May 28, 2025 • 21 mins
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The frontline workforce revolution is happening right now, and Zebra Technologies is leading the charge. In this enlightening conversation with Joe White, Chief Product and Solution Officer at Zebra Technologies, we explore how decades of operational digitization are culminating in an AI-powered transformation that's redefining what's possible for businesses worldwide.
Joe, a 25-year veteran at Zebra, takes us on a journey from the company's barcode origins to today's sophisticated AI implementations. He articulates how modern enterprises face critical challenges around what he calls "the three R's" – resiliency, reliability, and real-time visibility
The conversation reveals how AI is transforming frontline operations across industries. In retail, where shelf inventory accuracy typically hovers at a shocking 50-60%, AI-powered systems can now automatically identify stockouts, pricing errors, and misplaced items while generating immediate action plans. In manufacturing, companies like Bosch have reduced reject rates by 5% across 7,000 daily parts using machine vision technology. Yet Joe emphasizes that successful AI implementation requires first digitizing operational workflows – a crucial insight for any business beginning this journey.
Perhaps most compelling is Joe's customer-centric philosophy: every product in Zebra's portfolio traces back to a specific lighthouse customer who helped drive its development. This collaborative approach ensures solutions directly address real-world challenges with enterprise-grade reliability and scalability. As Joe puts it, "While I'm proud of the last 20 years of technology developed at Zebra, the next 5-10 years will be the most transformational, led by AI technologies applied to customer workflows."
Ready to see what's possible when frontline workers are truly empowered with intelligent technology? Listen now and discover how the convergence of digitization, automation, and AI is creating unprecedented opportunities for operational excellence.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey everybody, Really excited for this conversation
today with Zebra Technologiesaround the amazing work they're
doing empowering frontlineworkers.
Joe, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hi, evan, I'm doing well, yes, doing okay.
So how?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Thanks so much for joining.
Before we dive into theincredible work you're doing at
Zebra around the role of AI andmodern workflows and so much
more, maybe introduce yourself,your role and team within Zebra
Technologies and the mission.
For those who may not befamiliar, Yep, so I'm Joe White.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I'm the Chief Product and Solution Officer at Zebra
Technologies.
I've been with the company for25 years now, so all the way
back to Matrix, which was anRFID acquisition simple
technologies made into Motorolaand now Zebra today.
So been a long journey thereand, yeah, we have a lot of
(01:03):
exciting stuff going on aroundAI and digital transformation.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Well, I've been a big fan of you and the team for a
while and I understand thehigh-level strategy.
How would you expand that tothe current mission?
What's the big idea behind notjust digitizing and automating
front worker activities, butleveraging AI to help them?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, so it doesn't take long to start talking about
AI anymore.
It seems to be a headline foreverybody.
But you know, listen, ourjourney around helping our
customers digitize and automatetheir operations and driving
productivity isn't a new journey.
We've been doing this for along time with our customers, if
(01:49):
you think about the legacy ofZebra and simple technologies,
all the way back to printing andscanning a barcode which is
really the ultimate form ofproviding a digital voice to
physical things in theoperational world that our
customers operate in.
And so when you think about that, that journey, and then you
(02:11):
think about what our customershave been through over the last
five years in terms ofdisruptions and the day to day
operations of how they dobusiness, you know I kind of
qualify it as you know, thethree R's, if you will.
Everybody's focused aroundresiliency, reliability and how
(02:36):
do I get more real-timevisibility into my operations so
I can respond to all thedisruptions that have occurred
in their real world?
And so when you think aboutthat and you combine that with
the history of ZebraTechnologies and the fact that
we digitize and automate thefrontline workers, that's what
we've been about.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
And it's been an incredible journey.
You have so much success inthis market space.
You know pre, during,post-pandemic lots of changes.
What are some of the keydrivers for adoption in the
current marketplace?
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Well, certainly the ability to better respond to
changing events in themarketplace, and in more real
time.
It seems like whether it's inyour personal life or whether
it's in your work life.
As we move more to digital, thespeed of the operations and the
response time has to acceleratearound what's going on in the
(03:34):
marketplace.
And so when you think about allthe other factors, things like
workforce, you know, you know,certainly during COVID, labor
and shortages of labor became abig problem during the pandemic
Right, but even post pandemic,if you look at, you know, the US
(03:55):
Chamber of Commerce stats, youknow there's there's eight
million job openings and there'sonly six.8 million Americans
unemployed.
