October 21, 2023 • 27 mins
Prepare to be inspired. Today, we're chatting with Tim Wheeler, the UK Sales Director for Strongpoint. You won't want to miss this episode as we tackle intriguing subjects like automation, robotics, e-fulfilment, and the ongoing labour shortages. Tim shares his insights on these compelling subjects, giving us a glimpse into the future of retail, and trust us, it looks fascinating.
#theproductivityexperts
Register for the 2025 Productivity Forum
Find us in the Top 50 Productivity Podcasts
Connect to Simon on LinkedIn
Follow ReThink on LinkedIn
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Productivity Podcast.
This is the first in a miniseries with our friends at
Strongpoint, and on bothepisodes, I'm delighted to say
he's an old friend of mine, timWheeler.
How are you doing, tim?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm very well.
Thanks, simon, great to talk toyou again.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
And so you are now the sales director for the UK
for Strongpoint Correct.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Yes, I am.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
And I think, as we touched on on a previous episode
, you'd been on for anotherorganisation.
It's not a UK accent is it?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
It is not.
I am originally Australian, solet's not talk about rugby today
.
But yeah look, I spent theearly part of my career in
Australia in automation andtechnology.
I moved over to Europe it'sliterally 19 and three-quarter
years ago, so coming up to my20th UK birthday, so the accent
(00:55):
hasn't really come across yet,as you can tell, but I have been
in Europe and looking at globalsupply chains and technology
for many years now.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Excellent.
So it kind of feels like youmight have found your way home
with Strongpoint, because you'regoing to tell us a bit about
what they do in a second, buttoday we're going to talk about
automation, robotics,e-fulfillment and the kind of
potential issues that they'vegot around labour shortages
there.
So, yeah, tell us a bit moreabout Strongpoint.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah, I think you're right, Sometimes the best plans
are the ones that you didn'tactually plan.
And I think, having beeninvolved in the supply chain, in
store operations, in labourmanagement, as you know
automation technology it is youknow it's a great pleasure to be
in a company that brings all ofthat together for a very
important purpose.
(01:46):
And you know Strongpoint.
One of the areas that we lookat is e-commerce fulfilment.
So we don't do websites andmarketing and collect the orders
, but once an order exists thata retailer wants to get to their
customer, then we can take, youknow, the whole rest of that
(02:06):
fulfilment chain or, because ourproducts are platformed and
modularised, we can do parts ofthat chain along the way,
depending on what a customerneeds.
So you know kind of a name thatactually I hadn't heard of when
I joined almost two years ago,but very big in the Nordic
region in particular, have beensuccessful for many years and
(02:29):
they've been growinginternationally of late, because
the success that they'vedelivered in the Nordics
actually applies very wellaround the world and it was a
pleasure to join, to bring theirstory to the UK and really that
story is you don't have to beunprofitable in e-commerce and
(02:51):
that really is.
The big issue is, a lot ofretailers have seen the
e-commerce piece, the onlinepiece, as being something that
clearly you have to do and youhave to grow, but you know it's
not going to be profitable.
Now we can confirm that it canbe profitable as well as very
attractive to the customers, andit's great to bring that
(03:12):
message and those solutions tothe UK market.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Excellent.
So if we focus on kind of theautomation part from
e-fulfillment and maybe giveyour definition of what that
means for people that might notbe familiar, where does strong
point in automation start to fitin?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Well, it really can fit in anywhere on the network
and I say network becausee-commerce fulfillment is not a
simple thing.
There are different elements.
There are upstream of the storeelements.
So many companies fulfill froma warehouse, probably from an
existing fulfillment structure,and they'll add their online
(03:54):
orders to that upstream of thestore or part of the network.
Many companies fulfill fromstores, so they'll do picking in
stores and ship from the storeto the customer, or the customer
will come and pick it up in astore.
And then there are many sort ofin between elements, like dark
(04:15):
stores, micro fulfillmentcenters.
You can think of them as eithermany warehouses that are in
urban centers or you can thinkof them as stores that are
repurposed for other purposes.
And now there are hybrids aswell, where we're seeing
companies take a store and hiveoff some of what was customer
(04:36):
space and say we'll have apartial dark store within a
store for e-commerce, for onlinefulfillment.
So for any given company, thefulfillment of e-commerce can
exist, as I say, upstream of thestore.
It can be various flavors ofstores and store like real
(04:58):
estate being used for thatfulfillment.
And then, of course, you havethe last mile where, if you're
lucky, the customer will comeinto your store and pick up
their order.
A lot of the times you have toput in a delivery van and get it
to people's houses.
And again, there are hybridmodels coming where, amazon
style, you can have lockerseither associated with stores,
(05:20):
in the back of a car park, let'ssay, or maybe out in the world
at convenient locations sosomeone can pick up some product
on the way home or on the wayfrom the school run, or
something like this.
So e-commerce fulfillment isgenuinely it's a network these
days and it can be quite acomplex network and what we try
to do is to make that simple sothat you have the right
(05:43):
technology in the right part ofthat network, so you have that
efficiency, no matter what thestructure of your e-commerce
fulfillment chain.
So to the question of wheredoes automation fit?
It can fit anywhere, but Ithink in particular, yes, the
warehouse side of things.
