EP 597: Making Warehouse Automation More Accessible with iAutomate
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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.

Hey guys, it's Kevin with the new warehouse. I'm here at ProMat 2025 and I am in the iAutomate booth here with my friend Christoph Buchmann and he is the founder of iAutomate and we're going to talk a little bit about iAutomate but we're also going to talk about what he's seeing because he has a unique perspective on the industry through the app that they have. We're also going to hear a little bit about what he's hearing here on the floor at ProMat too. So Christoph, how's the week going so far?

Great. Good to be back. Promat, very busy show here the last two days, especially today. So, yeah, exciting to be here and see what's the latest and greatest in our industry. Yeah, absolutely. So we had you on the podcast earlier, a couple of weeks ago, right before Promat, talking about iAutomate and what it's all about and how people can leverage it and utilize it for the show here. But tell us a little just brief overview for people maybe that missed it, didn't hear about it. What is iAutomate?

Yeah, I Automate is a sales enablement tool, a solution validation tool for users who just want to compare different popular automated system solutions, develop an understanding of size, capacity, price, the famous question, what does this cost?

So we're able to help answer that question, provide guidance. And we also sell our software as a lead conversion software to system solution providers. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm sure that question is being asked a lot of times this week.

Yes, I've definitely been rehearsing it here naturally. Yeah, well, I mean the question of how much does this cost? I'm sure a lot of people are getting that. Sorry, yeah. And you know what? It's funny because the true answer is it depends and that was also the problem that it should not depend. So how can we kind of bridge that gap between yes, there's a lot of engineering that has to go into it to answer that question properly

But it turns out it doesn't require that much engineering to provide high-level guidance and answer that question

Is it 10 million or 50 million? Well, we can narrow that down pretty quickly. What it ends up being at the end of the day, yeah, some engineer will go into that. But just like configuring the price of a car, you can go on the website and see what it costs to build by a four-door sedan, right? So kind of following that philosophy a bit. Yeah, exactly. Why can't we have that for our industry? I mean, we work in automation and we haven't automated that process yet. So that's what I thought was a bit ironic. A little crazy. Yeah, yeah. All this high tech around us and that process is

It's very manual, time consuming. Absolutely. So coming into the show, I'm curious, what are you hearing from people as they're thinking about coming out this week? And what are they maybe searching for on the app or what's top of mind for them? What are they really looking to understand this week?

Yeah, it's really interesting to see that what we're hearing people are here for. And when we ask them, what's the theme of ProMAT? What are you seeing? It correlates a lot with what we're seeing in the usage of our app.

So people come here because automation has become more accessible, more available, because there are a lot of new technologies and solutions that are just more entry-level automation. So they're easier to access, they cost less money, the barrier is now lower to enter an automated space or to add automation to your warehouse.

and there's an abundance of solutions. So if you walk around the halls here, you can see so many different types of new technologies. Compare that to 20 years ago, I think that has fundamentally changed. So at large, more businesses have easier access to automation because of the abundance of solutions.

And that correlates to what we're seeing in the app because we can see which technologies are how popular, what's the frequency of usage. We can see that the trend is definitely going towards the scalable entry-level automation solutions. Solutions that you don't have to build a massive monument, $40 million investment and then wait 10 years to kind of grow into it. But you start small, crawl, walk, run approach, add more robots and truly scale it as you go as you grow type scenario.

So we see that correlation between the popularity in the usage of technologies on our app and what people are telling us they're here to see.

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that accessibility, right. And that kind of scaling, right. And starting, starting kind of small, right. That, that crawl, like you said, right. And then the walk to the run, I think is the right approach. And I think, you know, as we see that accessibility increase too, you know, that encompasses a larger market potentially of customers for these automation providers and, you know,

probably companies that maybe at one point thought they were too small for automation in a sense, right now it's becoming more accessible. Exactly. And with our software, they're actually able to validate some of these solutions, develop an understanding of how big the business, the operation would be that they're looking at or how big the technology would be that they're looking at.

And now they can walk around in a much more focused way and go straight to the solution providers of the technologies they've already qualified as viable or interesting. And they can now engage at a much more accelerated level, right? It's not, hey, I'm here to talk about automation, but I don't really know where to start.

