If you’re selling a limited number of products over the course of Q1-Q3, and then suddenly you have this incredible spike in demand with peak season, that variability doesn’t lend itself to sort of traditional forms of automation.

The world is changing, day to day, week to week, and what you are selling today may not be what you are selling tomorrow. In addition, consumer e-commerce demands can shift drastically – whether it’s the pandemic, the labor shortage, or seasonal spikes – different types of automation technologies are required to automate modern day warehouses, said Al Dekin, Chief Revenue Officer and Co-Founder of Locus Robotics. In this episode of Manufacturing Matters, Dekin and his colleague Vered Tomlak joined TECH B2B Marketing’s Jimmy Carroll to discuss an extensive range of automation topics, including advancements in AMRs and AI, the humanoid vs. AMR debate, and how companies can handle the automation demand during peak season. In addition, the discussion covers the approach Locus takes with understanding customer needs, some forthcoming technology announcements, the company’s recent milestone of achieving 4 billion successful robot picks, and more.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:00:07] Hi everybody. My name is Jimmy Carroll. I’m the vice president of operations at Tech B2B Marketing, and I have the pleasure today to be at the Locus Robotics facility with Al Dekin, who is the chief revenue officer and co-founder, and also Vered Tomlak, who’s the senior director of marketing programs at Locus. Al, Vered, thank you so much for having me, and thanks for taking the time. I really appreciate it.

Vered Tomlak: [00:00:26] Yeah. Thank you for having us.

Al Dekin: [00:00:27] Yeah. Our pleasure.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:00:28] Awesome. So let’s get right into it. I want to start in… The podcast is called “Manufacturing Matters,” and I fully understand that, you know, your end customer might veer a bit off of manufacturing and sort of into logistics and fulfillment, things like that, but both within the realm of fulfillment and manufacturing. I’m curious, what are some of the main pain points that businesses and customers of yours are facing today? Including labor shortage. And how are you guys helping?

Al Dekin: [00:00:54] Yeah, it’s a good question. I mean, labor shortage is the big one. And you see that across many different industries, actually. But in our world, you know, the labor shortage could also be translated to labor availability [and] quality. There are turnover factors. There’s a lot of things going on in the labor world that make it very turbulent. And so obviously that’s a concern for our customers. But beyond that, it’s also other things like flexibility. The world is changing, day to day, week to week. You know, what you’re selling today may not be what you’re selling tomorrow, for example. What you’re making today may not be what you make tomorrow. And then lastly, you know, I think especially over the last couple of quarters, you’ve seen volatility in demand, so that shapes the need for not just labor, but the need even for automation. So you combine all of those trends, all of those issues, and people are trying to solve a very specific problem, which is “how do I get stuff out the door? How do I move stuff out of the warehouse? But how do I do it in a way, when times are unpredictable?” Unpredictability doesn’t always lend itself to automation. And the labor, which usually is sort of the flexibility aspect in any operation has immense challenges. So we provide a solution that, through the use of robotics, drives an increase in productivity and throughput for the labor pool that you have available. We get more stuff out the door, we get stuff out faster, and do so in a way that is flexible. So it’s not something that’s bolted down. It’s not something that’s rigid, where it can only do one thing well. But as your business shifts, as the demand shifts, as the products change, we can change with it. So it’s a unique combination of flexibility and optimization.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:02:54] Yeah. So that’s really interesting. A couple of things I want to kind of follow up with there… One thing that, in writing a lot of content, one of the things I’ve been saying is, as the needs of the end user evolve, the vendor community has risen and advanced their technologies. “Flexibility” is one of the key words that I’ve seen and written myself a lot because, you know, “part variability,” “high mix, low volume,” all these different buzzwords—— You need automation systems that are more flexible. On top of that, I wanted to ask about labor shortage and industrial automation in general. Prior to Covid… Probably sick of talking about it, but, Covid led to a big uptick in the adoption of automation technologies, obviously. So if you look at some of the numbers now, it’s still going down a little bit because that’s a little bit inflated by these numbers that went up after Covid. But I think that, in my opinion and some of the people I’ve talked to —— I’m curious what you both think about this —— is that I think automation has been ripe for growth. Way before Covid was even an idea or, you know, a reality. So let me stop there and see what you guys think about that.