So the shortages around laborare going to continue to come
and continue to impact growthand acceleration of our economy.
But there are other factors thatour customers are looking at,
(04:18):
like worker safety, like workerjob satisfaction.
Job satisfaction leads toretention.
How do I remove the cognitiveload that my workers are under
when I give them more work to dowithout adding additional
(04:40):
capability and people to thatoperation?
And that's happening acrossevery one of the verticals we
serve today.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Amazing.
So I like how you frame thisdigitization journey that's been
going on for decades.
But now, as these workflows aredigitized, what's next?
How do you really then begin tolook at driving productivity
and operational excellence?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Well, you talked about AI and, obviously,
generative AI.
Agentic AI has become aheadline almost in every news
clip.
You hear every tech speech youtalk about these days.
Interesting enough, my adviceto all of our customers is
always until you digitize yourworkflows, adding and investing
(05:31):
in AI or agentic AI orgenerative AI becomes really,
really difficult.
But if you think about it, ai isnot new to Zebra Technologies
either.
You know our machine vision.
Business is built around AI.
And how do I drive real-timequality inspection into
(05:53):
manufacturing operations?
That has to have, you know,five nines accuracy, otherwise
you slow down a production linequality issues, which inject
significant costs.
So AI hasn't been a new thingfor us.
What is new for us and what ourcustomers are talking about
(06:14):
today is how do I applygenerative AI or agentic AI on
top of the data that I'mdigitizing and automating in my
operations the data that I'mdigitizing and automating in my
operations.
You saw some of that, I think,at the National Retail
(06:36):
Federation show we did inJanuary, where we really had
front and center on stage targetstanding up showing how we're
using AI and generative AI toactually drive intelligence into
their operations.
I think that's a great exampleof how the cognitive load that
goes on a store associate in aretail environment.
When you're looking at a shelf,facing and saying what has to
(06:59):
change about that shelf, what doI have to go do?
What are the stock outs, whatare the pricing labels that are
incorrect, what are themisplaced items on that shelf,
and you think about the workerand the size of a store like a
Walmart or a Target or somethinglike that.
(07:20):
The cognitive load on thatworker when customers are
walking up and down the aisles,interrupting them, and all that
kind of thing leads to veryinaccurate inventory levels in
their operations.
Right when generative AI, aiand actually agentic AI can play
(07:41):
a role is what if I can look atthat shelf and automatically
decode everything I'm looking atin real time, and not only do
that decoding actually createthe actionable workflows that
actually fix the problems thatare happening in.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Sorry, we had a bit of a glitch.
Can you hear me now?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
I can hear you.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Okay, yeah, we had a bit of a glitch out there for a
moment.
I was getting some feedback.
Can you hear me?
Now was getting some feedback,can you hear?
Speaker 2 (08:30):
me now.
No, I lost you I don't know why.
Yeah, yeah I don't know whereit's happening.
I think my side should be solid.
I'm not on wireless or anythinglike that.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Okay, well, let's try to continue, if you can hear me
now, and we'll try to edit thatpart out and we'll ask that
question again.
So three, two.
So when customers digitizetheir workflows.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
How are they using AI to really drive productivity in
their operations?
Yeah, evan, I think that's agreat question.
I think it didn't take us longto start talking about AI, which
seems to be the topic du jourin every tech conference and
every customer meeting I attendto.
As you may know, zebra is notnew to AI.
We've included AI capabilitiesin our products for over a
(09:38):
decade or more.
Our machine vision products, asan example, do AI to actually
do quality inspection and reallyget accurate dimensioning and
accuracy in manufacturingenvironments, which you know
they need five, nines uptime.
You can't have quality ofproduct coming out of a
(09:59):
manufacturing line with yieldlosses because of defects in the
manufacturing process.
So we're not new to AItechnology.
What is new in our market, evan, is really generative AI and
agentic AI, which is relativelynew.
(10:19):
You know most people don'treally think about the fact that
ChatGPT really only came outtwo and a half years ago, right,
and it's creating headlines noweverywhere you go.
So I think generative AIbecomes very interesting for our
(10:39):
customers.
Zebra ultimately providesproductivity to what our
customers do by digitizing andautomating their workflows all
the way back to the barcode days.
That's what we're driving.
Fundamentally is productivity.
Now that customers havedigitized a lot of their
operations, ai can play a reallystrategic role in driving
(11:00):
productivity.