I've looked into shuttles and cube storage systems and I think I need a cube storage system because I'm slow velocity, high storage density. Let's talk about your product. So it creates a win-win situation between those looking for automation and those providing it. And that's what we want to be. We want to be that facilitator in the middle at the end of the day. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's such a great, almost glue in a sense, right? So to kind of bring it together, right? Because I think we had talked about, you know, in our previous conversation that

A lot of people probably walk in here and they'll see some of these solutions and they'll be like, oh, that's never attainable for me. Without even really understanding what is the entry point? What does that cost? Exactly. And what does it cost? The answer should not be it depends. I think we are able to qualify it.

and therefore just make it easier for companies to explore and ultimately buy automation. I mean, that's what we're trying to help. Yeah, absolutely. So you've been in the automation world for quite some time, right? I think most of your career, right? Yeah. So tell us a little bit, you know, from a trend perspective or maybe even what's catching your attention here at Promap. One thing definitely seems to be climbing robots.

I remember 10 years ago, I worked for shuttle solution providers and we always joked in sales with the engineers, why can't they fly yet? Or at least they should be able to leave the rack, right? And now look at them, they're leaving the rack, they're driving in and out and they're climbing and I think one or two new solutions were aired here or introduced at the ProMat. So that seems to be a theme. And I think that fits perfectly with the trend towards the scalable automation

because you can add more robots over time to these types of solutions. So it lets you spend your money over time versus invest it all up front. I think the human still continues to play a very important role in automation. So we're seeing technologies complement human activity rather than fully substitute it.

So that's something I'm seeing here. And the other one I really just have to admit is I'm really blown away by the Asian technologies coming into the North American market. They are sophisticated, great software, some cool design ideas.

So I think it just adds to the options that you have nowadays when you're looking at what automation do you want to buy? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's interesting to see that and kind of the evolution of some of these things as well. And it's interesting you point out the robotic arms and like a reduction in seeing those. And I think that, you know, if we think about, at least from my perspective, the way I look at it, I think, you know, we look at that and a lot of

Cases like, you know, you're not getting 100% accuracy or 100% feasibility on what can be grabbed like with some of those, right? Which is tough, right? And I think what people want now is they want solutions that are going to like work 100% of the time because they're looking to see how do we solve the challenges we have right now.

So I'm curious as people are coming to your booth here and learning about the app and what you're doing, what has been some of their feedback, maybe challenges that they're facing in navigating automation? What are you hearing here? I think there's different challenges we're hearing. There's companies that engaged in and with automation for the right reasons. They had to, but they fully underestimated the challenges of executing it and then post go live actually maintaining the system.

So I think a lot of customers are saying, well, we bought automation for the right reasons. There was a business case, but we're really struggling to get the performance out of it. Or we still have too many errors or we're making mistakes. And the solution provider handed over the system and disappeared. And now we're kind of on our own trying to figure this out. So I think one thing is to buy automation. The other part of it is to know how to successfully operate it.

I think the industry at large could do a better job at supporting customers there. We're also hearing that customers still struggle, customers, users, anybody who's looking at adding automation, they still struggle to gain access to some of this critical information like what does it look like? What does it do for me? What's the business case? What are some of the benefits or the USPs?

That's what we're trying to help bridge that gap with the iAutomate app is to make this information accessible and further facilitate the dialogue. We want to connect people who've done automation with those who are trying to do automation to try and foster a stronger exchange as well. So I think the challenges of executing automation successfully remain the same. There's opportunity for improvement there.

And also navigating the space. There's so much technology out there. It's what do you buy? It's overwhelming. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's really interesting to hear that and kind of, you know, how do you navigate that in a sense? And I think it's great that you're bringing a tool to the market to be able to help with that navigation and just an understanding of like, you know, is this even...

Is this even in the realm of possibilities for me? Is this even feasible from a cost budget perspective? Can I actually explore these types of solutions? But I'm curious, what do you think about the future of automation? Where do you think we're trending towards? What do you think is going to be really top of mind as we go into the next couple of years here?