Al Dekin: [00:04:02] Well, I’d say you’re correct in the sense that Covid created an interesting opportunity for companies in the automation space. Some of that demand has shifted over time. Just look at retailers and, sort of, they’re trying to figure out their own demand curves and the like. But, you’re spot on. I mean, we’ve always been trying to automate tasks, jobs that are difficult to fill, that are not a lot of fun to do. One of the challenges, particularly working in a warehouse, is that it’s very repetitive work. It’s not not always inspiring work. The workforce actually is aging in certain parts of the world. You know, you’re trying to rely on an older demographic to actually do the work that’s physically taxing, physically demanding. So, we started this business well before Covid and hit a significant growth curve before Covid was something that was on everybody’s mind. So, yeah, we’re seeing that trend continue even now post Covid.

Vered Tomlak: [00:05:10] And can I just jump in? So, Locus Robotics in itself, we really are an AMR (autonomous mobile robots) solution for warehouses. And what we do is, we help increase, as Al said, the peak productivity. And we help everything in terms of allowing people to pick more accurately. We work off of AI that allows for more efficient paths and routes throughout the warehouse. So what you’re seeing now, though, in general, is a lot more people buying online, a lot more people, you know, doing those smaller purchases. And that was happening before Covid. Covid kind of spiked it up, for sure. You saw more and more people buying in that space. And for our customers, while it’s come down a little bit, it’s still maintained pretty high. And at that same time, as I said, it’s been compiled by a labor shortage, less people wanting to work there as well, and also reliability of that labor. So that’s where you’ve seen the popularity as well as automation cases being proven throughout both the markets here as well as internationally.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:06:10] It’s a really good point. I was thinking about this: right now in the US there are more open jobs than there are unemployed people. So even if you fill every job, people are still going to be like, well, “who’s going to do this? Who’s going to do that?” And a lot of these jobs —— I know how repetitive this is —— but dull, dirty, dangerous, right? Like, there’s variability, different types of jobs, but in a setting like this where somebody’s having to lift overhead all the time? Long-term injury issues there. And if you have robots that can do it, you know, it makes sense.

Vered Tomlak: [00:06:39] And one thing that also came about too, is just the need for the end consumer to want things faster. They want things overnight. I mean, it’s been talked about a lot. There’s obviously the Amazon effect, where people want things and they want it now. And this is where this has really helped those companies be able to deliver. Whether you’re a 3PL (third-party logistics) delivering upon your SLAs (service level agreements) or whether you’re a retail customer who’s promised next day delivery, our robotics specifically have helped people become faster and just more efficient with less staff, or the same level of staff that was there.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:07:13] So that’s perfect transition point because I wanted to ask you about peak season. First, for those who don’t know, if you could explain it. Second part of that question is, how do companies, how do businesses in the warehousing and logistics space —— you know, fulfillment —— how do they prepare for that?

Al Dekin: [00:07:29] So peak season is something everybody should be able to relate to. We’re all about to go out and spend a few dollars for the holidays. And what happens, as everybody knows, is that there’s rapid increase in demand. And then there’s an expectation that all of those orders, all of those products arrive in time to be wrapped and put under a tree or something similar. And so what you see is a compression of, particularly retail buying, into a couple of weeks of the year. There are a lot of retailers out there who basically make their number, they make their revenue in those 3 or 4 weeks that are now affectionately known as peak. And they range from Black Friday, Cyber Monday… there’s a lot of names for it, but the bottom line is, they can sell a year’s worth of revenue in a very short period of time. It’s an immense challenge because, especially from an automation perspective, if you’re only selling a limited number of units or product over the course of Q1, Q2, Q3, and then suddenly you have this incredible spike in demand. That variability doesn’t lend itself to sort of traditional forms of automation. So peak is a major challenge in our world. I alluded to this earlier, but we’re fortunate to have a solution that actually can scale up and scale down with these sort of spikes in demand. So it’s of huge importance to our customers. And it’s a huge importance to be able to actually keep up with the demand and, as Vered was mentioning before, make sure that those orders get out the door and arrive on on time.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:09:08] Yeah. You know, just for the sake of the conversation, like we don’t—— on “Manufacturing Matters,” in general, we tend not to get overly commercial, but to your point about having solutions that are scalable and can sort of do different things for different companies: can you walk me through a little bit of your product line in the different areas that they target?

