EP 604: A SIMPL Solution for Automating Warehouses
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And now, here's Kevin. Hey, it's Kevin with the New Warehouse Podcast, bringing you a new episode today. On today's episode, I am going to be joined by Nick Gordon, and he is the COO and co-founder at Simple Automation. And we are going to talk about...

How simple automation kind of came to fruition here today. And we're also going to talk about what they're doing. I think they're taking a really unique approach to an ASRS system using existing racking. And we're going to hear about how that works. And I'm very curious to hear how that works, actually, because it definitely caught my attention. And I reached out to Nick to get him on the podcast when I saw it, because I think this is something that could be...

really, really impactful to a lot of operations. So we're going to dive into that today. We're also going to dive into a little bit about what he sees in the ASRS market, because it's certainly a market where there's a lot of options now, I will say, and being recently at ProMed, maybe we'll hear a little bit about Nick's perspective there too. You know, there certainly are a lot of options on the market. So

Nick, welcome to the show. How are you? Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here. Definitely. Happy to get you on. Happy to talk about this. As I mentioned, Simple Automation certainly caught my attention, I think, on LinkedIn. I think I saw a video or something, and I reached out and said, hey, we got a...

We got to get you on the podcast to talk about this. So tell us a little bit, I guess you're a co-founder, right? So tell us a little bit about your background and kind of how you came to found Simple Automation, how this idea came about. Yeah, absolutely. So...

Been in the industry about 15 years and I kind of split my time. I started in the industry really working for a system integrator. I've pretty much been a system integrator my entire career. The first half of it was a full service system integrator, but our niche was really on live modernizations and like true brownfield work. We were,

We're very heavy into convey sort or ASRS modernizations. So systems that were structurally sound, but maybe they had controls or electronics that were just needed to be upgraded. And we would do true live brownfield modernizations where, you know, zero downtime to the operations. You're building mirrored systems. You know, you're doing weekend cutovers, third shift cutovers, basically boxes always go out the door.

And that probably foundationally started part of where Simple came from. The second half of my career was really spent as I'd say an end-to-end integrator. I've installed systems anywhere from traditional convey sort to unit sortation from an ASRS perspective, unit load, mini load, shuttle systems, cube-based storage systems, totes-to-person system, rack-to-person system. So I kind of had a

the ability to see end to end what solutions were out there and to integrate them for customers. And I'd see the start of Simple was I started comparing the first part of my career to the second part of my career and I said,

Geez, the second part of my career, we waste a lot of steel and we're pretty darn disruptive to our customers when we're bringing in these new, amazing solutions that are on the market. And I just kind of compared the two. And, you know, I sat down with my co-founder and we said, is there a way to build an ASR system that delivers the density and the labor efficiency, but make it in a less disruptive manner? Yeah.

and utilize people's existing infrastructure, things they've already paid for, they depreciate on their books. It's an owned asset. Can we utilize that steel and not throw a bunch of stuff out in a dumpster, which is what I saw us doing a lot when we were doing end-to-end systems.

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And certainly it sounds like you got a very full perspective through your career on all these different types of solutions and how they go in, how they interact with each other and everything.

spectrum there. So, I mean, I guess, tell us before we kind of dive further into the solution itself and what you came up with here. And I think I definitely want to talk about the idea of these wasted resources, potentially the steel you mentioned there as well. But

But, you know, tell us, because I think you've seen a lot of these solutions, right? And, you know, we're recording this about a month out from ProMat now. And, you know, tell us a little bit about kind of what you're seeing in the market, I guess in general, but also specifically around ASRS, because that's kind of like where you're focused, right? Yeah.

Yeah, you started this off by saying there's a lot of offerings. I would consider the market right now more of an evolutionary state than a revolutionary state. I think maybe...

Early 2000s, 2010 range, Kiva, AutoStore, and even Shuttle Systems slightly before that probably were more revolutionary. Right now, I feel as if we're in kind of this evolutionary state where there's small changes being made to different types of technology that are enhancing that technology and making slightly better offerings on a day-to-day basis.