So upstream, where you haveonline commerce, that's ripe for
(06:06):
automation, gainingefficiencies and possibilities
there and in the store itselfand in, as I say, the store like
entities, dark stores, microfulfillment centers then they're
also ripe for automation andit's probably worthwhile.
We're talking about automation alittle bit, defining it because
a lot of people thinkautomation, think about where I
(06:28):
started my career and these bigstructural, big metal boxes with
robots flying around, veryfixed, very expensive,
traditional automation andthat's what automation was 20,
30 years ago.
But now actually there's a muchbroader span.
First of all, those types ofsolutions have become much
(06:52):
smaller, much more flexible,much cheaper actually to
implement.
So those structural automationsolutions still exist and are
still an important part ofthings.
But actually there's nonstructural automation that's
becoming important now.
You know, robots is obviouslythe buzzword of the moment, but
there are many types ofspecialized and increasingly
(07:15):
general robots that are comingin.
There's certainly automation,but there's certainly not the
big fixed, structural typethings that people used to think
of as automation.
And then actually some peoplethink of technologically
enabling people as a part ofthat automation spectrum.
So when we equip a technologyonto an existing part of the
(07:41):
labor force and make them moreeffective, more efficient, make
their job easier, in a way,that's automation as well.
So it's quite the spectrum whenpeople talk about automation
and the trick really is knowingwhere on that spectrum you
should follow, which mixturefrom that spectrum you should be
looking at.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Interesting.
Yeah, it's a good summary andinteresting in terms of the
automation.
Your mind jumps to the, Isuppose, the futuristic end
that's been portrayed of robotsand everybody being kind of made
redundant, so that wholeterminator world, if you like,
and maybe not to that extreme,but let's hope not.
Yeah, yeah, but in that context, in that kind of vibe.
(08:24):
So if we think about e-commerce, we know that there's certainly
lots of labor challenges, costof people, then cost to pick
that item, cost to deliver thatitem, and that's kind of
spectrum of automation thatyou've talked about.
Where does it start to addresssome of those current challenges
?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Well, there's a couple of different challenges
that drive the need forautomation.
The first is actually labor,but it's not, as you say, the
old school can we get rid oflabor type question.
It's actually the laborshortage problem, and over the
last actually half a decadereally, this isn't a new issue.
It's not a post pandemic issue.
(09:07):
Labor shortages have been afactor around Europe for a long
time.
And what do you do if you can'tactually get the labor?
And that's gonna becomeincreasingly a problem?
We simply can't get the people.
So at the moment you're seeinglabor shortages in a big battle
amongst companies to attract andkeep Even the unskilled labor
(09:32):
force.
You just need those people tobe doing those tasks.
But that battle is gonna becomeincreasingly difficult, to the
point where if a company wantsto grow, they can't rely on
labor force to facilitate thatgrowth, or if they wanna stay
where they are, they can't relyon the labor force that they
used to be able to rely on.
So just the labor shortage isdriving.
(09:56):
And that's not even to mentioncost of labor, which is an
effect of that which obviouslyin an inflationary environment
is a problem, and that's a moreproblematic piece of the
inflation puzzle.
So labor's an issue for sure.
Actually, space can be animportant driver.
As I mentioned earlier,fulfillment's a network, and if
(10:19):
you want your fulfillmentnetwork to get closer and closer
to the customer, we want tostart using store space as a
part of our e-commercefulfillment.
You can't put a massivewarehouse in a dense city, or if
you did, it would cost an awfullot of money.
So if there's a solution thatallows you to make increasing
(10:41):
utilization of your space, thenthat's something that becomes
very important as well.
And then, of course, you havethe traditional measure just
looking at what will my businessbe over the next three years,
five years, whatever theplanning horizon is, and if I
don't automate, what is the costprofile of that plan?
(11:02):
And if I do automate, what isthe cost profile of that plan?
And, of course, there areusually considerable savings in
the cost profile of an automated, let's say, future as opposed
to an unautomated future.
And that's true whether yourbusiness is very mature and
growing slowly, or if you're oneof these exciting E-com
(11:24):
startups that's planning to gothrough the roof.
The problem is it's the same inits nature, different in its
quantity, let's say.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
And do people have different entry points?
So do some people do it step bystep?
Do some people go fullautomation?
How does their cycle work?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Very different entry points and it's why I like to
think of automation as aspectrum, and it's a spectrum in
two ways.
It's a spectrum of you knowwhere do you join the automation
spectrum, usually at the moresimple end of things technology
enabling your staff first, andthen maybe some smaller parts of
the automation spectrum beforeyou reach a scale where you need
(12:07):
to go big.
But it's also a spectrum intime and the spectrum on your
physical network.
So you may have in your networka warehouse and you may have
some dark stores and somefulfillment from stores.
So automation isn't one silverbullet.
Actually, it's a number ofdifferent solutions depending on
(12:27):
where you are on the networkand where you are on your
journey as a company.
So we, what we see is whatcompanies need is a partner who,
instead of existing at only onepoint on that spectrum and
saying here's what automation is, here's what you need, they're
(12:49):
better to have a partner whosits on all points of that
spectrum and can say right now,in this part of your network,
here's the automated solutionthat you need.