Al Dekin: [00:09:29] Yeah. So, it’s interesting because we… You use the term “product line,” which is understandable. But for us, we really come at it from a solution perspective. So we start off with trying to understand one of our customer’s particular workflows, their needs, the products that they handle, etc., and then make decisions around what’s the right way to solve the problem. Ultimately, the workflows that we support, whether it’s an outbound process like picking orders or it’s an inbound process of putting stuff on shelves, understanding that process will then dictate what we offer. And we have a couple of enabling form factors that really are defined by their capacity. So we have a smaller bot which is our original bot, hence the name origin, which has a payload up to 90 pounds, performs very, very well in very high throughput, very dense e-commerce environments, for example. But we also have an option for larger products —— whether they’re dimensionally larger or they’re of higher weight —— to be able to sort of shift and do the same thing that we do, but just for a bigger product. But really, those decision points and those product decisions come at the end. So we’re really focused on what does a customer do? What’s the process? And then we’ll look at what are the enablers that we can bring to the table. So a little bit slightly different approach. So we do have a product line in a sense. But it’s… They’re all capable of doing the same things. It’s just a question of the right tool for the right situation.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:11:13] Yeah. And I imagine it’s somewhat fluid too, right? Like if you have a customer that asks for a specific attribute or whatever specification capability, you might say, “hey, that’s a good idea” and integrate that into your offerings. Right? Is that something that you guys do?

Al Dekin: [00:11:25] Yeah. And I’ll give you an example. So I mentioned we have two robot form factors. Vector is the other one, which can carry up to 600 pounds. But whether it’s used for an inbound process bringing stuff into the building or an outbound process, something that might originate with a large, product we look at and say, “hey, that’s a good idea. Let’s make sure it’s available for anything that we do.” So every potential opportunity to improve a process is available, regardless of whether it’s a small or a large product or a small or a large robot.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:12:05] Yeah. So it’s not just so much of a “if you build it, they will come.” It’s like, “no, we’re going out there and solving problems and then going from there.” That makes sense actually.

Vered Tomlak: [00:12:13] Sorry. It’s an important note. I want to just get a little bit more into the details about the solution that Al was talking about after this, but what you just said about fixing the challenges or finding a solution, that’s how it actually started. So our founders —— Al, as well as our COO —— actually came from the logistics and warehouse space, and they were actually one of the first logistics companies to utilize robots in the warehouse. And then when Amazon came along, they kind of actually bought up the robots they were using. And there were a bunch of different people on the market. Not actually a bunch, but a good amount of different options on the market. But what was quickly seen was that these robots were built, and they were trying to figure out how to use them in a warehouse. And so coming from that logistics viewpoint, our team thought, “we know the challenges, so instead of building the robot and then finding what it can work and what it can do, let’s build a robot based on the challenges so it really works for warehouse people in the warehouse every day.” And it really solves problems. And that’s kind of still our motto today.

Vered Tomlak: [00:13:23] We don’t just build a bot or build a solution and then figure out where it’s going to work best. We figure out, what are the problems of our customers, of our prospects, and how do we solve those? And then, second, I just want to delve a little bit into —— we do have the platforms, and both the platforms really work off of the technology and the solutions of LocusOne, that kind of facilitate everything that they do. And through those platforms and through the LocusHub, which showcases those insights, we’re able to, or the robots are able to utilize the insights they gather every day, optimize their paths, optimize the pick order of the orders that are coming in from the WMS (warehouse management system). And that’s really where a lot of the efficiency comes, as well. And then when peak hits, what we’re easily able to do is have a customer say, “hey, I need 10 more origins, I need 10 more Vectors,” and they’re able to drop those bots. They’re instantly up on the network. They know what all the other bots know, and they’re able to start work right away. And that’s how we kind of help that scale.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:14:24] Now that’s interesting. It reminds me: I saw one of those —— I don’t know if you guys go on LinkedIn —— you see like goofy little shorts and inspirational videos. And it’s one of those guys. It’s the guy that swears a lot on LinkedIn. I forget his name…

Vered Tomlak: [00:14:37] Oh, Gary? (laughing)

Jimmy Carroll: [00:14:38] Gary! Yeah!. And he was talking about “the companies that interest me, the inventions that interest me most are the people that have been in a space and said, ‘hey, I’ve experienced this. How do I solve this?’ Instead of people just like, ‘here’s a cool thing I made.'” I’ll get into kind of a related question on that… I wanted to ask because we’re here, right? So this is a brand new facility, and I see a counter on the wall that’s a large number, over 4 billion. So, brand new facility—— you guys must be excited about that. And then tell me a little bit about that counter.

