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The New Warehouse podcast hosted by Kevin Lawton is your source for insights and ideas from the distribution, transportation, and logistics industry. A new episode every Monday morning brings you the latest from industry experts and thought leaders. And now, here's Kevin.

I think this is one of the busiest pro mats we've ever seen. Yeah, every year. The busiest Monday. A lot of times we anticipate it being a little slow start, but it was an incredibly fast start right out the gate. So we're very pleased and happy to

Nice, nice. That's good to hear, definitely. And Dan, what about you? I know we talked earlier this morning, right? But from an outsider perspective and a solutions community perspective, how do you think the show has gone? Yeah, I think it's great. Tenancy is excellent, of course. And I think, you know, it's kind of a cliche, but I think, you know, these are serious customer prospects that are here at the show this week as well.

A lot of them have mandates of some kind or another from up and above that says we need to put some automation in our warehouse and they're here to tell us how to do that. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a great thing to hear, right? And I think people are...

You know, I think, and I'm curious your thoughts on this. I mean, I think that the show is continuing to grow, right, from MHI's perspective. And like Modex last year, you know, they added the third hall, right? This year they added this hall, right? And I think it's kind of a testament to how our industry is just continuing to grow, right? And there's lots of advancements happening in technology, but also I think it's undervalued.

underlying kind of the critical importance that material handling has just in the world in general and in business. What do you think? Yeah, I think the push for automation and how to do things easier, faster, smarter, better, and more efficient is

Yeah.

Absolutely. And of course what's driving that, I mean, it's well understood, but the labor situation, we continue to address it. Not enough people, too expensive, and we just, you know, the need to automate, to compensate against the changes that are happening in the labor market, which everyone is struggling with. Virtually every company we talk to here at our booth, everybody on booth is complaining about the labor scenario that they're facing. Hmm.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that's been just an ongoing challenge, right, for people in material handling and warehousing. But you guys have a tool to help people with that, right? We do. We're excited to talk about it. I'm going to let Dan explain a little bit about what it is. Sure.

So we're representing MHI, once known as the Material Handling Institute, and within that a solutions community group is the genesis of this solution. So it's a new and innovative tool to help companies match up and find potential solutions for their problems and challenges and opportunities, whether that's hardware, software, consulting some other services.

do so through a new online tool that's kind of being launched, if you will, here at the show. It allows companies to anonymously, and that's the key point, we'll come back to that. I'm not going to touch on all of this under here because we're going to get into some more detail, but it's a way that they can submit their problem, opportunity, or challenge anonymously to

pool of over 100 vendors across multiple technologies and services review that come back with a response in terms of how they might solve their problem and then the company that did the results in the middle can look at all those and decide hey these look interesting to me these don't and have a mechanism to engage with one or more of those prospects so something very different and uh

that we think could be a real value-added tool for the marketplace in the 12th century. Yeah, absolutely. Anything you want to add to that? Well, I mean, we can talk about what it's called. So introducing the Warehouse and DC Solutions Network.

Sure. So what's great about the warehouse and DC Solutions Network that Dan kind of alluded to is it's part of our solutions community, which is an industry group that's a part of MHI. So MHI is what puts on the show here at ProMed. Yes. And the solutions community is over 100 of those companies that have joined together to collectively really work together to

for a community to understand material handling, to do outreach, education, but most importantly, have a collaborative space where we can push the industry forward to answer stuff like labor challenges and what are you trying to accomplish in your warehouse and how do you want to move your products and how can you do that better? And I think, you know, they say that we all together rise together

rise together better than separate. And so that's what solutions community is. It's a hundred plus companies working together that can provide solutions so that

Warehouse and DC Solutions Network that you can be a part of is really an anonymous place. So you're a customer and you are walking up and down these show floors and maybe you don't know where to get started. There's a lot. There's a lot of automation here. It can be overwhelming. We're kind of that one-stop shop. You can start with us. Start with the Warehouse and DC Solutions Network.

And what you do is you just, it's very simple. You fill out a form. There's four easy steps. We actually have these if you see us out. So we have this information for you about the Warehouse and DC Solutions Network. So we're passing these out. It's four easy steps. You just go to the website. Okay. So that's mhi.org, which you should be pretty familiar with. Yeah. Backslash Solutions Community.com.

And then it's going to be Warehouse DC Solutions. If you can't find that, because that's a lot, just go to mhi.org.

and look for the industry groups, look for Solutions Community, or just remember mhi.org slash Solutions Community, and you're going to see a form, and this is where you can submit it. So four easy steps. Fill out the form. Tell us about your project. Of course, the more information in, the better that we can find a match for you, and then what's great about it is that information is anonymous.

We're not going to know. So those of us that are on the floor, not going to know about that information because MHI is going to review it and then have us submit it to them.

And then, so it's almost like a matchmaking service. So the project review happens and then what you're going to receive as that practitioner, as that customer are tailored solutions that you can review yourself and then decide it's, it's almost kind of a matchmaking service, if you will, if you want to match up to that company. So it's a perfect way to get started to try to find someone to help you with your challenging problems around material handling.

Yeah. And I think that's great, too. And I love the fact that it's anonymous. I think that's great. Because I think a lot of people are kind of like, you know, maybe there's a project or not quite sure. But then, you know, they're like, oh, well, I don't want to get bombarded by sales or something. It's just solutions. No sales pitch. Yeah. Help you get started. Yeah. One click and you've got the power of 100 plus companies behind you to help you solve your problems. Yeah.