Right now, in another part ofyour network, there's a
different part of the automationspectrum that you need and, by
the way, let's look forward tothree years time and make sure
that as your business changes intime, your automation solutions
(13:14):
can change, whether that'sgrowing or moving up the
spectrum from semi-automated tofully automated.
But the automation solutionneeds to change with the company
and I think that's the bigpoint for me.
As I say, automation many, manyyears ago was a very fixed thing
where customers had this, in away, a terrible dilemma.
(13:37):
They'd look at one of these bigstructural pieces of automation
and they'd think it's going todeliver a return on investment.
I can see that.
But what if my business changes?
Is this thing going to end upbeing a white elephant with all
her stories where that's exactlywhat happened?
It's okay to design automationat a point in time, but what if
(14:01):
the business changes?
And what's good for me, havinggrown with the automation
industry, is looking at howflexibility, growth and
sometimes the opposite of growthsometimes you want to pare down
a piece of automation.
It's great for me to see howthat's all built in to the
modern automation solution.
So, as an example, you knowstrong point, a partner with
(14:26):
AutoStore, which is a little bitakin to those structural
solutions, but it's much easierto grow it with volume, for
example, than the old style morefixed automation solutions are.
And obviously, when you look atthe non structural things, like
you know, we do mobile robotsof various types humanoid, also,
(14:49):
little ones that pick uptrolleys and drive them around
warehouses and stores theserobots are inherently flexible
because if you start with four,then it's very easy to put in a
fifth, or if you have 20, it'svery easy to put in a 21st.
So so flexibility is built inand that's, I think, the most
(15:09):
important change that's happenedin the automation industry is
understanding that this, this isnot a point in time solution.
You start at a point in time,but you need to be flexible with
the customer and they mighthave a plan for what happens,
but they can't be certain thatin three years time they'll be
(15:30):
exactly on that plan.
They're going to be plus orminus, maybe a long way, and we
need to be flexible so that whenthat happens we're still
delivering the best cost profileand the most effective
distribution that we can.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Yeah, that makes sense and, like any business,
clearly there's diversification,there's change.
We wouldn't have predicted thepandemic.
So to have that flexibility andbe able to move around with it
seems like the ideal kind offramework and lots of if we
think of grocery, maybecertainly fashion as well lots
(16:04):
of people again going backthrough new concept stores,
future stores, lots of talkagain around kind of
experiential service being abreakthrough for people.
How does your kind ofautomation spectrum help support
that?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Well, one feature of automation is that it's often
very space efficient.
So the auto store solution thatI mentioned is an extremely
space efficient way to handleproducts and orders.
And if you think about, youknow, the experiential store and
the direction of stores.
It's exactly as you mentionedaway from you know, old school.
(16:46):
Put the product there.
It's like a pretty warehouse ina way, a store.
Put the product there.
People will come, they'll lookat it and they'll pick it for
you and they'll walk it out thedoor for you.
Now progressing along thatexperiential spectrum means the
story is more about having theright things for people to see.
Yes, they might want to sampleparts of your product range,
(17:07):
whether it be, you know, try onthe dress, or try the new food
product or whatever it might be.
There's an experiential part ofthings, but that's probably not
best facilitated by juststacking product in front of
them.
So more and more and for ahigher and higher proportion of
the company's product range,they're thinking how can we make
(17:29):
this experiential rather thanjust stacking inventory?
And the ultimate endpoint tothat trend would be that the
inventory is actually stackedsomewhere, but not necessarily
for the consumer's viewing In anauto store might be a beautiful
example where you take anexisting store, if you can store
the product much moreefficiently in a quarter of that
(17:51):
store's real estate and knowthat when the consumer's chosen
what they want, you can easilyget exactly what they want their
exact order out of that to them.
But before they do that they'rebrowsing some other experiential
area rather than just thestacked inventory.
And that's a direction thateven grocery supermarkets at
(18:13):
this moment are still very muchaisles full of inventory.
But they will move in time awayfrom that and knowing that you
can store product very denselyand fulfill very quickly and
very easily, I think that's theway that stores will head and
the experience part will be acombination of computerized
(18:36):
experience.
Somehow whether that's lookingat the person's own device,
maybe there's virtual realitystarts to come in for how you
actually experience product andmake your choices.
But knowing that automation canefficiently store product and
efficiently get someone's orderto them once they know what they
want, that's the directionstores are going to move in.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Interesting, and I assume there's also that piece
around freeing up colleagues todo the value-adding work, the
experiential work, where all theother bits around them are
automated or flowing throughrobots and alike.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
That is exactly right and actually robots, automation
will help with that part aswell.
But I think, looking at thelimited labor and thinking what
do we want this limited labordoing?
What's the highest value addfor us?
Then you're right.
Often stacking shelves andpicking product is.
(19:34):
If that can be done moreefficiently, then it can free
resources up for those customerinteractions and stores for a
long time.
They want everyone in the storeto be available for customers
if there are questions or I'mlooking for this product or tell
me about this thing, and havingmore people, more available for
(19:56):
that because some of the moremenial tasks are done in another
way it can only be a good thing.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah, and is it one of these industries?
It strikes me maybe is that thetechnology is moving at a
really rapid pace.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
It really is and I think, maybe even faster than
most people realize.