Vered Tomlak: [00:15:12] Yeah. So, like you said, we moved into this new facility this August. It’s over 150,000 square feet of engineering, R&D, and demo space. And this counter right here actually counts all the units we’ve picked since our incorporation as a company. And we just reached our 4 billionth pick earlier this week. And one really interesting fact about that is, it took us seven years to reach 1 billion, and it took us less than six months to go from 3 billion to 4 billion. So that just shows not only the rate of acceleration that Locus sees, but the growth of automation in the market. And specifically, you know, our bots out in the field.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:15:52] Yeah!

Al Dekin: [00:15:53] There’s an even better way to think about it, which is —— if we’re saving our customers $0.20, $0.25, $0.30 a pick, we’ve saved them over $1 billion. That’s the quick math. So that’s… In the end, we wouldn’t be here if we weren’t delivering something of value. So 4 billion is cool. But it translated ultimately to “what’s the value that’s been realized by, by our customers?” which is significant.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:16:19] Yeah, absolutely. As far as the new headquarters goes, I’ve only seen the part that I walked through to get here, but it’s very large and impressive. But I’m sure there are other areas that I haven’t seen. How’s this going to benefit customers of yours? Do you have new capabilities or things like that?

Al Dekin: [00:16:37] Yeah. It’s significant in that it’s not just about the space, but it’s what we do with this space. So, obviously, see behind us, we’ve got a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate our capabilities, and just to be able to bring customers here, bring partners in here, anybody who’s interested, you know, this is a significant playground for us and, more importantly, an opportunity for people to be up close and personal and learn firsthand. But as we’ve grown the business, it’s become not just important to educate people on what the capabilities are, but also for them to see that we’ve built a business. It’s one thing to develop a technology or develop a solution, but it can only scale if you have the business infrastructure, or bones, behind it. So here they can delve into, how we manage supply chain, our manufacturing processes, the quality control that we have. They can see all the other test floors here. I mean, there’re hundreds of robots running around here, and they’re all doing different things, and they’re running around for different reasons. So you can see that, you can appreciate the levels we go to to refine a product or to ensure there’s quality. And then even beyond that, see that we actually do pure, raw R&D here. I mean, the customers pose a problem to us, they say, “oh my God, wouldn’t it be great IF…” Like hmmm, interesting. And it may be something as small or as simple as a shelf design. It may be a tweak to something physical, it may be a tweak to something virtual or logical. But we have the ability to do very —— I’ll say “raw.” I’m a sales guy. —— raw R&D. I don’t know the technical term for it, but, do it here and then look for ways to scale that across the product line.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:18:31] Yeah, I was going to ask you about that actually. Have you ever had a customer that either wants you to show an example of having the bots being able to carry certain products or have they ever sent you certain products and you have to demonstrate to them either virtually or in person? Do you guys do that here? I would imagine, right?

Vered Tomlak: [00:18:46] 100%, yeah. I mean, so we’ve had customers come in who, you know, have a certain product that they need to carry. We have one that is wine and liquor, and we’ve created ways for our bots to carry those as well. I would say Vector in itself came from a lot of our customers saying that they needed to move cases and things that were heavier. And that kind of led us down the path of Vector, too. And one of the big things that we do for customers is, Locus doesn’t stop once the bots are deployed. We work on a “robotics as a service” model, which means we’re there 24/7. And it also means that we’re there past deployment doing optimization, throughout all of our customers. So we’ll bring the customers in. We’ll have our quarterly reviews with them. We’ll go over ways that we can optimize, they can optimize. And sometimes that comes down to, what do we need to develop to help them take their efficiency to the next level? And so we use this space as well, which allows them to, you know, work with the new robots, see the innovation in action, and help us get to those solutions together.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:19:46] Very cool. Yeah. So, AMRs is in general—— they’re not a new technology. I mean, I think Locus has been around 10, 10-ish years or so. Right?

Al Dekin: [00:19:55] Almost.

