This fireside chat recap is from Day 2 of FreightWaves Global Supply Chain Week. Day 2 focuses on retail.
FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: The future of automated warehouses.
DETAILS: The surge in e-commerce demand, the impact of COVID-19 and a shortage of qualified warehouse labor has forced retailers and their third-party logistics provider partners to implement warehouse automation strategies or to pull forward plans that may have been scheduled two to three years out. But looking out as far as 2025, there will still be a mix of automation and manual involvement, with humans still performing the creative thinking and workflow optimization.
SPEAKER: Jeff Christensen, vice president, product, Seegrid Corp.
BIO: Christensen brings over 25 years of experience and a portfolio of notable achievements. His career spans user experience, systems design, information delivery solutions, military systems, business intelligence and data analytics software. His expertise is in growing technology startups in different customer markets from founding through growth and exit, with previous companies acquired by Boeing and Nielsen.
KEY QUOTES FROM JEFF CHRISTENSEN:
“It’s now a constant peak across the board. And it’s been like that for nine months now.”
“There was clearly a movement toward automation. The demand was there. COVID accelerated it.”
“The technology is there” to fully automate a warehouse. But “economic viability is the most important question” in determining whether most or all of a facility should be automated.