And I'll give an example.
We Strongpoint, has aninvestment in a humanoid robot
company.
So we see one of our coreresponsibilities to really be on
top of all the technologies andbring the right technology with
the right maturity level at theright time to the retail market
(20:33):
and robots.
At the moment people think ofthe AMRs certainly little robots
that pick up a trolley and moveit around.
They've been around for alittle while.
They're getting much better.
What I find interesting iswarehouses have had these kind
of technologies, but not so muchstores.
There exist AMRs.
(20:57):
Now we have a partner, cmRobotics, who are really at the
forefront here.
They can do what these AMRs doin a warehouse, but actually
they can learn to navigateamongst people and if you're
going to operate as a robot in astore, one parameter is you
have to navigate amongst peoplesafely and it's quite striking
(21:19):
that surprising to many peoplethat you can have one of these
AMRs pick up a trolley, take itaround a busy store with people
walking around doing theirshopping and be very effective
at what previously was a.
No, we'll do it in a warehousewhere it's a very controlled
environment where you don't haveconsumers, you don't have to
worry about that kind of stuff.
(21:40):
So the technology is advancingthere to bring technologies from
warehouses into stores, whereotherwise that was a difficult
challenge.
But I mentioned the humanoidsspecifically Because that's the
one that I think we all need towatch very closely, and our
partner here, company called 1x,is very special and very much
(22:04):
more advanced.
I think that people realizethey do a humanoid and instead
of coming at it from the pointof view of industrial automation
you know, robot behind a cagedwall, where people aren't there,
does it's thing.
You know whether or not there'sa person in between it and the
bolt that it needs to put in thecar.
It's going to do the job.
(22:24):
No, no, the future of roboticsis safe amongst people, and so
we found a company that builds ahumanoid and it's designed to
be light enough that it's notgoing to cause damage.
Weak enough I know this soundsparadoxical but weak enough that
it's safe amongst people.
You don't want the extremelypowerful robot that decides it's
(22:47):
going to clasp its hand and thepower is so great that if it's
accidentally, you know, around ahuman, the human gets, gets
crushed.
Actually, you want robots thatare deliberately weak and light
in order that they can be safeamongst humans, consumers and,
as I say, we were very excitedto find a company that this is
(23:09):
exactly what they do.
And so the physical aspects ofthe robots are getting, you know
, just better and better, butsafer and safer, which is of
paramount importance at the sametime as the software and the AI
behind it is getting better andbetter and more effective and
more effective.
So I think, I think humanoidsare a direction that really
(23:34):
should be watched, becausethey're going to come in sooner
and faster than I think anyonerealizes.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
And I suppose I didn't really thought about the
fact that once you put them in acustom face environment,
there's all those otherconsiderations as well, and for
those that don't know what anAMR is, just want to give people
an explanation.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Oh, autonomous mobile robot.
So it's a robot that can movearound by itself.
They often look like you knowmost people have watched Star
Wars there's a little Star Warsrobot that runs around on the on
the floor in the first StarWars episode I'm showing my age
here, you know a little tableton the floor that can pick
(24:18):
things up and carry it around,and where they're primarily used
, as in warehouses, they canpick up pallets and move them
around, as I say, in stores.
Now they can pick up trolleys,order trolleys, which is really
important because if you'redoing store based fulfillment,
then you need people pushingtrolleys around picking orders
(24:40):
for customers in order to movethem to a click and collect desk
or ship them to someone's house.
So those trolley movements arereally important and if you can
get a robot that can actuallynavigate a trolley around a
store, that's really a bigefficiency because your pickers
no longer have to do thatbeginning and end, pick path
(25:03):
travel or the travel before theyget actually to the picking
shelves.
So really big efficiencies, but,as I say, a really clever
technology, because it's notjust enough to be able to pick a
trolley up and move it frompoint A to point B.
You need to be able to seepeople who are not.
You know they're, they're doingthe shopping.
They're not there worryingabout what robots are doing.
(25:25):
So these, these robots arebecoming extremely clever and
extremely effective inenvironments with normal people
doing the shopping.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Excellent, and is there any specific user case?
That's kind of fine tuned forsupermarkets, grocery retail.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, I think what's special about grocery retail is
temperature.
So you know, if I ordersomething online, then you know
I'll order some ambient products, but I'll probably order some
milk and some ice cream as well,and that is an additional
challenge and luckily that's astrong point that we have
(26:06):
addressed at times with ourautomation partners as well.
So you know, being beingspecialized in retail and in
particular, looking to thegrocery market, we know exactly
what the needs are and we can coinnovate with our automation
partners and say you know, weneed to move into these
different environments.
(26:26):
Temperature is a big one and Imentioned auto store once again
because actually multitemperature is particularly
important one but if you can getfrozen and ambient and chilled
all working together, you canactually gain efficiencies that
are good for the environment aswell.
(26:46):
So you know, for example, if youhave a frozen piece of
automation and surround that bya chilled piece of automation,
then you know the cold thatbleeds out of the frozen, bleeds
into the chilled and actuallyhelps to maintain the
temperature of the chilled area.
And this saves power, andobviously power bills have been
(27:07):
going up as well, as well asspace.
