 Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us today. I'm Laura Azege, a course lead here at MIT CDL for the MicroMasters in SEM program and I'm co-hosting this live event today with Kellen Betz also a course lead here at the MicroMasters program. Today we are extremely fortunate to have Mr. Pradeep Kumar with us. Pradeep is the Director of Advanced Engineering at Walmart so welcome Pradeep. Thank you, thank you Lora for the introduction and good morning everyone thank you for the opportunity today I'm looking forward for the discussion. Awesome so to everyone in our audience and if you have joined us before you already know we love to kick off our events with a poll so we would like to know now why are you joining the audience today? Is it that you are here to learn more about information like automation in general and are you here to learn more specifically for distribution centers, techniques or processes or willing to implement automation and you don't know where to start or you want to get some recommendations so while we let you populate the poll let's go with Kellen who will share us the agenda for the session. Awesome hello everyone welcome Pradeep and thank you Laura so for the next 30 minutes or so we're going to discuss automation with Pradeep focusing on the distribution center as a context and we'll discuss some examples and how to identify opportunities with automation maybe make or buy technology you know some of the trade-offs that come with automation you know technology considerations and a number of other exciting topics and so the last 15 minutes or so you know we'll definitely save some time for the questions from the audience and so please start thinking of those and please use that Q&A feature that zoom Q&A button there on the bottom to ask your questions we'll keep an eye on the chat as well but it's much easier for us to keep an eye on that Q&A if you have questions love to see post introductions you know introduce yourself where you're from maybe maybe Usman I see your your first one in there as well so you know great use that chat to connect with the audience but please use that Q&A for asking questions and then also make sure that you're logged in with a name we won't be asking or we won't be pulling questions from the audience they're anonymous awesome so with that maybe we'll close this first poll and we'll take a look at our results from this first poll here so the question was why are you here today I'm going to learn a little bit more about what you're hoping to get out of today's session it looks like you know you know 30 percent of you are looking to see automation how it improves playchain performance and so that's great also a good awesome to see here you know some micro masters learners here who don't miss any webinars it's always awesome to see if you're you here as well for deep I don't know if you have any thoughts on those results there absolutely I think that's exactly what we wanted people who were enthusiastic about learning automation supply chain and looks like most of our participants are looking to that so yes I think we should be able to cover most of those topics awesome so with that are you ready to kick things off pretty pretty good get started here absolutely let's go great well can you maybe just share this a little bit more about your background you know kind of your journey and your story of how you got to where you are today and sure my name is Pradeep Kumar I'm an automation enthusiast or at least that's how I would like to call myself I'm in this field for about more than 15 years and first seven years was working for small-scale industry designing automation equipment for food and pharmaceutical industry and the next eight years was spent in engineering and supply chain roles in one of the large CPG company based in based in us in most recent role I'm helping automate processes and the distribution centers for retail industry in summary I'm an engineer who likes to solve problem as most of us on the call certainly that's what most people in this call is so thank you for sharing that and that's a very interesting background and we're hoping to learn a lot from you today and your experience but before diving into the details of automation processes and specific technologies we want to start at a very high level on ask you why a company would want to automate a process and thinking on distribution centers or any other operations and with that you know a lot of questions come to our mind so I'm going to share those with you but feel free to share any of them so what are some of the strategies to identify opportunities for automation and once you get those opportunities how to sell those to the leadership how to get that buy-in and then once into that how do you think you can measure the results measure the success show them that the opportunities was fruitful very good question Laura I hope your question has a lot of different parts to it maybe let me try to address it step by step I think the first one I heard was why automate for example let's say in any warehouse we are handling a lot of cases you're unloading and loading on to the trailers removing cases from the pallets adding cases to the pallets there are multiple parameters to consider in these operations that will trigger the need for automation so some of the factors that why automating some of the factors that may require automation are you want to improve safety and ergonomics in your distribution centers right improving the associate experience so there are workers in the warehouse how do you improve their experience in certain tasks that they're doing increase in reliability of service to the end customer everything we do in the supply chain is is focused on is it creating value to the end customer if you're not doing that you're doing something wrong right so capacity increases increase in rate of production let's say you are measuring your cases per hour you're doing 100 cases per hour how do you get to 200 cases per hour reducing the error rate and improving the quality of the operation so all these factors would be it's like why we automate I think the next part of your question was what are the strategies to automate you know sometimes you think about strategies and maybe we think oh strategy has to be something like very it's a hard task now it's it's very simple I think really kind of breaking down the problem and looking at the how are you going to solve it so according to me I think he's understanding the current state of your supply chain identify the opportunity areas that need attention let's say from safety cost reliability or any other KPIs you want to drive in your supply chain build a future state process that you want to target so let's say for example you say I want to improve safety by 50 percent I want to reduce cost by 10 percent I want to increase reliability by 30 percent so you define those targets so based on those