 

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Danny:
- Hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I am joined by Patrick Moorhead who is the chief marketing officer at Pricefx. Patrick, thank you so much for joining me again. This is a second—this is a follow-up interview from before, so thank you for joining me again.
Patrick:
- Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here. I'm glad to be here again.
Danny:
- Well I'm excited to jump into this because a lot has changed, like a lot a lot, not just Covid and all that good stuff. A lot has changed for you, and I'd love to hear that. But before we completely jump into this episode, for those who aren't familiar with Pricefx, just tell us, who are you guys? What do you guys do?
Patrick:
- Yeah, we are a cloud-native, SaaS pricing optimization and management platform. We sell to billion-dollar-plus-a-year enterprises as a B2B service. We are designed to drive profitable growth and efficiency within those large organizations by helping them better understand their transaction and customer data in the context of how they price their products helping them then implement those insights into flexible price management strategies that are executed within the software with a high degree of speed, accuracy, and flexibility and ultimately deliver the gains that you can get off of that into their distributed global sales organizations through profitability solutions like CPQ, like rebate management, channel management, et cetera, et cetera.

We've built what we believe is the leading SaaS pricing platform. We are one of the only companies that is a pure SaaS cloud offering. A lot of pricing software providers offer hybrid solutions that, at some level, require customers to install hardware in their facility that require custom coded, hard coded software solutions. Ours is completely configurable and 100% delivered online which makes it very flexible and speedy. And apparently the industry likes that because our growth has been significant. In fact, our growth has ranged from 70 to 80% year over year for three years running, even through Covid.
Danny:
- Wow, that's fantastic. It sounds like there's a win. As a follow-up to that real quick before we'll jump into a little bit more stuff here, but from a very basic, fundamental level, how does that work? Let's say from a manufacturing standpoint. Is it plugging into, like taking ERP data and customer data and looking at trends and whatnot?
Patrick:
- Yes, yes, that's exactly right. Another way to think about Pricefx is it's sort of a middle-office management layer. We're able to ingest a significant amount and variety of data, so we can ingest and do ingest ERP data. We ingest CRM data. We can ingest data from financial services systems. For some customers we ingest data from web scraping services. In the case of one customer in Europe we even ingest and interface weather data as relates to their lift ticket business. So we're very data-omnivorous, and then we're able to transform that data by pooling it into data marts or lakes as the industry would call them to generate insights that then can lead into centralized, flexible price management. You'd be surprised to find out that in our estimation somewhere between 30 and 50% of enterprises above a billion in revenue manage their pricing via spreadsheets.

Dean Cohen of Quantum Storage shares how much the company has been able to grow while avoiding a lot of common industry pitfalls.
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Danny:
- Well hello, and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I am joined by Dean Cohen who is the vice president of Quantum Storage Systems. Dean, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.
Dean:
- My pleasure. Glad to be here.
Danny:
- I'm glad to have you on here. First order of business for those who are not familiar with Quantum, Quantum Storage Systems, tell me and our audience who you guys are and what you do.
Dean:
- We are a manufacturer of plastic storage bins and storage containers. We marry it up with wire shelving systems and supply to a wide array of customers complete storage systems in any way to organize your space.
Danny:
- Great, yeah. I imagine you're in a whole host of different industries and niche segments. Can you give us a little bit of a flavor of that?
Dean:
- We're fortunate to cater to a number of different markets. The markets include industrial and material handling, food service, medical, supermarket, food service, electronics, retail. There probably isn't an industry or a sector that probably is not using or organizing with storage bins.
Danny:
- Gotcha. You said you're a manufacturer; you're manufacturing those as well. Where are those facilities where you manufacture?
Dean:
- We do all of our manufacturing of all of our bins here in Miami. We've been doing that since 1988, so we've been doing it a long time and have our own injection molding company here in Miami where we manufacture all the products.
Danny:
- That's great. Okay, well cool. I think we're going to jump into a little bit more some challenges, some things I imagine that just like everybody and all the manufacturers, no one's been left untouched relative to Covid. I'm sure there's been some challenges but also some great opportunities. But before we jump into all that, I'd really like to know more about you. I want to learn a little bit more about Dean. This is where we focus on the executives that we have on here. So tell me, how did you get into this space? Take me way back.
Dean:
- I'm very, very fortunate that my father who was a very, very large influence on me was always involved in plastics and introduced me to the plastics world when I was a teenager. I had an opportunity to come into a custom injection molding business when we were looking to begin our own product line and our own name brand which was the origins of Quantum. That was my original foray or entrée into the business when nobody knew what a Quantum bin was or nobody had any idea that Quantum even manufactured storage bins. Those were my original beginnings, and very lucky to be where I am today.
Danny:
- Is this a family-owned business?
Dean:
- It is.
Danny:
- Okay, alright, and so your father started it; is that what I understand?
Dean:
- My father and first cousin.
Danny:
- Oh, excellent. Are they still involved in the business?
Dean:
- My first cousin is. Yes, he is.
Danny:
- Okay, excellent. So you got in really, you said you were young. You were a teenager. Was it 16? Was that right?
Dean:
- That was my original entrée. I came out of college actually having nothing to do in the business world. I was actually a tennis player, and all I wanted to do was play tennis and travel the world playing tennis.
Danny:
- Oh, well what happened?