Ai can play a really strategicrole in driving productivity.
In fact, I would argue that andI tell many of my customers
while I'm proud of the last 20years of technology I've
developed here within ZebraTechnologies, I think the next
five to 10 years will be themost transformational and it
(11:28):
will be led by AI technologiesand really applying it on those
customer workflows Very exciting.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
You also mentioned real-time visibility as being
absolutely critical for theenterprise.
How do you deliver?
Speaker 2 (11:45):
on that promise of real-time insight, real-time
asset visibility and what aresome of the benefits your
customers can gain today?
Yeah, we do that in a number ofways.
If you think about ourportfolio of products, our
mobile computers areincreasingly being put in the
hands of every worker out on thefloor and that capability
allows our customers tobasically allocate tasks and
(12:08):
digital services and digitalcapability out to the front line
of where work is getting donewithin our customers, whether
that be a T&L customer that'sdelivering packages, or it be a
retail store associate that'sservicing another customer and
needs some product informationor needs to educate the customer
(12:31):
about what they're about to buy.
Or you can go all the wayacross our portfolio and look at
our machine vision, our RFIDcapability, which is providing
real-time identification ofwhat's happening in the
environment in real time andmany of our customers.
Obviously, rfid has become avery hot topic and if you think
(12:56):
about the problem statementwhere RFID is being applied in
retail environments, it's allabout how do I get real-time
visibility of what inventory Ihave at my store and why is that
important?
That's important becausee-commerce is driving
transformational shifts in howcustomers buy and what they want
(13:20):
to buy and how they shop and ifthey want to buy online and
ship from a store, you betterhave the inventory on site.
Otherwise your customer is notgoing to be happy when they
don't get the product at the endof the day.
Well, rfid technology isactually delivering on that
vision of giving real-timeinventory.
(13:41):
If you think about how inventoryoperations work inside a retail
environment, it's really.
I ship from a DC to a store.
Many of our customers stillblindly receive those products
at the back of the store andthey only know that they have to
(14:03):
restock that when it goesthrough point of sale and they
say I have to reorder thatproduct.
If you think about all thethings that can go wrong in that
journey, there's a highlikelihood it's not sitting on
(14:23):
your shelf, it could have beenstolen, it could have never
actually arrived at the store.
I mean, there's so many thingsthat could go wrong.
If you look at a typicalretailer, evan, you'd be
surprised to know their on-shelfavailability of inventory sits
somewhere between 50% and 60%accuracy.
Wow, wow, yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Rfid can play huge value in closing the gap so that
when you walk into a store oryou shop online, you actually
get the product you were lookingfor.
We can all get behind that.
So we assume, because we allhave mobile phones, that
frontline workers are alwaysconnected as well, which sadly
isn't the case, and you know aconnected frontline workforce is
super essential.
Now how do you see yourselfempowering those frontline
workers, and what does theincrease in terms of
(15:14):
productivity and operationalflexibility mean?
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, I think that's a great question, evan.
We are seeing a general trend,and it starts with kind of our
larger customers around theworld and it varies by geography
, but the general trend towardsgiving every worker some type of
connected device.
(15:40):
So when you think aboutdigitizing your operations, you
eventually get to the pointwhere you're really managing two
different worlds an analogworld where you think tasks are
happening, you think things arehappening in the operation, and
then a digital world where youcan real time see them
approaching that inflectionpoint, certainly some of the
(16:05):
large ones where they'vedigitized so much of their
operation that it's actuallycosting them more money to
manage both worlds of analog anddigital, if you will right.
And so we see this trend ofputting a device.
It may not be a mobile computer, it may be a wearable computer,
(16:28):
it may be a different formfactor, but having to connect
all the frontline workers sothat they can really run the
operation at speed will play asignificant role in driving
productivity is because onceyou've digitized that frontline,
you can really get the leverageof what AI technology can bring
(16:51):
to that.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
And speaking of AI, the flip side, automation super
important as well, andautomation techniques have
become much more intelligent andyet you know, many folks have
only just embarked or haven'tstarted their automation journey
.
How do you see intelligentautomation being adopted and
what are some of the results,outcomes you're seeing at the
(17:14):
moment?
Speaker 2 (17:20):
outcomes you're seeing at the moment.
Yeah, I think, listen, we're.
You know we've investedconsiderably around our machine
vision business over the lastfive years and that tends to be
the front of our intelligentautomation.
But certainly RFID technologyplays a role in there as well.