Yeah, I think we're going through a transformation. I think we're seeing a radical and a rapid transformation towards a lot more automation that doesn't have to be fully automated. As we just talked, there's scalable entry-level solutions. So I think automation complementing operations. But either way, the trend is definitely towards more automation because the macroeconomic factors are just there. Labor is not getting any easier to find. Nobody wants to work in a freezer. Don't blame them. I've been there before. It's

Minus 28 Celsius, don't ask me what that is in Fahrenheit, but it's cold. The real estate prices, I mean, talk to customers about the cost of building a brand new warehouse in the New York or Toronto greater metropolitan area. Huge. So how can I fit more stuff in my existing buildings? How can I leverage my existing assets? How can I maybe improve the productivity of my existing operation?

That's where I think the trend is definitely going towards automation long term. And you hear that in conversations. It's maybe 20 years ago, the conversation was there's an opportunity to automate. Now it's a threat if you don't automate. You have to automate. Your competition is the problems that you have are not going to go away.

It's the perfect storm if you don't start looking at ways to automate your supply chain now to stay in the race, you might get caught off guard. So from that point of view, I'm very happy to be in this industry right now. I think it's exciting. I love seeing all these new technologies, innovations. I think software is making great leaps forward as well. AI being thrown around everywhere. But, you know, see where we are in five years with AI. I think some really cool stuff is going to happen there.

So exciting times with the ability we have and the transformational process I think is really, really taking off right now. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a really exciting time to be in the industry, right? And be able to see it. I'm happy to be in a perspective where I can watch it unfold, not necessarily have to navigate it directly. You can watch it from the outside. Yeah, I see all the cool things that are happening, but I definitely can see where operators are kind of like,

Where do I go? How do I navigate? So it's great you're bringing this solution to the table to be able to help with some of that. So now on our previous podcast, we talked about how can people use the iAutomate app to get some preparation in for ProMat, but now we're going to be coming out of ProMat. So how can people use the app to learn more or dive a little deeper into what they discovered here at the show? Yeah, so people who are here, were here, probably left the show with a lot of impressions or will leave the show with a lot of impressions.

That's where you can then pick up our app. It's free. We want to empower the users, the public, right? So they can now pick up the app and run various scenarios. Solution validation is probably what I would call it to now further develop scenarios of a small application, maybe a bigger one. What does it look like for this DC? Maybe I have multiple DCs throughout the country. So they can really start

drawing the map now and coloring the picture of what an automated future supply chain state would look like. So that's where our tool will certainly help them with solution validation. They can then reach out to iAutomate so that we can provide guidance. We can connect them, point them in the right direction. That's part of our mission, right, is to connect the right people. So I think from that point of view, the tool can further help the journey towards automation and the ideas that maybe were collected here and start helping

helping to manifest them in a way. And also we have our news platform. We want people to stay up to date. So it's not just for people looking to run a quick conceptual design of a system. It's what's happening in the industry. You know, it's do I go to 15 different websites or is there one consolidated space I can go to and read up on the news, the innovations, the latest tech, the last system that was announced. So we also just want to make it fun to use as a platform essentially for

news and information gathering. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a great resource for the industry, a great tool to be able to have to leverage both coming into a show like this and also coming out of the show like this with new discoveries. So it's been a pleasure to come join you here and talk to you and get some insights on what you think about the industry. People want to get the iAutomate app. What's the best way to do that?

iAutomate.app You can download it there or look for iAutomate on the App Stores Google, Apple Play, Apple, Google Play Store, Apple

That's where you can download the app and use it or the desktop version iAutomate.app. All right, awesome. So make sure you download the app, check it out to help you navigate all of those solutions that are out here and kind of the overwhelming plethora of options that we have here at ProMat and outside of ProMat as well. Great tool put together by Christoph. So thank you very much for joining me today.

You've been listening to the New Warehouse Podcast with Kevin Lawton. Subscribe and check us out online at thenewwarehouse.com. Enjoyed this episode? Make sure you are subscribed to the podcast and for more content from The New Warehouse, find us on LinkedIn and YouTube. Links to subscribe can be found in the show notes and for everything The New Warehouse, head to thenewwarehouse.com.