Industrial Insights Podcast
Industrial Insights with Mo Nafisi
Episode summary
Okay, and we're back after a quick break. I was just asking Mohammed about his experience working with 3PLs and common things he sees in their operation that are problematic. Or like if you could give 3PLs a heads up in advance in order to be able to integrate and automate like easier, faster or more smoothly.
Full transcript
Justin Smith 00:01
Okay, and we're back after a quick break. I was just asking Mohammed about his experience working with 3PLs and common things he sees in their operation that are problematic. Or like if you could give 3PLs a heads up in advance in order to be able to integrate and automate like easier, faster or more smoothly. Like what would that be? Or like what do you usually see that's problematic?
Mohammad Nafisi 00:29
Absolutely. As I mentioned, I think about autonomy as kind of a last resort, right? Where you need to basically go through every other thing that can bring in more leverage, that can help you free up more time, that can help you go talk with more customers and close ones and make the ones that you already have successful. And so with that, I think
Justin Smith 00:36
Yes.
Mohammad Nafisi 00:58
When you think about autonomy, you also need to think about the changes that you see in your business, the seasonality. so make sure you pick a solution that meets the flexibility of your business and the changes in it. I've walked into so many different warehouses where there's just abandoned autonomous forklifts that they have bought a few years ago. That's not getting any use anymore.
Justin Smith 01:23
no, that's not a good thing to see when you walk in.
Mohammad Nafisi 01:26
Right. Or like other machines that, you know, like last year was giving them really good value, right? But this year they need to just turn it off the entire time because the path it's going on is the path that they need to use now for like putting palettes on or other movement. And so these are the stories that has made me skeptical, right? making sure that we build a solution that's able to go past these skepticisms. And I think a lot of times, like when you pay a huge capex amount, it's really hard to see the incentives being fully aligned because the incentive of a vendor could be just like selling you something without having a stake in its long-term success.
Justin Smith 02:26
We paid for this big system. Now we're stuck with it. So you must tell people you're not ready yet or like this isn't good for you until you do like a certain things. I got to imagine. I love the idea of like automation is like a not a last resort, but like it's a maturity level that like you have not matured in some of your processes in order to get to the point where like this is now most appropriate or like has the highest probability of success.
Mohammad Nafisi 02:56
Exactly, exactly. And that could be an
Justin Smith 02:58
So you've turned people away and just been like, hey, next year, if you do these three things, maybe next year is a good time.
Mohammad Nafisi 03:06
Yeah, I think unfortunately sometimes like we need to have the self control to do that. And also like I think because we are incentivized for the long term success, we have to make sure we have capacity. We have to make sure we have the head count to basically be available for pilot.
Justin Smith 03:32
Yeah, I love that. That's interesting to think of. There's probably also things that the automated forklift can do that people don't do as well. Like, what are some of those things you've noticed, like as you've started to deploy systems? it's not just replacing one for the other. I got to imagine like your process can change too. So what are some things you might find that you do differently as a result?
Mohammad Nafisi 04:01
think one important thing is just like reliability and being able to use something for as long as the battery allows it. The other one is I think when you basically abstract away, let's say like a good 20, 30 % of the headache in someone's business, seeing what they can do without that sort of mind space being occupied. and what are the new customers they can close with that? What are the expansion plans they could come up with? So I don't think in terms of capability, forklifts can beat humans because humans can also do anything outside of driving the forklift, like moving boxes, cleaning, et cetera. But I think...
Justin Smith 04:57
Culture. Yeah.
Mohammad Nafisi 05:01
Exactly. But our goal is just to be able to abstract away a big chunk of what you do. That way you're able to free up mind space for more exciting growth.
Justin Smith 05:05
Yeah. Yeah, I always find that... So challenging when you're like, okay, I've offloaded this to a team member who is trained and like has the skill set to do better than I could at it. And trying to make the best use like the highest and best use of that time that's now free. Like, it's really challenging to say like, okay, if I have more time, like, is this really a better use? Is this the best use? Is this the highest priority or probability? That's the hardest mental challenge there is sometimes because you're already doing what you thought was the best use of your time or the best ideas that you have available. So to have to create more, newer and better is always tough. But that's ultimately where progress comes from.
Mohammad Nafisi 06:14
Absolutely, absolutely. And I think a lot of times when I talk with 3PLs, other operations, like, I don't think the demand for their services is going to be a big bottleneck for them, especially when you're able to like serve new customers with less operational complexity.
Justin Smith 06:36
What do you mean by that? Like that should allow them to go expand with current customers easier or faster?
Mohammad Nafisi 06:47
Absolutely, you know, like if I can get three new customers without having to worry about like my trailer ops, right It becomes way more economical for me to think about a few accounts that might have been too much headache before.
Justin Smith 07:09
Yeah, and maybe you have a better chance of hitting the promises that you made in terms of like time and delivery and like service levels.
Mohammad Nafisi 07:15
Absolutely. Especially in peak season.
Justin Smith 07:23
Yeah. With the time we have left, I figured we'd go a little future forward of like things you see on the horizon since you have a perspective that's different from others from the area that you are in in the industry. So if you just think through like the next couple of years, what's cool and exciting and on the horizon, what comes to mind?
Mohammad Nafisi 07:47
Absolutely. I think so far, robotics is one of those fields that we've just scratched the surface and in the past years, I feel like every year we've kind of thought it was coming and it was coming. And another thing is that I don't think we've built the data systems or easily integratable
Justin Smith 08:04
Yes.
