Foreign.

Welcome to another exciting and elucidating episode of the Omnitalk Retail Technology Spotlight series.

I am one of your co hosts for today's interview, Chris Walton.

And I'm Anne Mazinga.

And we are the founders of omnitalk, the fast growing retail media organization that is all about the companies, the people and the technologies that are coming together to shape the future of retail.

And she's back.

She's back.

And that was a little less creepy this time last time Kim was on.

Yeah, you really made us want the.

You want me to do that?

I don't.

I don't want that.

Because Kim is much, much more deserving of an elegant intro, not one that reminds us of like Poltergeist or whatever we decided that one was last time.

So.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, right, right, right.

But yes, without further ado, I want to introduce thematics market development director Kim Beaudry.

She's back with us once again, as she is every year to start the year, to share her expertise with us and to give us her take on the state of supply chain automation across retail.

Kim, welcome back to omnitok.

We were talking before we got started.

What show is this for you?

How many times you been on?

I think it's four times.

With you guys maybe.

I think so.

It might be five.

I.

I don't know.

But it's.

Yeah, four or five.

It's.

It's becoming regular and I like it.

Thank you for having me back.

As do we.

Well, Kim, whether this is the fourth or the fifth time that we've interviewed you, it still might be the first time that some members of our audience have met you.

So if you don't mind, let's just kick off with a quick intro and a little bit about Domatic for those who haven't heard of the company or just getting familiar with company.

Sure.

Thank you.

So I'm Kim Beaudry.

I am the director of market development at Domatic.

That is the group of people in our company that looks over the industries and vertical markets that all of our customers operate in.

It's kind of an unusual position in our company.

I really love it.

It's very unique.

But Dematic is one of the world's largest material handling suppliers and software providers for companies that need our equipment and our software inside their distribution centers and soon outside of the network and into the network of the distribution centers.

Yeah, Kim, your position is really unique and that's why we love having you on.

For our audience that has not heard Kim interview with us before, she's very candid.

She's very frank.

She tells it like it is.

And it's by nature of that position.

So.

All right, Kim, let's start with this.

How would you sum up the state of automation and automation investments across retail right now?

Well, it's interesting.

We've had a couple things happening over the last few years, so a couple things we can talk about.

One is that in 2024, and we're predicting into 2025, pretty much kind of a flattening of investment as far as high levels of automation and distribution centers.

And that's not just in the US we're seeing that actually globally.

Okay.

You know, we're kind of flat here in the US and some regions of the world are actually seeing a decline in investment automation.

But you know, that's coming out of.

It's been caused by a couple things.

First of all, the economy.

Right.

So capex expenditures have been kind of put on hold while interest rates and other things have been high.

Some geopolitical uncertainty as well, causing some.

People just a little.

Just a little.

Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to.

Yeah.

I won't get off on that tangent, but yeah, so yeah, so that is also causing people to kind of take pause.

And then there is a third thing which is kind of, we talk about kind of the post pandemic leveling out or of automation spend, which we thought we would kind of see the end of last year.

We saw huge peaks in investment and automation in 21 and 22 and then a huge drop in 23 and then kind of flattening in 24 and 25.

We thought we'd be turning the corner a little bit more by 25.

That hasn't, that's not being predicted anymore.

We're still seeing kind of stagnant growth in mature handling equipment.

Kim is I, I'm curious, like that's, that's maybe the trend that we're seeing.

But I imagine you are talking to people who are, are not taking that route.

You're talking to retailers who are making investments right now in that what is their reason or how are they justifying that capex for their executive board or for their boards for their executive teams?

Like, what is their reasoning for doing it right?

Well, I mean, at some point you run out of capacity or you just, you look at where you have distribution centers.

Am I paying more in transportation than I am in, you know, standing up another distribution center and.

Sure.

And holding inventory.

We are seeing investments in existing buildings.

So Brownfield investment has continued.

It's Just not these large, monolithic, hugely automated systems that we were seeing in, you know, during 21 and 22.

Right.

Yeah, got it.

More pragmatic investment.

Yeah, got it.

Kim.

So you're saying, so you're saying during the pandemic we saw a rush of money and investment in, in automation technologies partially fueled by, you know, probably needing to get goods out the door faster for E Commerce particularly.

And now you're saying overall the market is going to be flat.

The predictions are, the forecasts are flat, if not down in the coming years.

So, so an.

I don't know what we're going to do.

I mean, we like talking about all this cool, sexy automation stuff.

Like, you know, I mean, believe me, me too.

I bet, Kim, I bet.

Well, I mean, Kim, what does this mean for the industry then?

Like what, what can we talk about today that that's they start planning on?

At least let's focus on the good here.

I guess.

Let's do that.

We shall do that.

Because I'm not saying like everything's dead.

That's not the message really.

And the other thing is that I was talking to a customer who, you know, one of our customers who actually did a lot of automation during the pandemic.