targets let's start exploring the market understand the type of technologies available to get to the desired future state what is the readiness level of those technologies are these concepts only or I can place a peer to pay buy an equipment and create immediate value in the supply chain so these are some of the ways you can kind of strategize on how do you go about finding an automation technology the other part is like how do you measure value so value can be measured by the KPIs you're trying to drive KPIs can vary with type of automation systems you're designing like for this example I'll use case manipulation case manipulation is anything to do with cases as long as you're moving cases with the warehouse so you may be taking cases from the trailer putting it on a conveyor you may be taking cases from a pallet putting it on a conveyor or building a pallet with cases so anything to do with movement of cases we call it like case manipulation so some of the KPIs in case manipulation space would be cases per hour very simple you're doing 100 cases how do you get to 200 asset availability what is the percentage of your asset availability is your asset always available 90% of the time it's available or 95% of the time it's available because you have to figure in you always have to you know stop the asset and maintain the asset and sometimes your associates will have to go in and address some interventions so maybe less target less than 90% asset availability anything lower than that you have issues but you can work with automation to increase the asset availability error rate would be another one OEE so OEE is very standard for any automation equipment like overall equipment effectiveness so this is how you could kind of quantify the value generated by automation I think the last piece a lot of that you mentioned was how do you get leadership buy-in so kind of like what we just went through is do you understand your current state do you understand what is the future state you're targeting you have KPIs identified at that point you start doing cost versus effort analysis calculate the business value that can be driven so maybe calculate IRR internal rate of return like what what is the financial value and other values you can create at that point I think you're ready to share these ideas with stakeholders and the leaders to get buy-in you know you obviously have to maybe take them along with the journey while you're identifying the KPIs but at that point you're truly ready to get the leadership buy-in because you've done that exercise so hopefully I gives you some answer to what you were looking for that's awesome thank you I'm pretty you know great to kind of hear your perspective on you know supply chains even within a distribution center can be so complex you know there's so many moving parts and so to kind of break it down you know focus it on understanding what your current state is you know identify your your KPIs and and then proceed from there it's a it's a fascinating approach so maybe just kind of building off of that that approach that you just mentioned you know once you have that identifier that opportunity identified you kind of have your target your metrics you know establish what you're going for maybe you're improving safety or reducing error rate or whatever happens to be maybe the next step and kind of dialing in on the technology piece you know what are some of the strategies to identify where the right technologies are for this opportunity right you know should you if you're a company that maybe has some resources should you build that technology yourself should you buy that technology from a you know supplier in the marketplace and then how do you select those suppliers if you're going to you know work with a vendor a partner how do you go about selecting those suppliers or those partners in the marketplace absolutely I think this is a very common challenge when you're looking to solve an automation problem you always have an opportunity to build it internally or opportunity to go buy it in the market and sometimes the solution kind of lies in between so I think a definitely a critical step in the problem solving strategy something I'm familiar with is methodology called technology readiness level I think we have a slide for that Kellen I think was slide number one if you could share that yeah perfect so I think obviously starts with the scope of what exactly you're looking for so defining the scope of the problem might solve so what we do is in this particular processes we explore the market evaluate the capability demonstrations from solution providers and categorize them into this technology readiness level or trl is how we would refer it so for example like the bottom most is trl one category trl one category will be the supplier who has concept only and does not have a prototype to show so for example they may have a AutoCAD layout or a 3d model of the solution they think this is this is how they're going to solve your problem so we categorize them into trl one because they do not have a prototype to show as compared to trl five is the supplier who has mature product which has been tested and tried in the market is something that can create immediate value in the distribution space all others like trl two, trl three, trl four are similar categories higher the number higher is the maturity level of the product so because when you go out in the market you are you see multiple options out there and very difficult to select which supplier and very difficult to objectively select what supplier you want to go with so trl categorization of suppliers in this way really helps kind of building some objective selection process in the technology so coming back to kind of like make versus why suppliers classified in the higher trl categories are most likely to be selected because they're ready to go right that being said there are other important factors that may impact the decision making that could be a supplier's ability to scale maybe they are smaller company they're not ready to scale what is the cost of solution because if the cost is not right I mean it doesn't doesn't help us resource availability and other things right so it's a standard process we kind of go through when we're selecting a supplier so you said make versus buy there's a lot of pros and cons to both approaches something to consider for make making it yourself approach is availability of right skill set and resources in your team do you even have the resources and skill set in your team to build those solutions so for example if market is let's say immature in technology readiness so you are looking for something you think market does not have that it is high likelihood to make that internally probably there was an issue with Pardev's connectivity but I was very excited to see Kelly and I don't know if you did also but in our S2X course we usually have a finance piece of it and it's very