That is probably by design based on how people buy in our industry. It's also probably makes it way more confusing for end users. If you think about how impactful a purchase is when you're an end user, it's oftentimes a career changing decision, right? When you put your trust in a partner and you spend five, 10, 15, $50 million on a job,

you know, it can make or break your career. So it's not surprising to me to see more evolutionary change than revolutionary change right now because

There's less fear when it's just a small tweak and maybe it's already a proven concept. With that being said, I think if you go down the line and you start with traditional stuff, let's say mini loads, shuttles, then you go into the cube based, then you go to climbers, then you go goods to person rack systems, you go goods to person tote systems, even some of the person to goods things out there.

and then you look underneath those shelves right there's there's five to six offerings each so that's where i think it's probably very very confusing for customers you know they go they probably go in very to pro mat and get very overwhelmed i think when i started my career 95 of pro mat was conveyor and then like you know maybe there was one person that had

a shuttle system and maybe one person had like just the auto store bought on on a shelf in their booth like that was that was it for asrs technology and now uh you know we went in this past month

I didn't count them, but I would be surprised if there wasn't 40 or 50 suppliers in there with different varying degrees of, you know, those five or six different buckets I talked about, you know, technology. And some of them are offering three or four different technologies all together. So I think it's probably pretty darn confusing for customers as they walk through a show like ProMat, try to figure out what they should actually be going for.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's, you know, had a lot of that conversation that week because it is, I mean, whether it's, you know, ASRS or it's an AMR or whatever,

whatever the case may be, there's a lot of offerings now for all of them. And I love how you framed it as, you know, it's not necessarily like a revolutionary phase right now. It's evolutionary, right? And I think, you know, we do see that where, you know, I think there was an interesting post I saw a couple weeks ago where somebody was asking, like, you know, is this becoming a commoditized market in a sense because a lot of stuff looks the same, right? And this was coming from somebody that,

you know, not, is not really on a, an operation side and investing in these, but is, is working, you know, adjacently to, to some of these solution providers. And, and it is pretty interesting because some of the stuff you see is, yeah, it's a little, a little similar in a sense, right? Maybe there's like a little difference here, a difference there, or maybe just the color is different. Um, but you know, I think, um,

You know, it is interesting, like, to see that. And I think, you know, what you said there, I think kind of captures it perfectly. It's not like very, not like revolutionary in a sense, but there's these like evolutions, right? These little tweaks, these little improvements that this provider did or this provider did that's going to make a difference, not for everybody necessarily, but like for certain product type or certain industry, like could be a huge difference. So, yeah.

So tell us a little bit about, I guess, your solution, right? And I'm curious too, I mean, you just said like maybe there are 40 or 50 different ASRS solutions out there, right? So why come into like a crowded market and how does that kind of make you a little different? Yeah, I think it's a great question. And I think I'd answer it with, I feel as if the market is very crowded in the top percent of buildings that are more greenfields.

And nobody's done a great job of addressing the long tail of brownfield facilities. You know, if you look across

North America right now, I don't have the exact statistics off the top of my head, but the large majority of facilities are 15, 20, 30 years old. And there's a small minority that are highly automated greenfield facilities. So in those brownfield facilities are very difficult to go into without significantly impacting the customer supply chain.

So I don't disagree that it's a very crowded space. I don't see anyone else who's trying to go on existing racking and provide a goods to person or person to good solution that can give

and labor efficiency, which are obviously the two biggest thing folks are going after, right? I mean, I'm not saying anything interesting when I say that we need to do more with the space we have and we need to make the folks we have in that space more efficient, right? So that's ultimately the top goal of anyone who's, you know,

you know, running a facility and it's very difficult to do in a true brownfield sense. You know, where I think, you know, when I go back to talking about modernizations or brownfields, I think that's an area that has somewhat got mislabeled. You know, I feel like people have stated something as a brownfield simply because it goes into a building that has four walls that already exists. And to me,

When I go into a building that has four walls that already exist, but I say, take out your inventory, rip out your racking, grind your floors flat, the folks that your associates that are working there may not have tasks to do. And that's going to last from six to 12 or 18 months. To me, you're essentially turning that building into a greenfield. You're basically functioning like it's a greenfield. So

I think what's different about us is we're going on existing racking. I do not care if it's structural or role form. I don't care if it's case or it's pallet. We have installs on all of those. So we're able to go on what you have.