So it's great that thesetechnologies are now really
understanding the challenges ofthe store environment, of the
warehouse environment, thetemperature requirements, and
coming up with innovativesolutions to address them.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Amazing.
On that note, we will pausethere and we will catch up very
soon on episode two.
Thanks, tim.
Thank you, I can forward to it.
Thanks, simon.
Welcome to the Productivity Podcast.
This is the first in a miniseries with our friends at
Strongpoint, and on bothepisodes, I'm delighted to say
he's an old friend of mine, timWheeler.
How are you doing, tim?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm very well.
Thanks, simon, great to talk toyou again.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
And so you are now the sales director for the UK
for Strongpoint Correct.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Yes, I am.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
And I think, as we touched on on a previous episode
, you'd been on for anotherorganisation.
It's not a UK accent is it?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
It is not.
I am originally Australian, solet's not talk about rugby today
.
But yeah look, I spent theearly part of my career in
Australia in automation andtechnology.
I moved over to Europe it'sliterally 19 and three-quarter
years ago, so coming up to my20th UK birthday, so the accent
(00:55):
hasn't really come across yet,as you can tell, but I have been
in Europe and looking at globalsupply chains and technology
for many years now.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Excellent.
So it kind of feels like youmight have found your way home
with Strongpoint, because you'regoing to tell us a bit about
what they do in a second, buttoday we're going to talk about
automation, robotics,e-fulfillment and the kind of
potential issues that they'vegot around labour shortages
there.
So, yeah, tell us a bit moreabout Strongpoint.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah, I think you're right, Sometimes the best plans
are the ones that you didn'tactually plan.
And I think, having beeninvolved in the supply chain, in
store operations, in labourmanagement, as you know
automation technology it is youknow it's a great pleasure to be
in a company that brings all ofthat together for a very
important purpose.
(01:46):
And you know Strongpoint.
One of the areas that we lookat is e-commerce fulfilment.
So we don't do websites andmarketing and collect the orders
, but once an order exists thata retailer wants to get to their
customer, then we can take, youknow, the whole rest of that
(02:06):
fulfilment chain or, because ourproducts are platformed and
modularised, we can do parts ofthat chain along the way,
depending on what a customerneeds.
So you know kind of a name thatactually I hadn't heard of when
I joined almost two years ago,but very big in the Nordic
region in particular, have beensuccessful for many years and
(02:29):
they've been growinginternationally of late, because
the success that they'vedelivered in the Nordics
actually applies very wellaround the world and it was a
pleasure to join, to bring theirstory to the UK and really that
story is you don't have to beunprofitable in e-commerce and
(02:51):
that really is.
The big issue is, a lot ofretailers have seen the
e-commerce piece, the onlinepiece, as being something that
clearly you have to do and youhave to grow, but you know it's
not going to be profitable.
Now we can confirm that it canbe profitable as well as very
attractive to the customers, andit's great to bring that
(03:12):
message and those solutions tothe UK market.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Excellent.
So if we focus on kind of theautomation part from
e-fulfillment and maybe giveyour definition of what that
means for people that might notbe familiar, where does strong
point in automation start to fitin?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Well, it really can fit in anywhere on the network
and I say network becausee-commerce fulfillment is not a
simple thing.
There are different elements.
There are upstream of the storeelements.
So many companies fulfill froma warehouse, probably from an
existing fulfillment structure,and they'll add their online
(03:54):
orders to that upstream of thestore or part of the network.
Many companies fulfill fromstores, so they'll do picking in
stores and ship from the storeto the customer, or the customer
will come and pick it up in astore.
And then there are many sort ofin between elements, like dark
(04:15):
stores, micro fulfillmentcenters.
You can think of them as eithermany warehouses that are in
urban centers or you can thinkof them as stores that are
repurposed for other purposes.
And now there are hybrids aswell, where we're seeing
companies take a store and hiveoff some of what was customer
(04:36):
space and say we'll have apartial dark store within a
store for e-commerce, for onlinefulfillment.
So for any given company, thefulfillment of e-commerce can
exist, as I say, upstream of thestore.
It can be various flavors ofstores and store like real
(04:58):
estate being used for thatfulfillment.
And then, of course, you havethe last mile where, if you're
lucky, the customer will comeinto your store and pick up
their order.
A lot of the times you have toput in a delivery van and get it
to people's houses.
And again, there are hybridmodels coming where, amazon
style, you can have lockerseither associated with stores,
(05:20):
in the back of a car park, let'ssay, or maybe out in the world
at convenient locations sosomeone can pick up some product
on the way home or on the wayfrom the school run, or
something like this.
So e-commerce fulfillment isgenuinely it's a network these
days and it can be quite acomplex network and what we try
to do is to make that simple sothat you have the right
(05:43):
technology in the right part ofthat network, so you have that
efficiency, no matter what thestructure of your e-commerce
fulfillment chain.
So to the question of wheredoes automation fit?
It can fit anywhere, but Ithink in particular, yes, the
warehouse side of things.
So upstream, where you haveonline commerce, that's ripe for
(06:06):
automation, gainingefficiencies and possibilities
there and in the store itselfand in, as I say, the store like
entities, dark stores, microfulfillment centers then they're
also ripe for automation andit's probably worthwhile.