hard to connect people to finance and I love the fact that he brought the buy-in connected with sharing financial um status and um techniques like the IRR and also here because he's sharing a framework about technology readiness and I think Pardev is back the fact that we have a framework that we actually apply in the real world and in the real operation and issues we we have to face every day so I don't know if Kelly any if you found that sorry guys I'm back now can you guys hear me oh yeah welcome back okay perks perks of working remotely so no problem I think you finished with the answer but I know if you wanted me to share the slide again or if we want to move on to that yeah sure I think I was kind of talking about the make option maybe let me close that comment I don't know if it went through if you could flash the slide again I think we were kind of talking about make versus buy and and I think I was giving an example of if market is immature in technology readiness I think it's high likelihood to to make that product internally this way you can control your roadmap and build robust solutions purely based on your needs versus waiting for the industry to prioritize developing that solution awesome let me stop sharing so that I can see you back and I was saying I appreciate the fact that you brought this framework because this is not something that we usually see from the supply chain perspective itself but we do deal with bank versus buy decision and it's very interesting to see how you apply it on a specific industry or a specific need so thank you for bringing that to our audience I'm going to another topic now and as you explained before we use automation for different tasks for different improvement opportunities and I'm now thinking on perhaps the situation of planning a new facility when we're thinking on a new facility or in the way we design our network we don't only need to design how the facility is within it if if we need to have consider a certain size of a place or location a certain specific location for that facility or how to design the flow within it so based on your experience when that's automation come into that conversation when we're thinking on the sign in a new facility or when we're thinking where to locate it absolutely I think it's a it's a very good question and especially while designing a new facility a lot of factors needs to be considered like for example what is the desired output of that facility you know you don't build new buildings just for a line of sight of one to two years so consider the desired output from that warehouse for next 10 20 30 years down the line right so the other factors could be you know type of product you want to handle in that particular distribution center it could be are you handling an ambient product or you need a product that needs refrigeration you know something like grocery and things like that how the product needs to be received stored and shipped in the distribution center it purely depends on what product and all those requirements kind of evolve from that and other capabilities and infrastructure needed to process that one for example you know need barcode scanners you're going to need an ability to build pallets load and unload trailers so to accommodate all these factors automation is needed so most of the time these days real estate is limited I think we all know real estate is prime these days it's not it's very expensive so there is more need nowadays to have more efficient distribution centers than ever so automation is considered very early in design phase for these new distribution centers sometimes even before locking the real estate which makes perfect sense if you want to design your site before you lock get landlocked right so I think Laurie mentioned something important like network design network design has a significant impact on processes and automation systems needed in a particular DC so when you think of a warehouse you know warehouse has a upstream and downstream to it yeah you're designing a warehouse there is some nodes which are going to actually feed into that warehouse send product into that warehouse so you will call it upstream and there is a few things like this warehouse is going to ship things to other locations which could be end customer stores or another distribution center you call it downstream of that warehouse so there's a warehouse upstream of that and then there is downstream of that so give an example if the warehouse you're designing can only receive palletized loads all the upstream distribution centers which is feeding into it should have the capability to send out palletized loads so it's all interconnected right while designing an automation system for one warehouse you have to think about the whole network and this is where the network design comes in very building a new facility you have to consider a few things and think about how I'm going to get product into that distribution center and out of that distribution center so it's the whole network that you got to think about awesome thank you credit I love the perspective of kind of taking a step back and thinking about the network or maybe the end-to-end supply chain if you will perspective you know sometimes we get so focused on our specific function like you know improving receiving in a warehouse or something like that that we don't and we're maybe trying to optimize or improve a specific process we don't often maybe consider the factors or the considerations upstream or downstream of us especially outside of our four walls maybe and within that supply chain networks that's a it's a great fascinating perspective for sure awesome we'll just take a look at the time I think we have probably time for maybe running our second poll here so if we could launch that second poll here we want to get your input or your your feedback there in the audience so if we can launch poll number two here in the question and once that goes here is how can technology impact warehousing distribution and fulfillment centers and so some of the options you know maybe robotics can speed up labor intensive and repetitive tasks maybe machine learning can help identify the best position for fast moving products and so just kind of I wanted to you know query the audience out there and to kind of sketch your perspective on how technology can have an impact and then while you take a few minutes to work on that poll there we'll jump into the next question here and so kind of then also just along with the topic of the poll I'm focusing on technology and maybe starting with the software side and specifically you know the area that's popular in the news right now is AI machine learning but obviously we want to focus on you know automation and AI machine learning distribution center in the news it's more like chat gtp and some of these chat bots but it still all these brings visibility to these concepts I think these are probably