Brian Alexander is the senior vice president, commercial at Symbotic, a Massachusetts-based robotics and automation company. He brings more than 20 years of supply chain experience to Symbotic’s team, having previously served as chief operating officer and then chief marketing officer at intermodal marketing company Hub Group. Alexander is also on the advisory board of Marquette University’s Center for Supply Chain Management and is a long-time member of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Marquette University and an MBA from Cardinal Stritch University.
Q: How would you describe the current market for robotics and automation?
A: “Robots and automation” is a remarkably large ocean of options and technologies. Let’s focus on warehouses and distribution centers.
Inventory management and order fulfillment are typically overlapping operations and fall into two large buckets of technologies: AMRs (autonomous mobile robots) and AS/RSs (automated storage and retrieval systems).
AMRs typically operate in a dynamic environment around human workers. They act as a fleet of assistants for your workers. They typically require lower infrastructure and are relatively fast to deploy. As an independent warehouse technology, they offer limited advancements compared to modern solutions. Today, they have found meaningful application in integrated warehouse solutions and even outside the warehouse in everyday environments like hospitals and restaurants.
AS/RSs are enclosed, high-density robotic storage solutions with high vertical use of space and extreme operational speed that is not possible in human-inhabited environments. They turn your warehouse into a giant vending-machine-like operation. Through the engineered access points, AS/RS solutions are typically more effectively applied into larger automation solutions. In solutions like the Symbotic system, the AS/RS is part of the door-to-door automation solution.
Q: What are some major challenges distributors face that automation can best address?
A: There is automation and then there is AI-powered automation. Yes—we are all tired of hearing the term “AI” thrown around all the time, so let’s break down what it is specifically addressing here.
Traditional automation helps with repetitive tasks, helping to remove touchpoints like the movement of goods, packing, and wrapping. The system acts more like a chain reaction.
AI-powered automation has the added capability to make decisions, respond and adjust operations, develop over time, provide insight and feedback, and “see” the supply chain inside and outside the warehouse simultaneously. This allows technology to better maintain itself while resolving a wider range of operational problems than what we historically believed to be possible with robotic automation.
With AI-powered automation, solutions can now self-identity obstacles and learn how to resolve new problems. It can anticipate surges and lulls in SKU [stock-keeping unit] sales to proactively support out-of-stock prevention.
The intelligent warehouse builds orders based on the layout of the retail store and the most efficient paths to restock, the order of deliveries to multiple locations, and the method of pickup/delivery of digital orders. It can also track frequent packaging issues to report upstream to the original vendors.
This is in addition to the commonly known benefits of automation, such as reducing the strain of manual labor on workers and increasing capacity, supporting a wider variety of SKUs, condensing storage for more use per foot in the warehouse, and reducing operating costs.
Q: Which industries or distribution verticals can benefit most from AI-powered robotic warehouse automation?
A: I don’t think we can reasonably say one industry has more need for automation than another anymore. There is rapidly growing demand for intelligent automation across all industries to address universal problems—labor shortages, the growing cost of real estate, SKU proliferation, inconsistent supply, and diverse consumer needs and buying habits.
We saw companies in e-commerce, omnichannel, and retail as early adopters—I’ll even throw 3PLs into that category. There is still growing demand there, but now I would add grocery, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals and health care, and even manufacturing as some areas seeing growing AI automation adoption.
Q: What is the best place to start for a company considering automating its operations?
A: These are called “brownfield” sites—when existing operations need to continue around robotic advancements.
Implement automation in stages. Look for solutions providers that can comprehensively explain to you how the systems can be expanded after the pilot system is live and put value into their history of successful expansions.
This phased approach allows operations to continue around the implementation and allows your operations to adjust over time.
Personnel can adjust to the operational flow and the new advantages while having the safety net of the old way of doing things to mitigate risks during the transition.
Q: When will we see lights-out facilities at scale, and what will it take to achieve such operations?
A: In the last few years, hardware, microchips, and semiconductors have finally developed the capacity needed to support AI—now and for its development over the coming decades. We are now in a training period for AIs, where they know enough to work and are continually learning new variables and solutions to work better over time.
We also need to remember that a lights-out facility will also need maintenance. So it’s not just a facility that works—it also needs to be aware enough of its parts to know when support is needed and possess the ability to maintain the wide variety of parts.
I think we’ll see a rise in lights-out, fully automated warehouses with minimal human presence sometime in the 2030s. While the standard operations may be fully automated, I think we will continue to need humans for complex decision-making, some maintenance, and exception handling. Many of these jobs could be handled remotely.
Q: You give back your time to advise your alma mater, Marquette University. Why is this important to you?
A: I have been honored to support my alma mater, Marquette University, and their Center for Supply Chain Management for the past several years. They have an impressive academic leadership team with global reach and a team of industry advisers that is focused on contributing to the supply chain of the future. Marquette also emphasizes learning with a deeper purpose with a calling to serve others. I enjoy working with their energetic students, who are ready to embrace an exciting future with endless possibilities.