And back then it was easier for people to get projects approved because E commerce was going through the roof.

Right, right.

Money is flowing.

Right.

And so the biggest problem they were solving for really was order fulfillment.

So they put in, you know, ASRs Tickets to Person Solutions as an example to handle the order fulfillment part of what they were doing.

But they did, we did everything in kind of a rush and we're now finding out that, whoa, we didn't, you know, we need to step back and look at all of the other connective parts of the warehouse that should have been looked at if we weren't rushing.

Right.

So when you stand up a really high volume, high processing piece of equipment or a solution and it's only one part of the distribution center and you haven't taken into consideration how you receive product, how you store product, how you get product out of storage and how you ship product, you could end up with the really high velocity, high volume piece of equipment causing log jams in other part of parts of your building.

So we are seeing customers now kind of going back and just really looking for ways to invest in making those other parts of a building work more efficiently.

And so I do see, I do see that happening.

Right.

So taking, you know, finding out now that the automation that we invested in to get E Commerce Orders out the door had an impact on other parts of what we're doing.

And we need to really kind of think about a operationally, how do we run those things better and if there is a need for automation in those other areas, should we be doing about it?

So we do see that happening as well as.

Yeah.

And Kim, are you seeing that the, the retailers who are kind of doing this, this, this look back at, you know, how things are operating?

I think it's pretty standard that when you would, you would invest in any kind of automation that you're, you're coming back and you're looking to see how things are going.

What, what impro.

What processes could be improved upon.

Are you seeing that retailers are actually able to reuse pieces of the aut it that flexible where they're able to kind of make it work for this new format or are they having to reinvest here?

No, no, it would be, it would be.

They keep that automation that they put.

Okay, they have to do.

And what we, you know, we do routinely as a part of what we do with our customers is look at the end to end.

Right.

Material in, material out.

Right.

And what should we be considering?

So again, the, I've given example that the customer used with me is that we receive pallets of product at a receiving door.

Right.

So it could be, you know, all one pallet of the same sku, it could be a pallet of multiple different skus.

But what I pick out of is a tote.

So it's a box that comes in, but I got to pick out of a tote.

So there's a whole process that wasn't thought about that isn't really very fast.

Right.

That's a very manual labor intensive mess actually.

So we can walk in a building, if you walk by a receiving door and you see all these boxes just stacked up, you know, there's probably some kind of, there's some, there's a problem there in the operations.

And so, you know, I think that people are learning more, that we need to be considerate of the what comes in, what's handled in the middle and what goes out.

And all of those things are connected so that we're looking at the right types of automation.

We're looking at potentially changing some operations that might need to be, you know, made more efficient except et cetera.

So you can come in and do an audit of a building.

Even with existing customers that have had, you know, automation up for a while, an audit can come in and show where you've got Opportunities to change processes, make things more efficient.

We can do audits on equipment to see that it's, you know, is there a problem that's causing this log jam somewhere that we might be able to, you know, to fix?

So I think people right now are just taking what they have and making it work better.

Like sweat.

There's a real focus on sweating their assets.

So I, I, I've not heard that term before.

What does sweating the assets mean?

I thought it's overused and cliche.

I hope not.

So it could be, it could be.

It's new to me though, Kim.

So I imagine if it's new to me, there may be one more person that's listening that doesn't know that I could be wrong though.

No, no.

So it's, it's, it's basically I've got, I made an investment, I have these buildings out there, I'm not going to be able to put up new buildings and I'm probably not going to get approval to do a large automation project.

So I've got to look at what I do have and make it run better, run more efficiently.

I've got to look at the processes, which includes, you know, the people, the automation, the whole thing, make sure those are running effectively.

And then even, you know, we do, from a customer's service and life cycle support, we come in and look at again, the equipment.

Is it, are we having Mrs.

On a photo eye and things are, you know, not getting diverted the way they are in a conveyor system?

Are we, you know, we even do like audits on lights and things like that to make, we can start looking at energy efficiency.

So, you know, there's lots of things that you can do that don't involve a capex expenditure to make your systems run more smoothly.

And I think that's kind of what people are focusing on right now.

It's not saying they're not doing any automation, they're just kind of keeping steady.

We're not seeing this huge peak that we did in 21, 22.

Got it.

So they're sweating their assets off.

It sounds like a new Richard Simmons workout video.

You know, I'd rest his soul.

But yeah, it sounds like that's what they're doing.

But, so, but Kim, what I take away from you is there's, there's two reasons for that approach and it's all because of the capital constraints that we're seeing right now.

So one is, one is, and uncertainty.

And uncertainty.

Right.

Capital constraint combined with uncertainty.

Yep, yep.

And, and the reasons for that are that, you know, in the first instance you said like the pandemic people rushed into it and they deployed systems where they are kind of still working through the tilts on it and they have to get those tilts figured out to keep their operations running smoothly.