And just to further elucidate on that, you may get back, after you've submitted your problem or challenge, you may get back four or five, let's just say, I'm picking the number out of the air, of descriptions of how different companies would solve your problem or address your challenge. But now you're free to review those, and maybe you got four or five back that you like number one, number three, and number four. Those are the ones you're going to say, I'd like to engage with these three companies. They seem like they have the best fit.

with my apartment there and now the connection is made and you can start a dialogue with those three providers that you want based on the submission that you want to talk to. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's great to be able to get those options, right? So you can choose your path, right? And so for people that are here, right, attending and, you know, maybe they're exploring and,

As we mentioned, there's so much, right? It's kind of overwhelming maybe for somebody that's not quite exactly sure their next step or maybe they're just starting to look at automation, for example, right? So if they come away from this show and maybe they're inspired, right? They have some ideas that, oh, we could address this. How would you recommend they, or maybe the better question is, when would you recommend that they engage with this tool?

Really, you can start today. So there you can go to the website that I mentioned multiple times. We have these around. So there's QR codes that you can scan to get there.

You can do that if you'd like. Go back to your hotel room and get started. So, you know, the MHI staff is available to start reviewing those submittals. We do ask for a little bit of patience. So it is not immediate. There will be a couple weeks lag there. And I would say overall, probably by the time people get things back, especially since all of us

right now or at the show. Yeah. There'll be a, you know, I would say this is more of a three or four week process, but it will really help you kind of whittle down and get solutions if you don't know where you're going and you don't know where to get started. And it's just a really a great tool to fill out and to see what's out there. There may be something outside of your

your view of what you need, right? I think a lot of times when we come to the shows and we're looking to solve a problem, we think we know what we want, but maybe we don't know all that's out there. And I kind of started saying this being here at the show, there's so many new innovations, there's so much new technology from robotics and AMRs and AGVs and everything keeps being elevated. Maybe there's a new company that you haven't even

even thought of or maybe a company that's an old trusted faithful company that's part of solutions has come out with a brand new product just exactly what you need

So I think that's the beauty of the Warehouse DC Solutions Network. Yeah. I think, Terrence, I could just add to that. Sure. I mean, I think of this as another tool in the toolbox, right, another arrow in the curve. People are still going to do web searches. People are still going to come to promos. People are going to go to webinars. They're going to do all of those things that they typically do. But this is a new, very different way to identify potential solution providers. So I think it would start fairly early in the process to augment what you're maybe already doing or whatever because...

you're going to get a fairly, you know, people are, I don't think, people are going to use this boilerplate with questions. I think they're going to put references and draw them into the responses, make them tailored, make them appropriate, make them relevant.

And with very little effort, you're going to get this in without having to travel, without having to watch a webinar to do any of those things. You're going to get some feedback from real solution providers with an explanation of how they can address the problem. I think that's another nice addition to the other techniques that may be useful. Yeah. Yeah, and I think those are all great points there. And I think it's a great point, too, that

you don't necessarily know everything that's out there, right? And if you're an operator or you're running warehouses, you're focused on the warehouses running, right? And especially if you're in the position where you haven't done any automation or any large-scale projects yet, your knowledge is probably pretty limited. You can do some searching, like you mentioned there, Dan, but searching can only take you so far. Your worldview is going to be limited, right? That's why we have things like Chromat and Modex, and we're a part of MHI, and we have...

the solutions community and we have this this new warehouse tc solutions network is education it's to help us learn and help us find the places where we can connect to these tools as two tools to our toolbox because we don't know everything and and we're so busy you know we have limited time limited capacity to do um and this just kind of makes it a little our life's a little bit easier and we hope it makes it easier for all of our practitioners and customers

Yeah, absolutely. There's one more quick follow-up again on that, too. If you do a Google search on warehouse automation, just to pick that out as a topic of your, you know, what are you going to get? You're going to get a page of sponsored ads. Yeah, it's going to be sponsored ads. Who's got the best SEL? Yeah. Whereas this is a more objective, I don't want to say nice, because people are trying to find opportunities to question, but this is a different approach.

that is going to give you a different kind of result that you can leverage and add to the other. Absolutely. Definitely. And a great tool that you guys are bringing out here as the solutions community. And certainly one that I think many will leverage, uh, the smart ones will leverage, I will say. Um, so really appreciate you both stopping by and informing us about this tool and, uh, sharing it with the audience and hopefully a lot of people can leverage it and,

utilize this great resource that you put together. Thank you so much, Kevin. All right. We'll be out here looking. If you also stop, I think at the MHI booth, they have them there.

There you go. Or look for the purple. Or look for me. Look for the purple and then look for the green card. There you go. I want to squeeze in one last comment, which we neglected to mention. We had a number of practitioners, end-user companies, end-user supply chain managers and executives review this tool as we develop it on the device. Not just vendors making up the tool. It's a great point. There's some real practitioners that were involved in the development of this, and that's going to make it better for everybody.

That's great. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's perfect. I think that both sides of the table being involved, I think, is a fantastic thing. So definitely check out the tool. And Allison and Dan, thank you for coming in and letting us know all about it. Thank you. All right. Enjoy the rest of the show. You've been listening to The New Warehouse Podcast with Kevin Lahti. Subscribe and check us out online at thenewwarehouse.com.

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