I mean really, reallyfundamentally, rfid is
automatically collecting digitalinformation that historically
(17:43):
was done with a handheld barcodescanner or a mobile computer
device.
But certainly RFID, machinevision and robotics are all
playing a role inside of ourcustomers to really automate a
lot of these workflows.
And what I tell you isautomation isn't replacing
workers.
What it's actually doing isit's augmenting the, I'd say,
(18:08):
more laborious context work thatworkers were doing within their
workflows, regardless of thevertical you're talking about,
and putting them to more highervalue add workflows where they
can add value.
As I mentioned earlier, thelabor pool is not getting better
and I don't foresee it gettingbetter over the next 10 years
(18:32):
and customers will have tocontinually look at how do I
automate the context work thatmy workers are doing that they
don't want to do?
You know, machine vision is agreat example of that.
I mean, if we can look down aconveyor belt and actually read
(18:52):
not only what packages arecoming down the conveyance at
line speed.
But we can look at thecondition of the package.
We can look at is it a box, isit an envelope?
All these things we can inferand tell.
Well, those are things thatpeople were standing there
manually doing at one point intime.
(19:13):
I mean, there's customers ofours, the automotive industry.
While it's a little bitdepressed today, there's
customers of ours like Boschthat you know they've actually
improved their reject rates by5% on a production line volume
(19:34):
of 7,000 parts per day.
Wow, these are significantthings that required a human
being in the equation toactually look at the quality
issues of those parts coming offthe line and actually remove
them out of the production.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Wow, fantastic story.
Love that.
Final question, just on yoursort of personal professional
philosophy around design how doyou think about aligning?
You know product goals withcustomer needs and you know
baking in reliability andproductivity.
You have a lot of hit products.
So what's been your secret tosuccess there in your approach
(20:14):
to product development?
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Well, certainly it all starts with the customer.
Evan, like you know, we are nota consumer company.
We are not, you know, we're nota B2C kind of company.
Our mission in life is to helpdrive enterprise customers and
what that means is high quality,high reliability, high
(20:40):
dependability and delivering aplatform across their operations
that they can scale withconfidence in their environment.
So the way I drive the productorganization is really about
customer intimacy.
We don't build any productswithout being engaged with the
customer.
(21:01):
Literally, I can go through ourportfolio and tell you every
single product we have and whowas the lighthouse customer who
drove that product and,generally speaking, we co-design
it.
It's one of the gratifyingthings about my role at this
company and why I've been hereso long is I get to work with
the smartest and largestcustomers in the world and
(21:24):
co-develop and build and investR&D and really incredible
products that solve problems forthem.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Wow.
Well, your success is shiningthrough.
Congratulations on helping somany customers onwards and
upwards.
Can't wait to hear what's next.
Thanks for joining Joe.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yeah, thank you for having me, Evan.
It was great to speak with youand, yeah, we have a lot of
exciting things coming, so Ilook forward to the future.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Can't wait.
Can't wait to see more Thanks,thanks everyone for listening
and watching.
Take care.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Thank.
Hey everybody, Really excited for this conversation
today with Zebra Technologiesaround the amazing work they're
doing empowering frontlineworkers.
Joe, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hi, evan, I'm doing well, yes, doing okay.
So how?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Thanks so much for joining.
Before we dive into theincredible work you're doing at
Zebra around the role of AI andmodern workflows and so much
more, maybe introduce yourself,your role and team within Zebra
Technologies and the mission.
For those who may not befamiliar, Yep, so I'm Joe White.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I'm the Chief Product and Solution Officer at Zebra
Technologies.
I've been with the company for25 years now, so all the way
back to Matrix, which was anRFID acquisition simple
technologies made into Motorolaand now Zebra today.
So been a long journey thereand, yeah, we have a lot of
(01:03):
exciting stuff going on aroundAI and digital transformation.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Well, I've been a big fan of you and the team for a
while and I understand thehigh-level strategy.
How would you expand that tothe current mission?
What's the big idea behind notjust digitizing and automating
front worker activities, butleveraging AI to help them?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, so it doesn't take long to start talking about
AI anymore.
It seems to be a headline foreverybody.
But you know, listen, ourjourney around helping our
customers digitize and automatetheir operations and driving
productivity isn't a new journey.
We've been doing this for along time with our customers, if
(01:49):
you think about the legacy ofZebra and simple technologies,
all the way back to printing andscanning a barcode which is
really the ultimate form ofproviding a digital voice to
physical things in theoperational world that our
customers operate in.