And our intent is to try and bring in that density and labor play with either goods to person or person to goods solutions on that existing racking. I should say we do go on new racking too. I have actually two installs right now that are going on new racking. And that was simply because the customer didn't have existing racking, they could give up. So

So we had to buy some new racking. So our solution certainly works on new racking, but the optionality is there, especially if you start thinking about trying to have a, you know, a homogenous technology across your supply chain that can go on new and existing, depending on what the building looks like. Maybe it's a greenfield and you're going to put new racking on it, but maybe you've got some older legacy buildings.

And you can do a brownfield and put it on the existing racking. And now you've created a single technology that you're utilizing no matter what the facility looks like.

Very interesting, yeah. And I think, you know, that's definitely what caught my attention at first when I saw you all is that it's going on this existing racking, right? And I think that, you know, that is such an unlock in a sense, right, to allow you to do much more with what you already have, which I think a lot of people are kind of crunched and pressed to do right now, right? I mean, you know, the...

saying is like do more with less right I think is kind of the the mantra throughout the industry right and and I'm curious I mean talk to us a little bit about because you in your career you mentioned you know you dealt with a lot of brownfield type work and

Right.

Tell us a little bit about kind of the balance for the operation, right? The business where they're getting to that point, because if they're looking at a potential ASRS solution, right, they're getting to a point where, you know, storage is potentially an issue. And there's a decision point, right? There's a decision point, like, do we go get...

another building, right? Do we get a second building or a bigger building and move everything to there? Or do we try and maximize what we have? So tell us a little bit about kind of that tipping point, I guess, and how does that decision-making process go and how do you kind of fit into that? Yeah, yeah, certainly. So when I think about that greenfield versus brownfield, what I often think of are, you

Most customers are pretty good at handling the direct costs when they're trying to make a decision. So they're really good at saying, okay, well, here's my capex. I know what I'm going to spend. Here's the spare parts costs. Here's what they say for preventative maintenance. Okay, I can do a 10-year TCO on that.

Okay, what is, you know, what is going to be my labor pickup? We're going to take ourselves from this efficiency to that efficiency. Okay, what's my cube pickup? I'm going to go from this efficiency to that efficiency. And they can do a calculation on a return on investment where I think some folks struggle is the more soft costs associated with jobs that are highly disruptive.

When you take a facility down, that can mean a bunch of things. That can mean I'm fulfilling from a different node in my supply chain now. I had a facility in Minneapolis. Now the closest FC is in Chicago. So now I'm trucking from Minneapolis to Chicago. I'm going to fulfill from there. What am I doing with the labor that was at the Minneapolis facility? How am I flexing up the labor at the Chicago facility?

Do I need to get an annex or have to use a 3PL service to be able to deal with the overflow? So there's a lot of soft costs associated with projects that I think oftentimes get overlooked when you're highly disruptive, especially when those jobs drag on and it wasn't planned for. So being able to come in and be less disruptive and utilize the existing assets, I find to be pretty impactful to our customers and

Because they don't have to deal with those hidden costs that oftentimes aren't represented well when you're just looking at a proposal from a great integrator and you're looking at your efficiency pickups in that specific building and not looking at it holistically across your supply chain.

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's interesting you mentioned the soft costs in there because, you know, there are these other factors, right? That oftentimes, you know, there's some things that are happening in operations that are somewhat invisible, right? You could say potentially, right? And those all lead to cost too as well. And I think it's interesting to see this approach, right? So I'm curious to dive a little bit more into the solution here. You know, when you

Say it goes on existing racking. I mean, is there limitations to that? I mean, you know, somebody's listening and they're like, oh, I have racking, right? Could I just like throw this on my racking? I mean, what does that actually look like? What does an install look like? How does that happen? Are there adjustments to the racking that need to happen? Tell us kind of like all the details there.