powerful tools not necessarily a chatbot but AI machine learning within the context of a distribution center and so I wonder if you had any perspective on those tools and then maybe if there are any like critical gaps or open questions on the software side opportunities that we need to work on to you know they will help improve us in the future from an automation perspective absolutely I know chat gpt is a very popular topic these days I'm probably the rare one in this group that has not tried my luck in chat gpt yet but I've been hearing really cool things about it but yet to experience it but coming to I think Kalani bring up a pretty very important topic the AI and machine learning piece of it I believe both of the AI and machine learning they're integral part of any smart robotic or automation system now we're relying on these sophisticated vision systems motion planning systems and softwares that allows the autonomous movement of components within within a within a system these systems are designed to learn and get smarter by every repetition so there is always room for improvement in software and AI which is kind of like a standard response but according to me since most of the solutions are custom designed based on the applications we are working on it will take us some time to realize the benefit of AI in automation space but it is very promising I know because I'm part of those those work but it is very promising is just about time of we're going to see some benefits of it so I give you one example of you know think about you have a small robotic arm and you have a bin a plastic bin full of 100 items you get a customer order and the customer order is to ship a toothbrush right so the robotic arm is actually going to go pick up the toothbrush from that bin every time every time the arm is picking up the toothbrush it is registering the amount of force applied point is picking from so coordinates is picking from how fast is moving and after picking where it is dropping like coordinates of where it's dropping so next time robot is going to pick up the same item it is getting better in all those parameters essentially improving the efficiency with every pick it will take us some time to actually realize the benefit of the system but all the data is stored in the internal network and it actually further helps in deciding the KPIs for similar systems we're going to design in future so I think we are at kind of like brink of realizing the benefits of AI and machine learning and automation space thank you Pratip and thank you for sharing that example and before moving on I want to go to the related poll so if we can share the results now and probably you can share some insights on that so for our audience to know every potential answer was correct so well done I can see that most of you mentioned about robotics that can speed up labor intensive and repetitive tasks and some others of you focus on the machine learning answer that can help identify positions for fast-moving products and the machine learning for most efficient picking routes I don't know Pratip if you want to make any comments on any of those technologies we're happy to learn from you this is my type of audience so I really like the responses coming here absolutely I think robotics I think kind of gave an example of maybe the two-plus example of how robotics can help speed up the labor intensive and repetitive tasks we kind of touched on machine learning you know our softwares are getting better every time you know we're going through the repetitive process you know kind of artificial intelligence is coming in and kind of helping us improve the solutions by default which is which is I think very important IOTs you know I think we're going to touch on that a little bit further down the the session but connectivity is a big big piece in the automation all the systems needs to be connected to somehow to one system and the common constant flow of communication back and forth so digital twins I see digital twins I cannot imagine an automation system nowadays without having a digital twin I think especially in the autonomous world we are moving towards digital twin is a very good tool that we have in designing new automation systems so I believe I think we're going to touch on some of those we've already touched on those but like I said this is this is my type of audience I'd like to hear that and related to the automated world like we're talking about something we often hear about in this space is the lights out warehouse and so for those in the audience that don't know that basically it's a warehouse that is fully automated and doesn't need any stuff inside so that you can just turn the lights off we want to know pretty from your experience where do you see the state of the art going are we truly going to see most distributions centered to be that way fully automated or is there something else that it's coming yeah yeah I'm definitely familiar with this term but I think about this slightly differently my focus is to make sure we're creating value in the warehouse space is basically how I would look at it as a matter of fact a lot of my ideas come from warehouse floor working with associates working with the warehouse workers we are there actually providing constructive feedback on how to harden the technology here we bring in our prototypes in the distribution space and we work with the associates in the warehouse and they are actually helping us build and harden this technology so I have a question for the group I know you guys can answer so I'll answer it myself I know how many of us are actually training our kids to unload a truck in a distribution space I know I am not right so it's a hard job and sometimes you're doing that in extreme cold and hot temperatures you know trailers are parked outside at a docking station you don't have a much good temperature control there so in my personal opinion I would like to transition those roles to a worker who has a touchscreen in their hand and controlling X amount of robots that are unloading trailers for them so maybe we have a touchpad and the associate is managing four robots which is unloading the trailer for them to me that is the larger focus area than lights out warehouse we may or may not get to that point but I think I would rather focus on creating immediate value in the warehouses today that's awesome I love the perspective of you know rather than thinking about it as replacing labor you know improving labor improving the conditions and working with humans and making us more efficient you know obviously you know we're at the end of the day we're part of the supply chain and we're kind of the key actors in the supply chain so improving our the effort that we can put in and getting the more out of the effort that we put in and making improving the conditions that we have to work in I think is a great perspective you know especially you know just thinking about