Mohammad Nafisi 08:16
ERP systems for new companies to do well with. As I mentioned, those integrations could take a long time. So I'm super excited to just have these new generation and first generation of really successful robotics companies coming into the field. And I think that allows other solutions to be easier to integrate, to be easier to work with.
Justin Smith 08:47
The dream is like voice command for these systems, right? That's the part that like we're not there yet, but that would be super cool.
Mohammad Nafisi 08:48
I think in- Right, right, absolutely. We've thought about that the echo in a warehouse sometimes could be harder like all the other noises but I think voice systems have become so much better that it's definitely becoming possible.
Justin Smith 09:13
Yeah, it's got to be fun to think of what's on your roadmap. So if that was high level, what's exciting? How about here in your systems? What's like the next new exciting that like you are contemplating?
Mohammad Nafisi 09:28
Absolutely. I think stacking shelves is definitely like the workflow that today nobody is able to do fast and reliably. And so
Justin Smith 09:41
Because you started with horizontal, meaning moving a pallet from one place to another, like unloading a trailer or a container where a vertical is going up into the pallet racking. Yeah.
Mohammad Nafisi 09:51
Exactly, exactly. And you know, like sometimes I look at like forklift drivers doing them and I'm like, how are you possibly move something 30 feet into the air, double deep and still put it down? Yes, absolutely. It's just a miracle. You can barely even see like the edge of the pallet. But that's definitely like the gold standard. If we're able to do that really fast and reliably, we can basically like over time become
Justin Smith 10:03
Insane. Yeah.
Mohammad Nafisi 10:22
almost like an ASRS system where abstract away the entire storage system in a warehouse.
Justin Smith 10:34
What's so hard about that, Mohammed? All it's got to do is go up and go down. Yeah. So you got a third dimension. Yeah.
Mohammad Nafisi 10:36
That's right. right. Within... Right. Yeah, especially like the double deep ones are the ones where I still am in disbelief that humans can't do it. Really.
Justin Smith 10:58
Yeah, and that it's safe and repeatable and like happening all over town. It's it almost doesn't make sense or that like you would hope you could automate the top top pallet to like like with an elevator at the end of the racking to bring it down or something just because like past 32 feet even that you're like
Mohammad Nafisi 11:09
Absent.
Justin Smith 11:22
No way, yeah, it's just hard to imagine, like, that's your job and you're, can do that successfully all the time.
Mohammad Nafisi 11:30
exact.
Justin Smith 11:32
So what would change for you to be able to do that? You would need a taller warehouse to practice in. Maybe this doesn't look too short, but you can maybe practice on like the second level and third level.
Mohammad Nafisi 11:38
Hehehehehe That is very true, that is very true, yeah, yeah. I would say like the biggest thing is first of all having like enough data to work with for pick and place. So I think we're definitely getting to a point where in terms of data we'll be fine. The next part is basically building a good perception system. And the perception system is having the right brackets. for the right cameras and sensors to be on the forks because the hard thing about putting anything on the forks is they get damaged very easily, very high impact. So for that, we just need to build some customizable piece of sensors, brackets, to make it work.
Justin Smith 12:34
Yeah, I gotta imagine that's why you have the chop saw in the background as you're trying to like come up with different like, you got to test out a bunch of methods. Yeah, see what works the best and what gets in the way or what breaks often that kind of stuff. Yeah.
Mohammad Nafisi 12:38
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. We're blessed to be able to just like iterate super fast on their one roof. And a lot of times just be able to go through the entire stack from software electronics to hardware in one day.
Justin Smith 13:05
Yeah, I love it. That's awesome. I can't wait to see more of it. See it in Southern California warehouses around here and across the country. And I got to imagine you'll be at like trade shows and stuff like that too. And then I think I saw an article that you were in for like 2025, like one of the best automations for warehouses. There was like a top 10 list that I saw you on there as a number two, moving up the ranks. I love it.
Mohammad Nafisi 13:33
Thank you. Thank you. Yes, think, you know, 2026 is going to be a very exciting year. The year, as I said, like I think we will start to be able to work with any size customer and hopefully turn down fewer of
Justin Smith 13:54
What's the present size that's ideal?
Mohammad Nafisi 14:01
I would say like a 200,000 square foot or bigger facility usually makes a lot of sense. as long as sometimes a smaller could work, but we would have to have, you know, more facilities within a smaller geographical area to be able to serve the customers effectively. And if you have a lot of trailer operations. That's definitely a great place to pilot because we don't have to have the WMS integration. And yeah, the other part of it is make sure you've just done the other high leverage improvements in your operations.
Justin Smith 14:46
Yeah, you would think everyone would have in order to scale to 200,000 feet or larger, but then you realize like, I know that's not actually the case. Maybe many do, but not all.
Mohammad Nafisi 14:51
Right, right. And in our interactions, I mean, we just hope to be a good resource for every operation to just do those and have the easy wins.
Justin Smith 15:09
Yeah, I love it. Mohammed, thanks for joining us today. And then I really appreciate you spending the time working through some of our technical difficulties. And then this is new and exciting, I gotta imagine. It's so helpful. So I sure appreciate you sharing today.
Mohammad Nafisi 15:14
Thank you, Justin. and for it's Great to meet you and thanks for doing this.
Justin Smith 15:28
Super, we'll see you later.