Vered Tomlak: [00:19:56] Like 2015, officially.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:19:59] So close enough. And, you know, there’s been a number of other companies that have been around —— however long, it doesn’t really matter —— but it seems to me like, at Automate maybe two years ago or so, and all of a sudden there’s companies like Locus and some of the other big players, but a lot of new companies, too. Sort of like an explosion of AMR. And I’m thinking, why? Right? So first of all, why? But I think it’s also because, obviously the value right now in this unstable job market —— and Covid helped with that —— but also because I think the technology is advancing. What do you see as some of the main growth drivers beyond what we’ve already talked about, like fleet management software and AI, which I’ll ask about a little bit more, but what are some of these growth drivers do you think?

Al Dekin: [00:20:46] I think there’re a couple of things. It’s a very interesting question. At some level, I’d like to think we could take some credit for it. I’ll explain: like  Vered mentioned earlier, there have been a lot of companies that have built robots and some companies, even in the Boston area, that have been around for a long time. And there always seems to be a quest for commercial success. And I think the fact that we have built a business has, I’d like to believe, inspired additional folks to look at our approach, to look at the industry we’re in, to identify other opportunities, try and enter the market. It’s opened up. It sort of validated the opportunity for additional investment and the like. So I think all these things come together to create that explosion that you mentioned. But, if we had not set out to build a business and, you know, we’re well over 100 customers, 300-plus sites, we’re global now… That’s the proof point where a market says, “wow, there’s something there,” right? And you look at any emerging industry over time, there’s always a couple of companies that provide a level of validation. I’d like to think we’ve provided some of that and, you know, created a path for others, maybe not to do exactly what we do. But to  seek similar opportunities in this or adjacent markets.

Vered Tomlak: [00:22:30] Yeah. I think all the tech together, you know, has made all the solutions just more powerful. But as you look at the industry growing, there’s a demand and that demand has grown, which has made the solutions on the market, has made people say, “hey, I should create a solution and sell it because there’s demand there.” And the reason, really, there is a demand growth is because those early adopters, those DHLs, they tried the automation and it worked. And now people have seen that it is proven to work and it’s the path forward. And it’s what people need to do, not just to stay ahead of the competition, but to stay even in the game. And it really is kind of the way that automation is going or the way the warehouse and logistics space is moving forward. So they need to pick it up or they risk being left behind.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:23:20] Sure.

Vered Tomlak: [00:23:21] And so that’s where you’re really seeing a surge of new providers coming in. But once again, you’re going to kind of see some fall off because there are people, like we said, that understand what’s going on in a warehouse. And that’s one of our true beliefs, is that it’s not just about knowing the robots, it’s about knowing the challenges of a warehouse and how to solve those challenges for the people that are using the bots.

Al Dekin: [00:23:43] Yeah. You made a comment, which I thought was interesting in that it was more of a question, which is: Is it the advancements in the technology? Is it the improvements maybe in sensors or other enabling technologies? And I would say yes, to some degree. But, we didn’t set out to build a robot that had the most advanced sensors. We set out to build a robot that had the right level for the problem we were trying to solve. And we very much understood the problem we were trying to solve. So I think we—— and I use this term a lot—— we’ve earned the right to keep growing and keep growing and build the business in that the capabilities we have now are capabilities you wouldn’t even have contemplated, let alone worried about, 10 years ago. For example, 10 years ago, we were happy to get 10 robots into a building. So we didn’t have to worry about, “how are you going to charge 700 robots on a 24/7 cycle with no with no downtime, right? Which we do now. So again, yeah, there is enabling technology, but it’s really ultimately about the customer success and earning that right to keep getting to the next challenge and the next challenge and the next challenge. So now we look at what we have. And it’s more than just the robots, right? One robot… I would argue that there’s many kids in high school these days that could build a robot like this, but they wouldn’t know what to do with it, right? And if we said, “hey, how are you going to run 700 of these 24/7 to support a specific work stream, or improve productivity, reporting the results back and not disrupting order flow?” Oh, wow. Very different world, very different situation. So, I think we were able to take the concept of a robot and actually focus on the things that matter to make that robot valuable to our customers. And then everything else continues to fall into place.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:25:53] Yeah, 100%. This kind of ties into another question I was going to ask about: You don’t, to your point, it’s like if you do an application analysis for a new system —— whatever the system may be, a machine vision system —— you don’t go in there thinking, “I’m going to use XYZ products.” You say, “what’s my desired outcome here?” You don’t have to have the best technologies. I’m not saying you don’t HAVE the best technology, but I’m saying you wouldn’t need to put a 100 megapixel camera in there, for example. And I think you mentioned AI. And AI is a perfect example of that, right? And speaking of companies falling off, is AI… that’s a whole other story. But AI is adding a lot of value right now in a lot of different ways. Certainly subject to overhype. But now I think, especially eight or so years ago, it kind of burst onto the scene in industrial automation, largely in the form of deep learning. And it was kind of put out there as this magic tool that’s going to solve everything. It didn’t, but AI and other forms of machine learning have settled in as an extremely valuable tool in the overall automation toolbox. But you don’t need it for everything. So my question for you guys is, first, how do you use AI? And what’s your overall take on AI and the way it’s adding value today?