the context of you know robotics and robots taking our jobs if you will so awesome so maybe just taking a look at the time here I think maybe we have a quite you know time for me one or two more questions and then we'll jump into the audience there I see there's a bunch of questions in the Q&A so that's great keep keep bringing those and also if you could please use that Q&A feature to bring those questions instead of the chat I see there's some questions they're going in the chat so those who put questions in the chat if you can move those over to the Q&A and we'll take a look at those in that Q&A feature so maybe just you know one one more quick question or two more quick questions I'm kind of thinking about you know we've been talking about like you know the hardware side almost or also just like the physical side the moving physical products you know material handling if you have material handling equipment there's also the other side of things which is the information flow right you mentioned data obviously data being a key piece with machine learning and so we'd love to learn more about the role that technology has in the flow of information and how communication can enhance coordination between different players but thinking about that from an automation perspective right and how you know flow of information and coordination comes into play when you're thinking about automating processes within distribution center absolutely I think we may have a slide for that one maybe kind of talking through the data flow I think is a number two slide if you could yeah perfect so I think good question Kalin I think data gathering and flow of information is very important in an end to end supply chain you know different automation systems in warehouse have different software and hardware requirement but one of the strong considerations for identifying a technology solution in warehouse is its ability to integrate with the WMS network which is warehouse management systems you know this is one master system that is connected to all the automation systems I don't know if the master system is the right word but this is how I see it because it's connected with everything in a distribution center center both upstream and downstream as well right purely based on what network what kind of scale you're looking at so think of all the multiple operations in the warehouse you know loading and loading storing picking packing shipping you know all these operations they are connected with smart devices and feeding information back and forth with the WMS system warehouse management system so this is essentially like a one data source that enables coordination and assistant optimization of full end to end solution so we take a look at the picture here I think you're kind of looking at a isometric view of a distribution center essentially where you have loading and unloading on each side and then you have storing and processing in the middle so think of any operation in this particular visual you know every time you're unloading a trailer you're scanning a pallet and this feeds an information to WMS system that hey pallet is received inventory updated you're storing the items on the on the racks there you scan it now WMS knows okay this is my inventory levels you are preparing a pallet and you're attaching it to associated customer order so WMS knows okay the inventory has been consumed for customer X shipment you're ready to load the trailer you scan the pallet and you see okay this is already dispatched WMS updated right so everything is is residing in that WMS system and is constantly feeding information back and forth which pretty much real time is how you would use some of these systems to kind of integrate and have make sure you have full view of the supply chain not just one particular function. Awesome thank you for sharing that super clear image and example and as we are getting to the end of the event I would like to go with asking about what would be your recommendations to those in the program that are starting with us that are looking to involve themselves into implementing automation probably of some pieces of the supply chain or some facilities or in their designs in their networks probably when it comes to implementing IOT for improving communication event so there are probably lots of considerations and trade-offs to analyze and we would love to know your advice for them. Absolutely so I think I can understand you know designing an automation system could be a daunting task so it totally kind of starts with the problem statement you know defining what you're trying to trying to solve now one thing I'll strongly recommend is go visit the warehouse you know sign up for some of the operations and distribution centers unload a trailer depalitize a pallet and live in the shoes of warehouse associate you know this will enable you make strong recommendations next step is kind of building a hypothesis for example hey if I do certain things this is what I will achieve kind of really building a strong plan and your strong hypothesis having a good understanding of market and solution providers in the automation space is a key advantage I think something we should strive towards I'll recommend maybe take time in participating in in automation exhibitions you know read any related literature online search you know whatever gets you finding that solution you know there's a lot of information available online these days and kind of following the the the stage gate process there are onwards so proof of technology proof of concept you know pilots and then eventually look into scaling the most important pieces is to remain objective throughout the process rely on data to make selections and decision so I think I think a lot of we had a slide on that I think the the minimal viable product so yeah I think if you can kind of focus on the bottom panel of this slide so while designing a system all of us have a tendency to design a perfect solution with all the bells and whistles sometimes that approach works and most of time in my experience it takes longer than anticipated so in this particular case when we look at the bottom panel you know we're trying to solve let's say we're trying to solve a mobility solution for a customer customer wants to go from point A to point B the standard approach will be like hey let's go design a car but maybe we don't have to design a car and it truly begins with are we understanding the problem of the customer so if custom and sometimes customer doesn't know what they what what they want so in this particular case let's take an example customer wants to go from point A to point B let's give them a roller board customer hops on it and customer gets from point A to point B problem solved next thing is I'll skip the number two next thing is customer comes back and say hey man I I'm standing on this roller board I need something to sit on maybe okay I'll give you a bicycle