ProMat Interview with Jim Lawton: Getting ready now for what’s coming subsequent

By MMH Employees ·

March 22, 2023

Jim Lawton
Vice President and Normal Supervisor
Zebra Robotics Automation

Fashionable Supplies Dealing with: What’s your primary takeaway from Promat 2023?

Lawton: For me, the present’s “Contact the Future” theme captured the main target for everybody on the present, which is: what’s subsequent and the way can I ensure my operation is prepared for it? The basics have modified for supplies motion in methods I don’t assume anybody might have predicted simply 5 years in the past. The shift facilities on the strategic position that supplies dealing with and motion now play in provide chain, and there’s no going again. Clients are on the lookout for holistic options that may ship pace, accuracy and quantity—not simply on the process degree, however throughout total workflows, recognizing the interdependency of every step on one other and simply how necessary it’s to make the actions each inside and between seamless and clean.

MMH: What are the three key market traits out of your perspective?

Lawton:Labor stability stays unattainable to disregard. It’s not nearly at this time’s workforce: more and more, issues round the place the warehouse and manufacturing workforce of the longer term will come from are protecting our clients awake at evening, so how can these jobs appeal to the following technology?

Second, the truth that uncertainty is a continuing now—there is no such thing as a “regular state” making agility key.

Third, whereas the “pandemic” is over, the imprint it left on companies and shoppers stays and we’re all nonetheless attempting to determine what provide chains ought to appear to be. Warehouses and logistics operations have gotten a extra direct—and demanding—hyperlink within the buyer relationship for each B2B and B2B corporations. That change requires greater than a step-change in productiveness, throughput and effectivity.

MMH: How is Zebra Robotics Automation responding to those market traits?

Lawton: We’re working with clients to deliver innovation in robotics and cloud computing to their operations. We hear constantly that warehouse and manufacturing operations groups know that extra automation is important to serving to them appeal to and retain employees, scale up—or down—as market situations change and enhance operational efficiency. We additionally hear that many corporations don’t know the place or methods to start.

Our options give corporations a path to reaching their targets. Orchestrating complicated workflows resembling put-away from receiving, pick-to-tote, dunnage, pack-to-ship and success allow individuals and machines to carry out optimally. Options like software-differentiated autonomous cell robots orchestrate handbook and automatic workflows, so individuals and robots work collaboratively to extend productiveness, streamline throughput and scale back the toll of bodily labor on the workforce.

March 27, 2023

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