Yeah, absolutely. So no, it truly doesn't matter. Like I said, we're on structural, we're on roll form, we're on pallet, we're on case. So we're on a majority of the standard racking that folks would be using for storage in a fulfillment center. Some of the questions often come up in regards to how important is maybe density to your solution. So

You know, you might have VNA or you might have larger 10 foot aisles and you want to move the rack closer together. So sometimes we are going to move the rack. We're still going to use it as is, but we might be moving it closer together in order to make it slightly denser.

So and that just becomes a kind of a disruption conversation. Right. So it's like, do you not want to have any disruption and you just want us to attach it to the existing racking where you might not get a major density lift? Or if you want the density lift and it's going to be less disruptive because we're not ripping it out and grinding floors and then re-erecting it, you know, starting from essentially new, but we're just going to shift it. Right. So we're going to we're going to move the racking.

which is, you know, we're not going to pay for the cost of the new rack. We're just going to pay for the installation costs, right? So a lot of times those are the conversations we're having with customers, which is do we want to move something or not? And how important is density to the overall solution set? We can move nothing.

And we can just put it on the existing racking or we can move everything and make it really close together. And that's kind of the optionality that customers will ask for. Besides that, you know, we're able to, you know, basically just attach ourselves to the existing uprights. It's really as simple as that. We're attaching ourselves right to the face of the racking. We're not making any modifications to it. Interesting. And the.

the robots itself, right, that are involved. I think I saw there's two robots, right? There's one that's like a shuttle climbing kind of, and then one on the ground is dropping it too. So tell us a little bit about, because I know that's kind of like a big discussion on what's the right robot type or setup for ASRS, right? So tell us a little bit about the decision to have two separate in the solution. We'll be back after a quick break.

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Yeah, certainly. So I like breaking duties of things for art. And this is, this maybe goes back to us being simple. Personally, when I've done integrations of technology, I like my robots to essentially be specialists. I've found when I've done previous integrations of technology and the robots more of a generalist for

For me, that usually means it's a very complicated robot if it's required to do, you know,

up in the rack, down the ground, going to stations, doing everything. So that's why when we designed this, we wanted to have a specialist. We wanted to have a robot that rode the rack and picked up totes, and we wanted a robot that rode on the ground and drove itself to the stations. And from our perspective, that drives reliability, availability, drives down spare parts costs, drives down preventive maintenance costs.

And really that's been driven off of just our experience working with a lot of different technologies and what we think is the most

Simple, I guess, way to steal our name to do something. So, you know, that's really why we do what we do and correct. We've got basically, you know, a robot that rides the face of the rack. It moves in the X, Y and Z direction. So it's going to go up and down the face of the rack and it's going to be able to access any location, double deep, bi-directional. So we can go on both sides of the rack as long as the aisle is close enough.

And then it's going to drop to a ground bot or a P&D location on the ground. And a ground bot is going to pick that up and take it to any destination it needs to go to. And that's just our methodology on, you know, we like things simple. We like them very focused on the tasks they have to do. And we believe longer term that drives down the total cost ownership of these systems in the reoccurring maintenance and spare parts costs.

Interesting. Yeah. And I think, you know, certainly it's in the name, right? Simple, as you said. But and I think, too, we should touch on. So the the form factor of the product that's able to grab. Right. I mean, you don't need to put everything in totes. It can grab cases, too, as well. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, so right now we're doing totes in a very limited size of cases. We've got some stuff on the horizon that we'll be launching in the future that will allow us to take on a much deeper variation in case sizes.

And that's, I guess I'll, I'm going to keep that one behind the veil of secrecy for the time being. But we recognize that there is significant value to being able to get outside of just tote based systems and just in getting variable with the case sizes. I think that's probably going to be the next horizon that folks really try and tackle because I don't think very many people have done that either. And, you know, we've got some things, got some things cooking.