Al Dekin: [00:27:08] So I think AI is critically important. But I think some of what you describe and some of what I was just talking about is completely analogous. So, it’s a question of how you’re using it. For what purpose, at what level, to deliver what capability, functionality, or value. We’ve been using AI since we launched the business. It wasn’t anything that we trumpeted or what have you. But the complexity of our navigation, independent of the physical enabling technologies,  completely depends on artificial intelligence and our ability to make very quick decisions. It’s one of the reasons why we believe we have some of the best navigation in the business. So AI is, in some sense, not new. It’s new in terms of the hype and the hype cycle, for sure. But we’ve been using it where we feel it’s appropriate. Now, fast forward to today. Yeah, Vered made mention earlier, we capture data, we have dashboards and the like. If you look at the customers that we have, the data we’ve captured and aggregated on behalf of our customers, now we’ve got a tremendous asset to be able to look at that and say, “how do we make additional improvements,” right?

Al Dekin: [00:28:32] AI without data flow data, a data source, and then appropriate models is pretty useless. Right? So we’ve been planning for, I’ll say the infrastructure for AI since day one. Take that further. Now there are specific enhancements. So when we look at the evolution of say, safety sensors and the like, we’re starting to look at going beyond simple sort of LiDAR (light detection and ranging) scans, and we’re adding object recognition and other things that you see other people are doing, other people are bringing to market —— but they’re bringing to market kind of as an enabling technology, whereas we’re already developing and embedding them into our existing technology. So, for us, it’s always been a question of the right technology, generally speaking, for the right problem, but ensuring that we’re forward looking and having a development path that makes sense for the customers we serve, makes sense for the problems we solve. So yes, I’d agree AI has… Every technology, even robotics, goes through a hype cycle. But at the end of the day, I would argue if you’re purposeful, you’ll continue to add value, evolve your product, and increase the longevity of the solution you provide to the market.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:30:02] Yeah. Interesting. Are you doing object detection on the robots? So, in other words —— and there’s a reason I asked this, it’s just something I’m curious about. But, first of all, are you doing object detection on the robot?

Al Dekin: [00:30:17] We’ve not announced anything. Yet.

[00:30:20] Okay. Fair enough.

Al Dekin: [00:30:21] More to come.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:30:21] Okay.

Vered Tomlak: [00:30:22] But where the AI, a lot of the times, comes into place —— as Al said —— is with the insights. And these bots are making decisions, too, in real time. If an order is shorted or if there’s something in its way, in its path, it’s figuring out what the best way to get to its next item is. It’s also utilizing that information and then storing it so people can look at it and kind of make decisions, whether they’re on the floor and they’re the supervisor, or the warehouse, or even up into the operations team. That’s where a lot of that comes into play.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:30:55] Yeah. Fair enough. Part of the reason I was asking, I’m just curious: i know that for a while there was some hesitance from folks in the industry to want to put their data in the cloud. So I didn’t know if you were doing that. And if you’ve seen that or if we’re past that or if it’s irrelevant to your business.

Al Dekin: [00:31:10] Relevant to our business? No, I think almost everybody these days has some form of their data in the cloud. I mean, our overall architecture has on-premise compute. We have onboard compute on the robot. So we have a multi-tiered architecture to begin with. But, you know, it’s a question of, where does it make sense to store stuff, whether it’s for redundancy purposes, backup recovery purposes, access purposes, whatever. But yeah, the cloud plays a role in just about everything these days.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:31:44] Okay. Got a fun one for you guys. This kind of tacks onto that previous conversation about, you know, are certain technologies necessary? Humanoid robots. One of the discussions I’ve seen a lot lately is, why do I need a humanoid when we have wheeled robots that are already successfully doing what we need? What will a humanoid do? Will they ever be affordable? What’s your take on humanoids?

