I have been all over the place lately and still in the middle of a busy travel season with a flight this evening to Cincinnati to visit with Kardex.

Last week, I had the pleasure of being a speaker at ASCM San Diego's 2nd annual conference. It was a great gathering of professionals from all sides of the supply chain. There were a good amount of students in attendance as well which made for some really well rounded discussions.

My talk was focused on how to develop orchestration within the warehouse and how to bring humans, robots and data together as one. This is not an easy thing to do but something that organizations must be thinking about now. I believe we are quite far from seeing widespread fully automated and lights out operations. There is just too much variability within most warehouse environments to have a reasonable business case for lights out. Lights out if definitely happening but mostly in very standardized and repeatable operations.

With that being said, humans are still a critical part of the warehouse environment but the reality is we don't have enough humans to do everything that needs to be done to match up to the expectations of today's consumers. This leads to the abundance of robotic solutions that we see becoming available in the market.

In order for companies to navigate the balance, they must find the harmony between the humans, the robots and the data. Most importantly, the data. As I highlighted to the audience in San Diego, data is critical for human decision making and robots as well. The reality is that data can be interpreted differently by humans and we have the ability to navigate around bad data. Robots on the other hand are pretty black and white when it comes to data. The key component as we've discussed many times on the podcast is to have clean data.

A great example came from the audience last week where someone noted that they are piloting a pallet jack style AMR but it is only successful in moving pallets 50% of the time. It often needs intervention because it believes that a piece of plastic wrap hanging off the pallet is an obstruction. For a human operator, we know that we can continue to put the forks into the pallet even if that piece of plastic wrap is dangling there.

This is where all three of these elements need to come together. Humans need to be on board, data needs to be solid and robots need to put into optimized scenarios to yield the best results. Orchestrating this all is the key to getting the best results.

If you've got questions on this or would like to see the slides I'm happy to send them over. Just reply to this email and let me know.

Monday's Episode - How RFID Technology Works at the Dock Door for Your Warehouse Operators with Sonaria

Are you tired of costly warehouse mis-shipments and struggling with new technology adoption on the dock?

In this episode of The New Warehouse Podcast, Kevin Lawton is live from the Sonaria booth at MODEX 2026 with John Wirthlin to dive into an innovative RFID shipment verification solution. John explains how Sonaria focuses on business outcomes and an operator-centric experience, aiming to seamlessly transition workers from the traditional barcode "beep" to the invisible power of RFID.

Watch as John gives a live demonstration of Sonaria’s intuitive UI, showing how the system instantly reads pallets, prevents mixing refrigerated and ambient products, and stops incorrect shipments before they leave the dock—all while capturing hard data to continuously validate your ROI.

Wednesday's Episode - AI Forklift Platform: Redefining the Operator Experience

Welcome to this episode of The New Warehouse Podcast. Kevin chats with Bill Pedriana, President of Noblelift North America, live from MODEX 2026. Noblelift, a global manufacturer of lithium-powered lift trucks, is introducing a new wave of innovation.

The conversation centers on the launch of the Omega and Hero platforms, with a strong focus on AI integration and operator enablement. Pedriana shares how Noblelift is rethinking the forklift, not just as equipment, but as an AI forklift platform designed to improve productivity, safety, and workforce performance in modern warehouse environments.

Friday's Episode - EPG Aura Brings AI Into Warehouse Execution

Live from MODEX 2026, Kevin chats with the EPG team. Jett Chitanand, President of EPG USA, and Jason Wojtal and Ryan Absil discuss how AI in warehouse operations is evolving beyond dashboards and automation hype.

Together, the demos demonstrate how AI and workforce technology are increasingly integrated into modern operations.

We're continuing to roll out our MODEX content through the rest of this month and highlighting some great solutions. These episodes are best watched in video format so make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel if you haven't already.

Have a great week!

Thank you,

Kevin

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