I'll say, but we're not, we're not ready to take on any case size as it, as it may be. Okay. All right. Interesting to know. And then we'll be looking forward to you coming back on the podcast to share, share that stuff that's behind the curtains right now. And those evolutions, I guess we'll, we'll say, um, definitely. Yeah. So, uh, but I gotta, I gotta ask you because you, you mentioned in there that you,

You're not necessarily a fan of generalist robots, right, in a sense. You like them to have specific tasks. So I'm curious your thoughts on humanoids, actually, because, you know, humanoids, essentially that's the value, right, is that, you know, there will be a generalist, right? They can go and do this task, and they can go and do this task, or they can do this task, right, is the long-term view for most of them. So I'm curious your thoughts there.

This is, see, this is one that I'm, I'm not settled on yet. Yeah. You know, I, maybe let me step back. Like, I think when, when I first started seeing like the arm, the push for the arms come out, right. I thought there was like this, all of a sudden people said like dark warehouse, right? Like it was like, oh, we've got arms that can pick. It's going to be a dark warehouse.

You know, I'm of the mindset that we're pretty far away from a dark warehouse. I certainly think at some point we'll probably be there, but I think we're pretty far away from it at this point because the cost is going to just be, you know, probably a prohibitive for a significant duration of time. I don't think I'm saying that we'll never get there, but I don't see that

it's happening anytime in the next you know couple of weeks and i think that's probably

tying back to my vision of things being more evolutionary than revolutionary right now, and just the overall way people adopt technology. You know, it's pretty expensive to be an early adopter of a revolutionary technology. It's a lot more reasonable to be an early adopter of an evolutionary technology. And I think that will lend itself to things slowly evolving as opposed to having a chat GPT kind of moment like we had, you know,

just a year or so ago. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I was very curious, uh, your thoughts on that when you, when you said that. So interesting, but yeah, I think it's, uh, it's interesting to see, right. I mean, it certainly, certainly it was something as we were talking about pro man. I mean, that was certainly something that, you know, stood out from the show that people were, were talking about, but I think a lot of skepticism around it too, in those conversations. So, um,

Very interesting to hear your perspective there. So really interesting to learn about simple automation here today, Nick. And I think it's a very interesting approach to being able to do more with that brownfield space and, like you said early on, kind of alleviate the waste of a lot of materials and potential resources, which I think a lot of companies are probably...

looking to try and figure out how can they do something with what they have existing without necessarily going all the way down to a greenfield, as you mentioned earlier in the conversation. So, you know, if we look at the, and the solution is called the adaptive solution, right? So if we look at the adaptive solution, I mean, who is really the right candidate for that? Like who would be someone that's like, oh yeah, this makes sense for you to invest in?

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, everyone's trying to tackle space and labor, right? So that's kind of at table stakes. I think folks that have, you know, supply chains that are, you know, they've got maybe some brownfield buildings and they've got some greenfield buildings, they've got a mix in their supply chain. They're looking for a single technology that they can put across new buildings and old buildings.

would be, you know, great candidates, people that have existing infrastructure, existing racking that's in their building that could be utilized to create an ASR system and, you know, are looking to come in and not waste assets, you know, come at a lower price point because they're not having to buy that infrastructure are the folks that are going to see, you know, a big value in this and are going to be the folks that find it to be really impactful. So...

Interesting. Yeah. So, you know, somebody is looking to maximize their space, but they're not ready to go to another facility and they think they can do more with what they have. Then it sounds like simple automation might be the right tool for you or the right solution for you in a sense. So, Nick, I want to thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. And it's been a pleasure to get some of your perspectives on the industry, but also learn about what you're doing with simple automation. And we're

Looking forward to seeing the further evolutions of Simple and the adaptive solution as well. So if people want to get in touch or learn more about Simple Automation, what's the best way to do that?

Yeah, I'd say just go right to our website. We've got a contact us form. So just simpleautomation.com or you can get us on LinkedIn, shoot messages or, you know, just reach out to me directly on LinkedIn. Happy to chat with anyone at any time about the automation space, automation industry, ASRS, you know, where we're going, maybe even humanoids, right?

Definitely, definitely. So we'll put all that information at thenewwarehouse.com and in the show notes so people can easily find it. So, Nick, thank you once again for your time on the show today. You've been listening to The New Warehouse Podcast with Kevin LaTey. Subscribe and check us out online at thenewwarehouse.com.

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