Al Dekin: [00:32:21] It’s funny, because we’ve been in discussions with a lot of the humanoid companies or manufacturers. There’re a lot of interesting concepts there. Our view is that eventually somebody will have a solution and a technology that makes a lot of sense. I think there are some repetitive tasks, in a warehouse, for example, that could certainly be fulfilled by something like that. You could argue whether it should be a biped or some other form factor. In fact, there are some companies now that actually have, they have articulated arms where they have a wheeled base, for example, right? So, our interest in that market is to make sure that we’re understanding where the advancements are being made. We did the same thing when arms were just coming out. It’s our job to be plugged into new innovations and try and either help push along things that we think have promise, or at least be able to make decisions around what we want to try and work with as these technologies come out, or perhaps avoid altogether. So there’s enough there investment going into humanoids, i don’t think you can ignore it, and we’re not. But it’s also a question of how soon these will actually be viable in the market. And, again, on behalf of our customers and what our customers are interested in, our job is to be right there with our customers in emerging technologies.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:34:02] Vered, I think you were going to say something?

Vered Tomlak: [00:34:03] Very similar. We always like to say that robots are cool and there are lots of really cool robots, but it comes down to: it’s what pays the bills and what makes the ROI. And so I agree that there might be a solution down the road and a humanoid that works. And we’ll keep an eye on that as we’re building for innovation. But right now, does it make sense for our customer? Will it bring the ROI that’s needed? Would we recommend something just because it’s cool? Would we try to innovate something that we don’t know is feasible in a certain amount of time, just because it’s going to be the next new thing? No. We’re really focused on how are they going to make their numbers and how are they going to succeed? Because when they succeed, we succeed. And that’s the end goal.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:34:50] Yeah, they’re undoubtedly cool, right? They’re super cool looking and I want to see more of them. And I hope that they become a reality, an everyday part of life. But, at Automate, there were a lot of AMRs functioning, including, as you know, a specific dedicated-AMR demo area, right? There were no functioning humanoids that I saw. So not yet. But it’s a newer technology to be fair. And, what will they be doing? I don’t know, serving drinks? I think one company had a robot that… It wasn’t a full humanoid, but it was a little bit of a humanoid from here up. But anyway.

Vered Tomlak: [00:35:28] It was making coffee, I think.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:35:29] Yeah.

Al Dekin: [00:35:30] I have enough problem being a functioning human, let alone a functioning humanoid. But again, I think we’ve proven time and time again that, with investment, with learning, things will evolve. And, I share the excitement for just the evolution of technology in general, for sure. I think we’re very practical, as Vered said. But we became practical in terms of our willingness to innovate around specific problems. So, as the problems evolve, we aim to and we continue to invest to be in those conversations and thinking clearly about what makes sense and what doesn’t.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:36:16] Yeah. Fair enough. Very pragmatic. Right?

Vered Tomlak: [00:36:20] I think, as we like to say, innovation with purpose.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:36:22] Interesting. So in the larger realm of industrial automation, what are some other technologies that excite you right now? Not long term, but right now. What are you excited about?

Al Dekin: [00:36:37] That’s a very loaded question. For us, I think it’s a… And again, keep in mind, we have a very narrow view. I mean, I spend a lot of time in warehouses and I don’t get out much. Right? So, but within the four walls of the warehouse, I continue to see other opportunities around, I’ll say, other handling requirements. For example, you know, we do a lot of each picking, some cart and handling, but there’re still a lot of what we would call carton-based operations. There’re pallet-based operations. There’s loading and unloading of  trucks. So, there are lots of things that we could stop and look at and say, “hey, that’s an opportunity. That’s an opportunity.” We’ll probably never get to a lot of them. So I see it as an incredible opportunity to continue to squeeze out additional optimization, productivity throughput within the four walls in ways that we may never even pay attention to. So it’s… Within the four walls, there’s tremendous, tremendous opportunity.