you have a seat and you have to pedal customer comes back and say thank you for giving me the solution I don't like pedaling I don't like the speed the bicycle can go and okay I'll give you a motorbike customer comes back and say thank you for giving me the solution you know what I'm bored with going from point A to point B myself I want to bring my friends right at that point you give them a car so kind of tying it back to designing an automation system is you don't have to design a Rolls Royce with all the bells and whistles to begin with maybe start with something simpler and truly understand the need that customer has and keep on giving them minimum viable product at every stage this will help you solve the problem create immediate value as well as develop relationship with customer and get to improve your product as you go along the cycle so hopefully it gives you a little bit of flavor off you know we don't have to go boil the ocean the very first time that's awesome I love the the analogy I guess you'd say you just got there it's a you know a great perspective or framework you could almost use for a lot of you know projects innovation you know even startups you know could I think could benefit from that perspective you know sometimes we have this vision of like this beautiful you know fully electric you know five-seater car but maybe it's not it's too much and it's not to say solving directly the problem and so starting with a little bit more of an MVP and working our way towards that vision maybe the vision changes as we go along you know we understand the customer needs a little better that's a fascinating analogy awesome so just looking at the time we want to try to jump in here to the questions you guys brought there in the audience and so thank you for all those questions and we have a bunch in there and so we're going to try to get to as many as we can with the time we have left and while we do that if we could launch our third poll here just to kind of see you know what you got out of today's event you know what you thought the most interesting part was you know maybe expanding your knowledge on automation or learning about specific applications like AI for example so we'd love to kind of just see what you got out of today's discussion so far and when we do that while you do that we'll jump in here to the Q&A and I'll maybe start with just a question here I think it's actually a kind of a fascinating question from Alejandra that we don't often think about which is just the role that international standards can play you know this can have you know I think a significant impact in a lot of different areas but you know sometimes like those technology interfaces for example you know to standardize some of those interfaces like a simple example might I'm thinking of maybe is like the USB port in our computer right that's kind of a there's a standard there if we all had different ports for different devices we wouldn't be able to play as easily I'm just wondering you know again this question from Alejandra here what are the role that standards have it could be international standards like ISO or just could be other forms of standards what role do those standards have in terms of automation in robotics in DC absolutely absolutely I think that's a very good question and standards do play a significant role in as we go from building a solution from incubation space into more mature products especially in the emerging tech I think you will see different companies different startups kind of working and tackling the problem in different ways and then in few years down the line you you get into a situation where you have three different solutions but essentially solving the problem the same way at that point I think these standards come in very handy especially in the emerging tech we don't want standards to limit our ability to innovate but at the same time if you are getting beyond incubation spaces getting into more comfortable level of okay now we feel comfortable with these solutions I don't think of any other way but standardizing some of these solutions and and kind of you know setting up industry standards around it so good question there thank you Pradeep and we have so many questions from the audience that I don't think we'll get to all but let's go with this one from Carlos that I think it's very interesting so there are very a lot of questions that are bringing the topic of the cost that it has to automate so you already mentioned that we can start with a a viable model that doesn't have to be the best one or the ultimate one but they want to know if you could elaborate a little bit more on how to assess and simulate the stages of a possible automated solution considering it's a very critical point there's a lot of investment to make and it's a hard decision how would you work on assessing the potential performance of anything you're implementing I think something to strongly consider would be if I'm understanding the question would be how do you simulate build simulations of these solutions you are you're going to go solve a secure designing a line and you want to run a certain amount of production through that particular line and there's a lot of contributing this multiple factors to that automation systems that sometimes it's very difficult to build mathematical models or do just figure it out by designing an autocad layout the 3d models there are a lot of good simulation tools out there in the industry which can help you actually simulate the environment that you are building you can actually simulate that hey I'm running 100 cases per hour you can actually simulate that you have a robot which is actually building pallets and is generating 1000 cases per hour and and see all these things in simulation in in a in an integrated way in that way you can use these simulations either to get leadership buy-in or either to get some of the cost analysis done so you would have to go manufacture and prototype these things if the business cases are there so simulation softwares and simulation tools are actually coming very handy before you go and spend a lot of money on a prototyping type of solution awesome that's I have a question I want to build on that a little bit but maybe before we jump into the next question we could share the results of our poll and just take a quick look at our poll results here today and the question was you know it was the most interesting part of today's session for you it looks like most you know just expanding knowledge general knowledge and automation distribution centers that's great also understanding the impact of technology and supply chain functions and that's awesome pretty I don't know if you have any thoughts on those poll results or we'll jump into the next question now this is not this is good I mean I hope we're creating value for the audience here so that's good awesome so with that maybe I'll jump into the next question