And so when you think about that, that journey, and then you
(02:11):
think about what our customershave been through over the last
five years in terms ofdisruptions and the day to day
operations of how they dobusiness, you know I kind of
qualify it as you know, thethree R's, if you will.
Everybody's focused aroundresiliency, reliability and how
(02:36):
do I get more real-timevisibility into my operations so
I can respond to all thedisruptions that have occurred
in their real world?
And so when you think aboutthat and you combine that with
the history of ZebraTechnologies and the fact that
we digitize and automate thefrontline workers, that's what
we've been about.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
And it's been an incredible journey.
You have so much success inthis market space.
You know pre, during,post-pandemic lots of changes.
What are some of the keydrivers for adoption in the
current marketplace?
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Well, certainly the ability to better respond to
changing events in themarketplace, and in more real
time.
It seems like whether it's inyour personal life or whether
it's in your work life.
As we move more to digital, thespeed of the operations and the
response time has to acceleratearound what's going on in the
(03:34):
marketplace.
And so when you think about allthe other factors, things like
workforce, you know, you know,certainly during COVID, labor
and shortages of labor became abig problem during the pandemic
Right, but even post pandemic,if you look at, you know, the US
(03:55):
Chamber of Commerce stats, youknow there's there's eight
million job openings and there'sonly six.8 million Americans
unemployed.
So the shortages around laborare going to continue to come
and continue to impact growthand acceleration of our economy.
But there are other factors thatour customers are looking at,
(04:18):
like worker safety, like workerjob satisfaction.
Job satisfaction leads toretention.
How do I remove the cognitiveload that my workers are under
when I give them more work to dowithout adding additional
(04:40):
capability and people to thatoperation?
And that's happening acrossevery one of the verticals we
serve today.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Amazing.
So I like how you frame thisdigitization journey that's been
going on for decades.
But now, as these workflows aredigitized, what's next?
How do you really then begin tolook at driving productivity
and operational excellence?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Well, you talked about AI and, obviously,
generative AI.
Agentic AI has become aheadline almost in every news
clip.
You hear every tech speech youtalk about these days.
Interesting enough, my adviceto all of our customers is
always until you digitize yourworkflows, adding and investing
(05:31):
in AI or agentic AI orgenerative AI becomes really,
really difficult.
But if you think about it, ai isnot new to Zebra Technologies
either.
You know our machine vision.
Business is built around AI.
And how do I drive real-timequality inspection into
(05:53):
manufacturing operations?
That has to have, you know,five nines accuracy, otherwise
you slow down a production linequality issues, which inject
significant costs.
So AI hasn't been a new thingfor us.
What is new for us and what ourcustomers are talking about
(06:14):
today is how do I applygenerative AI or agentic AI on
top of the data that I'mdigitizing and automating in my
operations the data that I'mdigitizing and automating in my
operations.
You saw some of that, I think,at the National Retail
(06:36):
Federation show we did inJanuary, where we really had
front and center on stage targetstanding up showing how we're
using AI and generative AI toactually drive intelligence into
their operations.
I think that's a great exampleof how the cognitive load that
goes on a store associate in aretail environment.
When you're looking at a shelf,facing and saying what has to
(06:59):
change about that shelf, what doI have to go do?
What are the stock outs, whatare the pricing labels that are
incorrect, what are themisplaced items on that shelf,
and you think about the workerand the size of a store like a
Walmart or a Target or somethinglike that.
(07:20):
The cognitive load on thatworker when customers are
walking up and down the aisles,interrupting them, and all that
kind of thing leads to veryinaccurate inventory levels in
their operations.
Right when generative AI, aiand actually agentic AI can play
(07:41):
a role is what if I can look atthat shelf and automatically
decode everything I'm looking atin real time, and not only do
that decoding actually createthe actionable workflows that
actually fix the problems thatare happening in.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Sorry, we had a bit of a glitch.
Can you hear me now?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
I can hear you.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Okay, yeah, we had a bit of a glitch out there for a
moment.
I was getting some feedback.
Can you hear me?
Now was getting some feedback,can you hear?
Speaker 2 (08:30):
me now.
No, I lost you I don't know why.
Yeah, yeah I don't know whereit's happening.
I think my side should be solid.
I'm not on wireless or anythinglike that.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Okay, well, let's try to continue, if you can hear me
now, and we'll try to edit thatpart out and we'll ask that
question again.