We're talking about automation alittle bit, defining it because
a lot of people thinkautomation, think about where I
(06:28):
started my career and these bigstructural, big metal boxes with
robots flying around, veryfixed, very expensive,
traditional automation andthat's what automation was 20,
30 years ago.
But now actually there's a muchbroader span.
First of all, those types ofsolutions have become much
(06:52):
smaller, much more flexible,much cheaper actually to
implement.
So those structural automationsolutions still exist and are
still an important part ofthings.
But actually there's nonstructural automation that's
becoming important now.
You know, robots is obviouslythe buzzword of the moment, but
there are many types ofspecialized and increasingly
(07:15):
general robots that are comingin.
There's certainly automation,but there's certainly not the
big fixed, structural typethings that people used to think
of as automation.
And then actually some peoplethink of technologically
enabling people as a part ofthat automation spectrum.
So when we equip a technologyonto an existing part of the
(07:41):
labor force and make them moreeffective, more efficient, make
their job easier, in a way,that's automation as well.
So it's quite the spectrum whenpeople talk about automation
and the trick really is knowingwhere on that spectrum you
should follow, which mixturefrom that spectrum you should be
looking at.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Interesting.
Yeah, it's a good summary andinteresting in terms of the
automation.
Your mind jumps to the, Isuppose, the futuristic end
that's been portrayed of robotsand everybody being kind of made
redundant, so that wholeterminator world, if you like,
and maybe not to that extreme,but let's hope not.
Yeah, yeah, but in that context, in that kind of vibe.
(08:24):
So if we think about e-commerce, we know that there's certainly
lots of labor challenges, costof people, then cost to pick
that item, cost to deliver thatitem, and that's kind of
spectrum of automation thatyou've talked about.
Where does it start to addresssome of those current challenges
?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Well, there's a couple of different challenges
that drive the need forautomation.
The first is actually labor,but it's not, as you say, the
old school can we get rid oflabor type question.
It's actually the laborshortage problem, and over the
last actually half a decadereally, this isn't a new issue.
It's not a post pandemic issue.
(09:07):
Labor shortages have been afactor around Europe for a long
time.
And what do you do if you can'tactually get the labor?
And that's gonna becomeincreasingly a problem?
We simply can't get the people.
So at the moment you're seeinglabor shortages in a big battle
amongst companies to attract andkeep Even the unskilled labor
(09:32):
force.
You just need those people tobe doing those tasks.
But that battle is gonna becomeincreasingly difficult, to the
point where if a company wantsto grow, they can't rely on
labor force to facilitate thatgrowth, or if they wanna stay
where they are, they can't relyon the labor force that they
used to be able to rely on.
So just the labor shortage isdriving.
(09:56):
And that's not even to mentioncost of labor, which is an
effect of that which obviouslyin an inflationary environment
is a problem, and that's a moreproblematic piece of the
inflation puzzle.
So labor's an issue for sure.
Actually, space can be animportant driver.
As I mentioned earlier,fulfillment's a network, and if
(10:19):
you want your fulfillmentnetwork to get closer and closer
to the customer, we want tostart using store space as a
part of our e-commercefulfillment.
You can't put a massivewarehouse in a dense city, or if
you did, it would cost an awfullot of money.
So if there's a solution thatallows you to make increasing
(10:41):
utilization of your space, thenthat's something that becomes
very important as well.
And then, of course, you havethe traditional measure just
looking at what will my businessbe over the next three years,
five years, whatever theplanning horizon is, and if I
don't automate, what is the costprofile of that plan?
(11:02):
And if I do automate, what isthe cost profile of that plan?
And, of course, there areusually considerable savings in
the cost profile of an automated, let's say, future as opposed
to an unautomated future.
And that's true whether yourbusiness is very mature and
growing slowly, or if you're oneof these exciting E-com
(11:24):
startups that's planning to gothrough the roof.
The problem is it's the same inits nature, different in its
quantity, let's say.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
And do people have different entry points?
So do some people do it step bystep?
Do some people go fullautomation?
How does their cycle work?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Very different entry points and it's why I like to
think of automation as aspectrum, and it's a spectrum in
two ways.
It's a spectrum of you knowwhere do you join the automation
spectrum, usually at the moresimple end of things technology
enabling your staff first, andthen maybe some smaller parts of
the automation spectrum beforeyou reach a scale where you need
(12:07):
to go big.
But it's also a spectrum intime and the spectrum on your
physical network.
So you may have in your networka warehouse and you may have
some dark stores and somefulfillment from stores.
So automation isn't one silverbullet.
Actually, it's a number ofdifferent solutions depending on
(12:27):
where you are on the networkand where you are on your
journey as a company.
So we, what we see is whatcompanies need is a partner who,
instead of existing at only onepoint on that spectrum and
saying here's what automation is, here's what you need, they're
(12:49):
better to have a partner whosits on all points of that
spectrum and can say right now,in this part of your network,
here's the automated solutionthat you need.
Right now, in another part ofyour network, there's a
different part of the automationspectrum that you need and, by
the way, let's look forward tothree years time and make sure
that as your business changes intime, your automation solutions
(13:14):
can change, whether that'sgrowing or moving up the
spectrum from semi-automated tofully automated.