here kind of building on the idea of simulation but then maybe taking it almost into a more of a real time simulation if you will or just a technology that's somewhat similar which is this concept of digital twins you know I know it's a lot of companies and a lot of you know in the ecosystem it's kind of a buzzword also you know it's just you know a technology that's getting a lot of attention right now I don't know if you could share your experience and perspective on the use of digital twins and again this is a question here that I lost it in my thread here but it's a question actually from Nitin in the audience here I'm just asking your um learnings from implementing digital twins or just the the value of the opportunity that digital twins bring absolutely now I think we're working on very complicated problem solving automation world where it's not just one parameter that you are going to automate there's going to be multiple parameters you need to consider and digital twins is essentially to me is kind of simulating that environment in in 3d and this is what so maybe I'll give you an example I think autonomous cars is an is a is a is a good example you know when autonomous cars is running and don't quote me on it I'm not the expert but I'll give you the gist of it is you know autonomous car when it's running it has you know cameras and sensors on it essentially what it's doing is actually building a digital twin of what the car is seeing in the front of it and if there's any obstacles and things on the road and the car knows okay here's an obstacle I'm going to go around it or hey I'm going to stop and things like that very similar in the automation world as well and this is exactly what digital twin lets us do is simulate what a robot or a vision system is seeing in an automation system and accordingly orchestrate the movement of multiple mhg components in that particular let's say robotic cell so everything works and kind of like somebody's running and running an orchestra and everybody knows what they're singing out of right so it's truly looking at the dynamic environment and finding a solution in that so in other words I don't see a way for us to design an automation system the complexity of the automation system we're designing without a digital twin thank you for sharing that part deep and definitely we encourage the audience to take a look a little bit deeper on digital twins because as parties said it's it's becoming much more important in so many different aspects that are related to our supply chains so there are a lot of questions regarding this but I'm taking the one from a half if I'm pronouncing that well they want to know about what are the challenges or what are those main challenges that you identify when it comes to automating distribution centers and processes and if you can talk about them as bottlenecks or challenges but what is it that you have to deal with when you're going to automate a distribution center yeah I think there's the problem could be looked at multiple ways is sometimes kind of a set a few times is truly understanding the problem sometimes you know we think we know the problem but once we are asked to put it on a piece of paper then then we start thinking okay do I really know know the problem right really able to quantify the problem is actually the majority of the challenge once you're able to do that I think the next step is whether we have the solutions available in the market or not I think we kind of spoke about make versus buy but sometimes the right solution lives right in the middle that maybe I have to build a part of solution and maybe I need to go work with somebody else and it's it's more of a combined effort to get to a solution it's not a binary selection of either I have a supply or either I'm going to build it internally nowadays with the complexity of the solution that you're dealing maybe there is a combination to coexist there and develop it together right so to me those are some of the challenges is truly finding the solution truly defining the problem and how are you going to go solve it and then the biggest challenge is we want to solve the problem today and we're not ready for that like how can we quickly go deploy these these systems obviously without compromising on safety and all that but the speed to automation I think is some of the for like a better word pain points for me when I'm looking at the industry and designing some of the automation systems in the distribution space awesome thank you Pradeep so just taking a look at the time here I think we probably have time we have so many questions in the Q&A that maybe we have time to pull in a couple more here before we before we close things off and one area I think there's a great question another question looks like here from Alejandra I think this is a fascinating challenge maybe I'm wondering your perspective on it is just the if you think about the end consumer distribution right where you're delivering like each is or individual products maybe to an end consumer instead of moving cases and pallets where things are maybe a little bit more standardized if you will with that each is or that end consumer individual product distribution you have such a diversity or a variety of products and packaging and sizes and shapes and changing you know packaging types and changing formats and all that kind of stuff and I'm wondering you know Alejandra's question here is about image recognition and how image recognition maybe can help tackle this challenge but maybe there's also other technologies or approaches to help you know tackle this challenge of just the the complexity of the product packaging and product sizing within that individual or each distribution network absolutely nothing else that's a very good question I think the largest complexity lies on the each space is the each picking space because you have just tons of varieties of skews that you can automate and they all look different so the vision technology definitely plays a very strong role in it but just solving the vision does not solve the problem so if I look at the automation system I can kind of categorize that into three categories vision is obviously one and very important one second one is is the hardware of it and third one is mobile mobility of it so let me elaborate on that like vision is like you have camera and you're looking at the the items let's say final the example I gave for toothbrush you're looking at hundred different items is your vision system efficiently able to identify each of those hundred things in the in the bin how accurately it's identifying is is the is is the vision system category and then the hardware piece of it is okay now my system is able to see it can I go actually go pick it up efficiently without dropping it so that's where the hardware comes in and let's say you have different products in it some of them are corrugated products some of them are non