John “Jack” Peck of FastFetch shares his insights into the future of the distribution industry, and life lessons he's gained along the way.
 

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Danny:
- Well hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I am joined by Jack Peck who is the president and CEO of FastFetch Corporation. Jack, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series.
Jack:
- Well it's a pleasure to be here.
Danny:
- Well I'm excited to jump into today's conversation and learn a little bit more about you and a little bit more about FastFetch. So to start with, for those who aren't familiar with FastFetch, give us a little snapshot of who you guys are and what you do.
Jack:
- Okay, well my elevator pitch typically is, you know when you order something online and you hit the enter button, and two days later it shows up at your house? A lot of stuff happens between the time you press that button and it shows up. We're responsible for part of that stuff. If you wanted to get more specific, FastFetch really produces software and hardware for order fulfillment in distribution centers and warehouses. We take orders. We do a lot of optimization, use a lot of artificial intelligence to get them out of the door quickly and accurately, in a snapshot.
Danny:
- Excellent. Well it sounds like that thing seems to be kind of important these days, especially as online ecomm is, I was reading a report how last year—because of the pandemic, so in 2020—the increase, it went up by 40% or something like that. I think we're going to have some great things to be able to unpack here in the rest of this episode. But before we really dive into that, I want to know a little bit more about you. I want to know more about Jack. I want to know—take me back. How did you get into this space? Was it something that you studied in school? Was it as a kid, you were tinkering around with it? What was that?
Jack:
- Well things happen according to things you didn't necessarily plan. When I was an undergraduate major, I was a math major. I did a lot of work. My PhD was actually in petroleum engineering and computer science, a combination of those which is a long ways away from distribution.
Danny:
- Just a little bit, yeah.
Jack:
- But you learn a lot about computers. You learn a lot about people. You learn a lot about research, innovation, entrepreneurialship, all of those things regardless of what the field is. When I went to Clemson University as an assistant professor, I looked for opportunities to do research. Some of those opportunities were brought to me by other people outside the university, and so I played on that and did a lot of work in social services, did a lot of work really for the governor's office. I did a lot of work in Medicaid, the health department, did a whole bunch of work in mental health. That was primarily database work. Then around 1987 my kids were getting to the age where I was going to have to put them through college. I said, I better start earning some money outside the university. You do get opportunities like that during the summers in education when you're looking for things to do.

So I started a company, Foxfire Technologies. Foxfire actually specialized in manufacturing systems, real-time shop floor control primarily for apparel manufacturing. Well when apparel and textile started moving offshore to the islands and to Central American and now of course to Asia, that opportunity started to dry up some,

Justin Cramer of Proship discusses the major changes and challenges experienced by the logistics industry, and how they'll shape its future.
 