Vered Tomlak: [00:38:02] Yeah, I think what I see when we talk about innovations, or the new things coming that excites us, are those new use cases that we’re figuring out and that we’re succeeding with, with both these platforms. So, just when we see sites that are using our platforms together. Or, the things that we’ve been doing for a long time, but a lot of people are adopting now is… Real estate prices are very high for warehouse spaces. So people are looking to figure out, “how can I get the most out of my current space?” And a lot of times it means going up. And right now, for our bots, specifically our solution, it’s flexible enough to be brought up to that second level. So it’s seeing the robots on multiple levels now, in developing those new use cases, integrating with different kind of conveyors or sortation machines, and things like that. And kind of blending it all together. Those are some of the cool things that we’re seeing specifically with our solutions and our new use cases that we’re taking on.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:39:06] When you… Pardon me, this might be an ignorant question, but when you say “go up to the second level,” do you mean as part of like an ASRS system or something different?

Al Dekin: [00:39:14] As a mezzanine environment. So you walk into a warehouse, there’s a lot of them that have multiple floors.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:39:19] Okay.

Al Dekin: [00:39:20] And again, a unique challenge, one that we’ve got a significant opportunity to help with. But a lot of solutions, they need to reside on the ground floor and they can’t actually work on mezzanines, for example.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:39:37] Okay.

Al Dekin: [00:39:37] So you’ll you’ll see stuff like that, whether it’s new, whether it’s legacy. Those are interesting opportunities. But I’d even add a very simple one. What we’re doing a lot more of these days is integrating with packaging technology. So, once we pick it off the floor, somebody’s got to put it in a box, or some thing has got to put it into a box and get it out the door. So there’s a lot of innovation going on in terms of bringing together automated packing-type concepts and technologies and merging them with flow systems that flow goods like we do from one place to another.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:40:17] Okay. Thanks for indulging me there.

Al Dekin: [00:40:20] No, no. All good.

Vered Tomlak: [00:40:21] So I want to go back a little bit. Sorry, it’s going back to peak a little bit, because as we talk about innovation… Some of these innovations could be quite small but with a really meaningful impact. So, one of the major things about the peak season is you have a lot of people ordering. And what some people who maybe don’t work in the warehouse space don’t realize is that then you have a lot of returning. And that is also an issue. And so we’ve been doing this for a while, but it shows a little bit about the innovation to meet that kind of need. We enabled our bots to be able to do put-away, and that’s now a big thing that our customers are doing. So they can seamlessly both pick stuff on the shelves, but also put back in a seamless fashion.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:41:01] Yeah. Good point. Let’s see, I’ve asked so many questions, even more than I planned, but is there anything else that we haven’t talked about that that you guys wanted to bring up or that you’re excited about?

Al Dekin: [00:41:14] We could spend hours talking about the technology, but I think it’s, for me, it’s exciting just to see a business grow, a business scale. Other companies see opportunities for us to create an ecosystem of innovators. But I sort of come back to… To me, it’s just been an amazing, an amazing journey. I mean, you look at this building and where we are today. There’re a lot of people who put a lot of hard work into this. And it’s not just the robots. It’s how we sell them. It’s how we support them. It’s how we manufacture and distribute them. You know, it’s the flexibility and the business model and everything else. So, I think this is… It’s been a very gratifying few years and now we’re just excited. I think we’ve just touched the surface.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:42:19] Fantastic. Well, I’m glad to have been able to visit this facility. I’m glad you’re in Massachusetts. It’s great. I really appreciate the time. If people want to learn more, obviously they can check you out on LinkedIn. But, I suppose it’s at LocusRobotics.com?

Vered Tomlak: [00:42:35] Yep. That’s LocusRobotics.com. We have a lot of great customer videos on our website. We have a lot of great resources and materials —— if people are just trying to understand if they’re ready for warehouse automation or just, you know, looking to learn —— in our resource center. We also have our own podcast, if you don’t mind me putting a little plug!

Jimmy Carroll: [00:42:54] I sure don’t.

Vered Tomlak: [00:42:55] It sounds a little familiar to yours, but it’s called “Warehouse Automation Matters,” where we sit down with a lot of our customers, a lot of our partners, and we talk about their unique business needs, what they’re seeing in the industry and, not just how we’re solving it, but how the industry is solving it in general. So, I encourage everybody to listen to it. It’s on our website, Spotify, anywhere you can listen to a podcast.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:43:20] Awesome. And if anyone has any specific questions for Al or Vered, feel free to reach out to us at Manufacturing-Matters.com, or email me directly, jimmy@techb2b.com. I’d be happy to pass them along. Hopefully you all enjoyed this podcast. I know that I did, Al and Vered. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Al Dekin: [00:43:38] Yeah, thank you for your time.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:43:39] All right. Thank you.