corrugated products some of them are packed in poly some of them are different like this different physical parameters of that products so can one hardware solve that problem or maybe you do different hard ways to solve that problem you're able to see it but you're not able to pick it up right so and the third thing is after you have let's say you solve the picking of it now how do you move it where you're moving it how are you going to move it are you packing it in in a in a bag or a box to ship it to the end customer right so to answer the question coming back to it is vision definitely I think there's much more scope and improvement in the vision especially in the each each picking space but we have to kind of look at holistically vision hardware and mobility of it to actually solve that but truly understand I think in the each space the the complexities is high thank you pretty I'm not sure if this is the last question or probably we can make one more but I want to go with a certain deeps question and just in case you have any experience in this because we haven't talked about this technology in particular how do you see the introduction of drone technology into warehouse automation for different type of activities I think that's a that's a very important technology which is getting a good adaptability in overall supply chain in distribution space something I do not have direct exposure to but I'm I'm aware that there are few companies and few other solution providers out there who are using drones inside the distribution space and then there are obviously the the last mile delivery piece of using drones and delivering you know customers orders through drones is is a technology which has been implemented that being said I do not have direct exposure to it but I see I see the feasibility of it I see the application of it in few areas in the distribution centers where this can be further explored awesome yeah drones you know it's thinking of one of those kind of buzzwords almost and sometimes you see pictures of you know like warehouses that are high technology warehouses and there's a drone flying around you know but often some of the solutions are really more I guess physical infrastructure rather than like a mobile robot in a warehouse but yeah so that's interesting to hear that you don't have too much experience in it but that there may be there's opportunity there to explore for sure definitely opportunities there yeah there's definitely opportunities there I think I've seen some prototypes is is it's the limited exposure that I have I don't I'm not you know played with that directly awesome so maybe I think just looking at the time I think probably have time for one more question at least and there's many questions in the he and I here appreciate all your your thoughts and input there from the audience so I'm just gonna pull a question here from Susanta I apologize for not pronouncing your name correctly there but this kind of goes to one of the comments you made earlier part deep about you know bringing the human into the conversation and we're talking about automation and technology and you know robotic arms and drones and all this kind of stuff but bringing the human into the conversation and often you know maybe there's a synergy or opportunity for a synergy there between the automation the technology and then also the humans who are involved in on these processes and so I'm wondering if you could just you know share a little bit more about how you approach that synergy right the synergy between the technology and the humans involved you know whether it's you know co-bots or whatever those whatever that synergy looks like if you could just share a little bit more about that synergy there absolutely I think co-bots specifically do not have much exposure to that definitely I have other team team members who are more focused on that but from this energy standpoint I definitely see a very strong potential I think that's exactly where my focus is how do we build more synergies how do we have the warehouse workers use the technology more in the distribution space really identifying the the pain points faced by the warehouse workers and like what I was you know we kind of touched on that earlier lifting heavy boxes or walking 10 20 30 miles in a warehouse just because you're doing certain operations how do we take that ask away and make them more using the technology kind of you know build that synergy so we can actually creating value so we have four robotics arm working and the warehouse worker is helping me make sure the you know we kind of touched on asset availability make sure how they are interacting with those systems to make sure that asset availability is is you know assets are fully utilized assets are always available or go address some of the interventions and address some of these anomalies address any unantitled volume going through those systems so having building those synergies where a human interact with these automation equipment is to me is the is the way to go at least that's kind of my focus area right now so that's how I would look at it I don't know if telling that answer the question or not I think so and I want to in the interest of time thank you for this insightful conversation we've learned a lot from you from your experience and we love to see how you apply a lot of concepts that we sometimes just learn about or hear about or our buzzwords in the news so we truly appreciate learning that from you on your expertise I want to give you the word in case you have any final comments to our audience no well I I appreciate I know all of us are busy and carving out one hour of time to listen to this session hopefully you walked away with one or two things you liked or something you can go implement in your roles or education so I truly appreciate everyone's time and I'm sure we'll find a way to to connect with each other so thank you very much and thank you guys for the for the opportunity here yeah absolutely thank you pretty appreciate you sharing your time as well I know an hour is hard to carve out for all of us and I appreciate you carving out an hour to share with us and all the preparation that went into this this event today and thank you everyone in the audience for sharing your perspective and our polls and all the questions you brought there you know there's way more questions than we were able to get to in our short amount of time I appreciate you you're thinking about the topic and sharing your your questions and thoughts there as well and Laura thank you for co-hosting with me today awesome thank you it's always fun to co-host with you and to learn together from our experts you all know this is the last webinar on our winter series and our courses are coming to an end too but stay tuned to the social media from our micro masters program for any upcoming season on series of webinars thank you everyone and see you soon thank you guys