Jim Lawton is vice chairman and common supervisor for robotics automation at Zebra Applied sciences. He works with prospects to implement clever automation and superior robotics to remodel their operations with better effectivity, larger productiveness, and decrease prices. He has expertise in e-commerce, provide chain optimization, and collaborative robotics—expertise that has formed his ardour for serving to manufacturing, provide chain, and logistics organizations leverage expertise to reinforce enterprise efficiency.
Lawton holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from Tufts College, an M.S. in electrical engineering and pc science from the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise (MIT), and an MBA from MIT’s Sloan Faculty of Administration. He not too long ago shared his insights with DC Velocity Group Editorial Director David Maloney.
Q. How would you describe the present state of robotics automation?
A: That is undoubtedly some of the thrilling instances I’ve seen within the 10-plus years I’ve been available in the market. For warehouse and achievement operations groups, three tendencies are creating actual urgency for deploying robotics and automation now.
First, there are the pressures of labor—each hiring and maintaining workers as we speak and recruiting workers sooner or later. Second is the transformation of the warehouse into an on-demand operation the place there’s a a lot nearer connection to the tip buyer, with all of the expectations that entails. Third, it has by no means been tougher to forecast with any confidence what the enterprise and financial surroundings will appear to be. For these of us engaged on creating options, improvements like collaborative robotics and cloud computing mix to create limitless alternatives to assist prospects clear up actual issues.
Q. Zebra, which has lengthy been identified for data-collection units, cellular computing, and printing merchandise, acquired Fetch Robotics in July 2021. Why did the corporate determine to broaden its portfolio into autonomous cellular robots?
A: For the final couple of years, we’ve seen prospects battle to determine one of the best methods for them to drive higher productiveness, throughput, and accuracy of their warehouses. They’re asking good questions like: “How do I deploy automation?” “What are one of the best workflows to make use of it?” “What sort of outcomes can I get by leveraging automation?”
Our prospects have actually pulled us into the journey they’re on to get extra from the options they have already got with robotics and automation. So, we’re asking ourselves how we may help them do this. With improvements in our units, akin to wearables, heads-up shows, cellular computer systems, and autonomous cellular robots (AMRs), operations groups can actually obtain that subsequent stage of productiveness they’re wanting from robotics and automation.
Q. You’ve got a background in electrical engineering and pc science. How does that background enable you to determine potential purposes for robotics automation?
A: Rising up, I beloved to construct issues with an Erector set and Lego bricks, taking a pile of items and constructing one thing with them. It was that feeling, I believe, that finally obtained me a profession in manufacturing and, extra particularly, operations, the place I’m centered on serving to operations groups flip what’s basically a pile of items into one thing better than the sum of these components.
About 10 years in the past, I took an interest within the methods wherein software program was on the coronary heart of the innovation we have now now come to anticipate from our units—and what that meant for machines on a broader scale. We’ve seen advances in machine imaginative and prescient, notion, and synthetic intelligence (AI) that permit us to do issues with robots that weren’t potential 5 or 10 years in the past. So, it’s opening up new alternatives to deploy robots in locations that may add a lot, way more worth than ever earlier than.
Q. What are the important thing advantages of autonomous cellular robots in distribution services?
A: First, AMRs free folks up from strolling miles and miles in an effort to full orders. Meaning extra orders will be fulfilled and shipped each single day. Second, AMRs take the burden of tedious duties off folks, and, in doing so, contribute to a greater working surroundings—one the place [people] usually tend to keep. Third, AMRs are straightforward to deploy and will be configured for greater than a single activity, making the innovation accessible to operations of any measurement and basically democratizing the power to profit from automation.
Q. What’s being executed to assist human employees really feel extra snug working alongside collaborative robots?
A: Probably the most profitable implementations I’ve seen have been at corporations that make one elementary alternative on the outset of a deployment—they embody individuals who work on these processes each single day. These employees perceive the processes and the workflow, and they’re in one of the best place to determine easy methods to bridge these two in order that what in the end will get deployed will work within the surroundings. That engagement goes a really good distance towards dispelling fears of job loss and creates alternatives for employees to discover and advocate different locations the place robots can ship worth.
Q. One benefit of autonomous cellular robots is their scalability. How does that profit prospects in managing peak seasons?
A: Traditionally, achievement operations met seasonal spikes by hiring short-term employees. However that is not a sustainable technique. Even outdoors of seasonal spikes, it doesn’t work. For instance, we have now a buyer that hires short-term employees to make up for the hole they’ve in full-time employees. They bring about in new short-term employees each Monday morning, and the shopper has shared that, on common, by lunchtime, 50% of these employees have stop.
AMRs make it potential to keep away from that “gotcha,” as a result of they will shortly be configured to finish essentially the most pressing activity at hand, akin to choosing and transporting to packaging when demand spikes, after which redeployed to a different activity when demand ranges stabilize.
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