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Danny:
- Hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I'm joined by Justin Cramer who is the cofounder of ProShip. Justin, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series. How are you doing?
Justin:
- Excellent. Thank you for having me.
Danny:
- Well I'm excited to jump into today's episode and learn a little bit more about you. For those who don't know about ProShip or have not heard of you, what do you guys do?
Justin:
- ProShip solves small parcel shipping complexity problems. And a lot of those problems are around speed. So if you're a high-volume shipper, somebody shipping 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, maybe even a million shipments a day, you know there's a lot of complexity involved there. There's a lot of data that has to move, and it has to move very quickly or you're not going to be able to keep up with your operators, your automated equipment, or maybe your batch processes. So that's really what we do in a nutshell is we simplify and streamline everything necessary to actually produce the appropriate carrier label to get the package to your customer in the time they expect.
Danny:
- Yeah, and we all know now that that online and ecomm and when you look at freight with even just B2B from raw goods to manufacturer, just the whole thing with the big demand in ecomm has just created this massive demand for all kinds of technology where we're seeing the supply chain is really struggling to keep up. And then there's all kinds of talk about the big thing is, the holiday season comes up, what kind of strain you're going to have on there. So I'm excited to jump into some more of these topics a little bit later, but right now, this part of the episode is I really want to get to know more about you, more about Justin and hear your story a little bit more. So tell me. Take me back. How did you get into this space? Was it something—did you go to school saying, hey, I want to go into logistics? What's that story there?
Justin:
- No, actually I started out in the US Navy as a nuclear machinist mate. I was operating nuclear power plants at sea, had created some very good friends while I was there, and one of them got out of the military before me and ended up in the Chicagoland area doing logistics software and said, hey, I've got a job for you on the way out. And so we started. And we realized that well, logistics software is complicated, but not nearly as complicated as nuclear power. So we found what we thought was a pretty good niche: helping to move data, helping to select the appropriate carrier services, and apply a lot of business rules. And customers, they can get to some really complicated business rules, and I think we got lucky in the fact that we were able to simplify what nuclear power was, so we were able to help our customers using some of the same techniques, simplify their business rules, or maybe not simplify but streamline and properly hierarchy their business rules such that back in the early 2000s, they'd actually get significantly more out of the lower-powered processors that were available at the time. And it just grew from there.

At first it was all about the integration. It was all about connecting to the rest of the enterprise software stack, moving that data, streamlining those business rules like I mentioned. But it was really about helping the customer to leverage the resources that they had with computing as well as labor which is a continuou...

Jason Walker returns to discuss the philosophical and practical dilemmas of robotics, automation, and the labor shortage.
 

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Audience Note: Shortly after filming this interview with Jason, Waypoint Robotics was acquired by Locus Robotics; and Jason Walker is now leading Locus' efforts to develop new market opportunities following the sale. Feel free to read more about the acquisition on the Locus Robotics website.
Danny:
- Hello and thank you for joining me today on the IndustrialSage Executive Series. I am joined today by Jason Walker who is the CEO and co-founder of Waypoint Robotics. Jason, thank you so much for joining me today.
Jason:
- Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Danny:
- Well I'm excited to chat with you again. I know we spoke, I don't know, probably two years ago maybe under our—we've spoken many times at ProMat and then at MODEX. This is what, 2019, 2020, maybe even in 2018 as well. I can't remember. So it's been a minute. And then you've been on the show as well, but under the sales and marketing banner. But we've never had you on the Executive Series, so I'm excited to ask you some questions we've never asked before. So this will be fun and exciting.
Jason:
- I'm looking forward to it. I did zero preparation, so I always do best in such.
Danny:
- Perfect. No, we like that, honestly because you get real answers. I don't want scripted, canned stuff. Yeah, we want the real deal. So we're just having a conversation. For those who are unfamiliar with Waypoint, tell me a little bit about, what do you guys do?
Jason:
- We make autonomous mobile robots primarily for manufacturers, so small to mid-size enterprise which is, in the USA, about 90% of the economy. And the thing that's—well there's a bunch of unique things about Waypoint robots. But the thing that I think is the most interesting, overarching, unique thing is that we have intensely focused on ease of use. Our vision is that we can ship a robot to a customer, and the shipping and receiving clerk who unpacks that box can be the person who sets it up and gets it going and uses it on a day-to-day basis without any training. Kind of like when you buy an iPhone, it doesn't come with an instruction book. It's just so intuitive to set up that it guides you through it. That's our vision, and that's what we shoot for, and it's what guides us through our process. That is something that I think is a big differentiator because of the accessibility it creates.
Danny:
- Yeah, absolutely. You're definitely seeing—AMRs are huge right now, obviously. Moving into automation is a really big piece. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that, but before we get there, what I want to do, this is the part of the show where I like to learn more about my guests. I want to learn more about Jason. So tell me, how did you start your career? Obviously CEO and co-founder of Waypoint Robotics, but take me back.