So three, two.
So when customers digitizetheir workflows.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
How are they using AI to really drive productivity in
their operations?
Yeah, evan, I think that's agreat question.
I think it didn't take us longto start talking about AI, which
seems to be the topic du jourin every tech conference and
every customer meeting I attendto.
As you may know, zebra is notnew to AI.
We've included AI capabilitiesin our products for over a
(09:38):
decade or more.
Our machine vision products, asan example, do AI to actually
do quality inspection and reallyget accurate dimensioning and
accuracy in manufacturingenvironments, which you know
they need five, nines uptime.
You can't have quality ofproduct coming out of a
(09:59):
manufacturing line with yieldlosses because of defects in the
manufacturing process.
So we're not new to AItechnology.
What is new in our market, evan, is really generative AI and
agentic AI, which is relativelynew.
(10:19):
You know most people don'treally think about the fact that
ChatGPT really only came outtwo and a half years ago, right,
and it's creating headlines noweverywhere you go.
So I think generative AIbecomes very interesting for our
(10:39):
customers.
Zebra ultimately providesproductivity to what our
customers do by digitizing andautomating their workflows all
the way back to the barcode days.
That's what we're driving.
Fundamentally is productivity.
Now that customers havedigitized a lot of their
operations, ai can play a reallystrategic role in driving
(11:00):
productivity.
Ai can play a really strategicrole in driving productivity.
In fact, I would argue that andI tell many of my customers
while I'm proud of the last 20years of technology I've
developed here within ZebraTechnologies, I think the next
five to 10 years will be themost transformational and it
(11:28):
will be led by AI technologiesand really applying it on those
customer workflows Very exciting.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
You also mentioned real-time visibility as being
absolutely critical for theenterprise.
How do you deliver?
Speaker 2 (11:45):
on that promise of real-time insight, real-time
asset visibility and what aresome of the benefits your
customers can gain today?
Yeah, we do that in a number ofways.
If you think about ourportfolio of products, our
mobile computers areincreasingly being put in the
hands of every worker out on thefloor and that capability
allows our customers tobasically allocate tasks and
(12:08):
digital services and digitalcapability out to the front line
of where work is getting donewithin our customers, whether
that be a T&L customer that'sdelivering packages, or it be a
retail store associate that'sservicing another customer and
needs some product informationor needs to educate the customer
(12:31):
about what they're about to buy.
Or you can go all the wayacross our portfolio and look at
our machine vision, our RFIDcapability, which is providing
real-time identification ofwhat's happening in the
environment in real time andmany of our customers.
Obviously, rfid has become avery hot topic and if you think
(12:56):
about the problem statementwhere RFID is being applied in
retail environments, it's allabout how do I get real-time
visibility of what inventory Ihave at my store and why is that
important?
That's important becausee-commerce is driving
transformational shifts in howcustomers buy and what they want
(13:20):
to buy and how they shop and ifthey want to buy online and
ship from a store, you betterhave the inventory on site.
Otherwise your customer is notgoing to be happy when they
don't get the product at the endof the day.
Well, rfid technology isactually delivering on that
vision of giving real-timeinventory.
(13:41):
If you think about how inventoryoperations work inside a retail
environment, it's really.
I ship from a DC to a store.
Many of our customers stillblindly receive those products
at the back of the store andthey only know that they have to
(14:03):
restock that when it goesthrough point of sale and they
say I have to reorder thatproduct.
If you think about all thethings that can go wrong in that
journey, there's a highlikelihood it's not sitting on
(14:23):
your shelf, it could have beenstolen, it could have never
actually arrived at the store.
I mean, there's so many thingsthat could go wrong.
If you look at a typicalretailer, evan, you'd be
surprised to know their on-shelfavailability of inventory sits
somewhere between 50% and 60%accuracy.
Wow, wow, yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Rfid can play huge value in closing the gap so that
when you walk into a store oryou shop online, you actually
get the product you were lookingfor.
We can all get behind that.
So we assume, because we allhave mobile phones, that
frontline workers are alwaysconnected as well, which sadly
isn't the case, and you know aconnected frontline workforce is
super essential.
Now how do you see yourselfempowering those frontline
workers, and what does theincrease in terms of
(15:14):
productivity and operationalflexibility mean?
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, I think that's a great question, evan.
We are seeing a general trend,and it starts with kind of our
larger customers around theworld and it varies by geography
, but the general trend towardsgiving every worker some type of
connected device.