But the automation solutionneeds to change with the company
and I think that's the bigpoint for me.
As I say, automation many, manyyears ago was a very fixed thing
where customers had this, in away, a terrible dilemma.
(13:37):
They'd look at one of these bigstructural pieces of automation
and they'd think it's going todeliver a return on investment.
I can see that.
But what if my business changes?
Is this thing going to end upbeing a white elephant with all
her stories where that's exactlywhat happened?
It's okay to design automationat a point in time, but what if
(14:01):
the business changes?
And what's good for me, havinggrown with the automation
industry, is looking at howflexibility, growth and
sometimes the opposite of growthsometimes you want to pare down
a piece of automation.
It's great for me to see howthat's all built in to the
modern automation solution.
So, as an example, you knowstrong point, a partner with
(14:26):
AutoStore, which is a little bitakin to those structural
solutions, but it's much easierto grow it with volume, for
example, than the old style morefixed automation solutions are.
And obviously, when you look atthe non structural things, like
you know, we do mobile robotsof various types humanoid, also,
(14:49):
little ones that pick uptrolleys and drive them around
warehouses and stores theserobots are inherently flexible
because if you start with four,then it's very easy to put in a
fifth, or if you have 20, it'svery easy to put in a 21st.
So so flexibility is built inand that's, I think, the most
(15:09):
important change that's happenedin the automation industry is
understanding that this, this isnot a point in time solution.
You start at a point in time,but you need to be flexible with
the customer and they mighthave a plan for what happens,
but they can't be certain thatin three years time they'll be
(15:30):
exactly on that plan.
They're going to be plus orminus, maybe a long way, and we
need to be flexible so that whenthat happens we're still
delivering the best cost profileand the most effective
distribution that we can.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Yeah, that makes sense and, like any business,
clearly there's diversification,there's change.
We wouldn't have predicted thepandemic.
So to have that flexibility andbe able to move around with it
seems like the ideal kind offramework and lots of if we
think of grocery, maybecertainly fashion as well lots
(16:04):
of people again going backthrough new concept stores,
future stores, lots of talkagain around kind of
experiential service being abreakthrough for people.
How does your kind ofautomation spectrum help support
that?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Well, one feature of automation is that it's often
very space efficient.
So the auto store solution thatI mentioned is an extremely
space efficient way to handleproducts and orders.
And if you think about, youknow, the experiential store and
the direction of stores.
It's exactly as you mentionedaway from you know, old school.
(16:46):
Put the product there.
It's like a pretty warehouse ina way, a store.
Put the product there.
People will come, they'll lookat it and they'll pick it for
you and they'll walk it out thedoor for you.
Now progressing along thatexperiential spectrum means the
story is more about having theright things for people to see.
Yes, they might want to sampleparts of your product range,
(17:07):
whether it be, you know, try onthe dress, or try the new food
product or whatever it might be.
There's an experiential part ofthings, but that's probably not
best facilitated by juststacking product in front of
them.
So more and more and for ahigher and higher proportion of
the company's product range,they're thinking how can we make
(17:29):
this experiential rather thanjust stacking inventory?
And the ultimate endpoint tothat trend would be that the
inventory is actually stackedsomewhere, but not necessarily
for the consumer's viewing In anauto store might be a beautiful
example where you take anexisting store, if you can store
the product much moreefficiently in a quarter of that
(17:51):
store's real estate and knowthat when the consumer's chosen
what they want, you can easilyget exactly what they want their
exact order out of that to them.
But before they do that they'rebrowsing some other experiential
area rather than just thestacked inventory.
And that's a direction thateven grocery supermarkets at
(18:13):
this moment are still very muchaisles full of inventory.
But they will move in time awayfrom that and knowing that you
can store product very denselyand fulfill very quickly and
very easily, I think that's theway that stores will head and
the experience part will be acombination of computerized
(18:36):
experience.
Somehow whether that's lookingat the person's own device,
maybe there's virtual realitystarts to come in for how you
actually experience product andmake your choices.
But knowing that automation canefficiently store product and
efficiently get someone's orderto them once they know what they
want, that's the directionstores are going to move in.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Interesting, and I assume there's also that piece
around freeing up colleagues todo the value-adding work, the
experiential work, where all theother bits around them are
automated or flowing throughrobots and alike.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
That is exactly right and actually robots, automation
will help with that part aswell.
But I think, looking at thelimited labor and thinking what
do we want this limited labordoing?
What's the highest value addfor us?
Then you're right.
Often stacking shelves andpicking product is.
(19:34):
If that can be done moreefficiently, then it can free
resources up for those customerinteractions and stores for a
long time.
They want everyone in the storeto be available for customers
if there are questions or I'mlooking for this product or tell
me about this thing, and havingmore people, more available for
(19:56):
that because some of the moremenial tasks are done in another
way it can only be a good thing.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah, and is it one of these industries?
It strikes me maybe is that thetechnology is moving at a
really rapid pace.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
It really is and I think, maybe even faster than
most people realize.
And I'll give an example.
We Strongpoint, has aninvestment in a humanoid robot
company.
So we see one of our coreresponsibilities to really be on
top of all the technologies andbring the right technology with
the right maturity level at theright time to the retail market
(20:33):
and robots.