(15:40):
So when you think aboutdigitizing your operations, you
eventually get to the pointwhere you're really managing two
different worlds an analogworld where you think tasks are
happening, you think things arehappening in the operation, and
then a digital world where youcan real time see them
approaching that inflectionpoint, certainly some of the
(16:05):
large ones where they'vedigitized so much of their
operation that it's actuallycosting them more money to
manage both worlds of analog anddigital, if you will right.
And so we see this trend ofputting a device.
It may not be a mobile computer, it may be a wearable computer,
(16:28):
it may be a different formfactor, but having to connect
all the frontline workers sothat they can really run the
operation at speed will play asignificant role in driving
productivity is because onceyou've digitized that frontline,
you can really get the leverageof what AI technology can bring
(16:51):
to that.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
And speaking of AI, the flip side, automation super
important as well, andautomation techniques have
become much more intelligent andyet you know, many folks have
only just embarked or haven'tstarted their automation journey
.
How do you see intelligentautomation being adopted and
what are some of the results,outcomes you're seeing at the
(17:14):
moment?
Speaker 2 (17:20):
outcomes you're seeing at the moment.
Yeah, I think, listen, we're.
You know we've investedconsiderably around our machine
vision business over the lastfive years and that tends to be
the front of our intelligentautomation.
But certainly RFID technologyplays a role in there as well.
I mean really, reallyfundamentally, rfid is
automatically collecting digitalinformation that historically
(17:43):
was done with a handheld barcodescanner or a mobile computer
device.
But certainly RFID, machinevision and robotics are all
playing a role inside of ourcustomers to really automate a
lot of these workflows.
And what I tell you isautomation isn't replacing
workers.
What it's actually doing isit's augmenting the, I'd say,
(18:08):
more laborious context work thatworkers were doing within their
workflows, regardless of thevertical you're talking about,
and putting them to more highervalue add workflows where they
can add value.
As I mentioned earlier, thelabor pool is not getting better
and I don't foresee it gettingbetter over the next 10 years
(18:32):
and customers will have tocontinually look at how do I
automate the context work thatmy workers are doing that they
don't want to do?
You know, machine vision is agreat example of that.
I mean, if we can look down aconveyor belt and actually read
(18:52):
not only what packages arecoming down the conveyance at
line speed.
But we can look at thecondition of the package.
We can look at is it a box, isit an envelope?
All these things we can inferand tell.
Well, those are things thatpeople were standing there
manually doing at one point intime.
(19:13):
I mean, there's customers ofours, the automotive industry.
While it's a little bitdepressed today, there's
customers of ours like Boschthat you know they've actually
improved their reject rates by5% on a production line volume
(19:34):
of 7,000 parts per day.
Wow, these are significantthings that required a human
being in the equation toactually look at the quality
issues of those parts coming offthe line and actually remove
them out of the production.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Wow, fantastic story.
Love that.
Final question, just on yoursort of personal professional
philosophy around design how doyou think about aligning?
You know product goals withcustomer needs and you know
baking in reliability andproductivity.
You have a lot of hit products.
So what's been your secret tosuccess there in your approach
(20:14):
to product development?
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Well, certainly it all starts with the customer.
Evan, like you know, we are nota consumer company.
We are not, you know, we're nota B2C kind of company.
Our mission in life is to helpdrive enterprise customers and
what that means is high quality,high reliability, high
(20:40):
dependability and delivering aplatform across their operations
that they can scale withconfidence in their environment.
So the way I drive the productorganization is really about
customer intimacy.
We don't build any productswithout being engaged with the
customer.
(21:01):
Literally, I can go through ourportfolio and tell you every
single product we have and whowas the lighthouse customer who
drove that product and,generally speaking, we co-design
it.
It's one of the gratifyingthings about my role at this
company and why I've been hereso long is I get to work with
the smartest and largestcustomers in the world and
(21:24):
co-develop and build and investR&D and really incredible
products that solve problems forthem.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Wow.
Well, your success is shiningthrough.
Congratulations on helping somany customers onwards and
upwards.
Can't wait to hear what's next.
Thanks for joining Joe.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yeah, thank you for having me, Evan.
It was great to speak with youand, yeah, we have a lot of
exciting things coming, so Ilook forward to the future.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Can't wait.
Can't wait to see more Thanks,thanks everyone for listening
and watching.
Take care.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Thank.
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