At the moment people think ofthe AMRs certainly little robots
that pick up a trolley and moveit around.
They've been around for alittle while.
They're getting much better.
What I find interesting iswarehouses have had these kind
of technologies, but not so muchstores.
There exist AMRs.
(20:57):
Now we have a partner, cmRobotics, who are really at the
forefront here.
They can do what these AMRs doin a warehouse, but actually
they can learn to navigateamongst people and if you're
going to operate as a robot in astore, one parameter is you
have to navigate amongst peoplesafely and it's quite striking
(21:19):
that surprising to many peoplethat you can have one of these
AMRs pick up a trolley, take itaround a busy store with people
walking around doing theirshopping and be very effective
at what previously was a.
No, we'll do it in a warehousewhere it's a very controlled
environment where you don't haveconsumers, you don't have to
worry about that kind of stuff.
(21:40):
So the technology is advancingthere to bring technologies from
warehouses into stores, whereotherwise that was a difficult
challenge.
But I mentioned the humanoidsspecifically Because that's the
one that I think we all need towatch very closely, and our
partner here, company called 1x,is very special and very much
(22:04):
more advanced.
I think that people realizethey do a humanoid and instead
of coming at it from the pointof view of industrial automation
you know, robot behind a cagedwall, where people aren't there,
does it's thing.
You know whether or not there'sa person in between it and the
bolt that it needs to put in thecar.
It's going to do the job.
(22:24):
No, no, the future of roboticsis safe amongst people, and so
we found a company that builds ahumanoid and it's designed to
be light enough that it's notgoing to cause damage.
Weak enough I know this soundsparadoxical but weak enough that
it's safe amongst people.
You don't want the extremelypowerful robot that decides it's
(22:47):
going to clasp its hand and thepower is so great that if it's
accidentally, you know, around ahuman, the human gets, gets
crushed.
Actually, you want robots thatare deliberately weak and light
in order that they can be safeamongst humans, consumers and,
as I say, we were very excitedto find a company that this is
(23:09):
exactly what they do.
And so the physical aspects ofthe robots are getting, you know
, just better and better, butsafer and safer, which is of
paramount importance at the sametime as the software and the AI
behind it is getting better andbetter and more effective and
more effective.
So I think, I think humanoidsare a direction that really
(23:34):
should be watched, becausethey're going to come in sooner
and faster than I think anyonerealizes.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
And I suppose I didn't really thought about the
fact that once you put them in acustom face environment,
there's all those otherconsiderations as well, and for
those that don't know what anAMR is, just want to give people
an explanation.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Oh, autonomous mobile robot.
So it's a robot that can movearound by itself.
They often look like you knowmost people have watched Star
Wars there's a little Star Warsrobot that runs around on the on
the floor in the first StarWars episode I'm showing my age
here, you know a little tableton the floor that can pick
(24:18):
things up and carry it around,and where they're primarily used
, as in warehouses, they canpick up pallets and move them
around, as I say, in stores.
Now they can pick up trolleys,order trolleys, which is really
important because if you'redoing store based fulfillment,
then you need people pushingtrolleys around picking orders
(24:40):
for customers in order to movethem to a click and collect desk
or ship them to someone's house.
So those trolley movements arereally important and if you can
get a robot that can actuallynavigate a trolley around a
store, that's really a bigefficiency because your pickers
no longer have to do thatbeginning and end, pick path
(25:03):
travel or the travel before theyget actually to the picking
shelves.
So really big efficiencies, but,as I say, a really clever
technology, because it's notjust enough to be able to pick a
trolley up and move it frompoint A to point B.
You need to be able to seepeople who are not.
You know they're, they're doingthe shopping.
They're not there worryingabout what robots are doing.
(25:25):
So these, these robots arebecoming extremely clever and
extremely effective inenvironments with normal people
doing the shopping.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Excellent, and is there any specific user case?
That's kind of fine tuned forsupermarkets, grocery retail.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, I think what's special about grocery retail is
temperature.
So you know, if I ordersomething online, then you know
I'll order some ambient products, but I'll probably order some
milk and some ice cream as well,and that is an additional
challenge and luckily that's astrong point that we have
(26:06):
addressed at times with ourautomation partners as well.
So you know, being beingspecialized in retail and in
particular, looking to thegrocery market, we know exactly
what the needs are and we can coinnovate with our automation
partners and say you know, weneed to move into these
different environments.
(26:26):
Temperature is a big one and Imentioned auto store once again
because actually multitemperature is particularly
important one but if you can getfrozen and ambient and chilled
all working together, you canactually gain efficiencies that
are good for the environment aswell.
(26:46):
So you know, for example, if youhave a frozen piece of
automation and surround that bya chilled piece of automation,
then you know the cold thatbleeds out of the frozen, bleeds
into the chilled and actuallyhelps to maintain the
temperature of the chilled area.
And this saves power, andobviously power bills have been
(27:07):
going up as well, as well asspace.
So it's great that thesetechnologies are now really
understanding the challenges ofthe store environment, of the
warehouse environment, thetemperature requirements, and
coming up with innovativesolutions to address them.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Amazing.
On that note, we will pausethere and we will catch up very
soon on episode two.
Thanks, tim.
Thank you, I can forward to it.
Thanks, simon.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.