And then the second piece is just the fact that you know, you've got to reinvest in the buildings because the buildings are getting older and you've got to keep them up to speed and.

Right.

You know, as, as, as working as pot as well as they possibly can.

But I'm curious like with that we always talk on our show like with every business decision there's also a cost.

So what are some of the.

If, if that's what the industry is doing in mass sweating their assets, what are the costs or watch outs to that approach?

Like I mean I imagine some of these buildings are getting quite old too.

So can, can that approach last?

It can last to a certain extent.

So you know, we've seen customers.

I know maybe it's actually there's a little bit of good in this too.

Beyond the fact that there could be.

We'Re going to be smarter about making decisions.

But I look at things like, you know, maybe we're getting a little positive tick on the sustainability from a sustainability perspective, which is kind of weird.

But I'm going to use an example of another customer who has a very, have very large regional distribution centers and they have decided rather than building new, you know, 100,000 square feet or, or something like that e commerce DCs that they would find that space in an existing large half a million or million square foot regional distribution center to do their E commerce fulfillment out of.

So you know, as much as I like people to build new buildings, you know, they're making do with the building that they already have and they're using the space more efficiently.

So I mean that's an example of some of the things, you know, that the customer I'm seeing customers do.

I think, you know, there'll be a time at which that, that building for example, there is no more space.

Right.

So you cannot take in any more SKUs to store and you can't take any more volume to ship.

And so that will turn.

And I think that you know, the people that we get reports from are saying we'll see an upturn in 2026.

We heard that about 2025.

So you're skeptical.

I'm a little skeptical.

I just think again, I think there is a ton of volatility and uncertainty Right now that is causing, it's going to cause another pullback, I think.

But at some point people have to, they're going to have to hit the volumes that they need to either ship to their stores or to their customers.

They're going to have to build.

But again, I think, I think we talked about this a long time ago when we talked about close to consumer.

We are definitely seeing the retailers talking about building these smaller buildings that use somewhat automated solutions, but also more flexible solutions.

So AMRs that can fit in a place where you're not certain how, you know how the fulfillment's going to work out.

You want to test it, stand up a building, but you don't want to bolt things to the ground.

So we're seeing people do that.

But also even in existing buildings that have a lot of forklift trucks, for instance, they're looking at automated guided vehicles to take the place where they can't get people to drive a forklift truck.

So, you know, there's just little inching forward of improvements.

And I just think that we're going to continue to see that for at least another year.

So it's really important to think about, you know, who do I pull and I get a little plug for my company.

Who do I pull in to talk about?

You know, we have a, to talk about, first of all, an audit of the operations.

What can I be doing differently from receiving to shipping that might improve what we're doing?

And also after the fact, once I've got something installed, are my people, people properly trained to know how to use equipment, to get as much out of it as it as you can.

So, you know, there's operational training that can happen after you buy something that's really important to think about.

And then also looking at the full.

I've talked about this, I think every time I talk to you guys, but it's, it's about looking at your full network, including your stores.

Right.

Where are you going to get?

Do you.

You know, there's a lot of companies that are filling E Commerce orders out of their stores, which is also potentially part of the reason why we're not seeing E Commerce buildings being stood up.

So, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's all this stuff combined.

It's the interest rates, the uncertainty and the fact that people are just trying new things to, you know, delight their customers, basically.

And it could be I'm using my store to do all my E Commerce fulfillment.

Kim, the other interesting aspect that I was like Talking to you about when we have you on is, you know, if the retailers are taking the sweat, sweat the assets approach, you know, the automation hardware side is one thing, but, but software also comes into play in that equation too.

And so with the rise of AI and ML, you know, what's your take on that in terms of the investments we'll see, you know, in the software side, you know, will we see that and in what way and what, what will people be focused on using it to do?

Yeah, absolutely.

It's.

The software is probably going to be the biggest areas of investment I think, over the next couple years.

So again, there's, so you can look at what we call a control tower, which measures the health of your equipment.

It can tell you, it can monitor anything you, you really want it to do.

So how are my, how's my automation working?

Also I can tell you, you know, how many trucks or how many tires should I have in reserve for my, my fleet?

Because you tend to go through tires so long.

So there's, there's things like that that are getting a lot of attention right now again, about making things more efficient.

With what I have, maybe that's what's happening.

It's kind of like a pause to, to take a breath and say, hmm, you know, I've done all these things now, I can't right now, but what else could I do to make things better?

So software is going to be a big part.

So the control tower aspect, you know, looking at AI and machine learning to say, first of all, I can make predictive analytics about equipment that we think are going to go down, right?

So we keep seeing a photo eye that's missing something going by it or a belt that isn't working properly.

So we can alert a maintenance person or somebody that's in charge of the floor to say, hey, this is happening over on repeat.

We think you need to look at this.

And, and they can do preventative maintenance.

So that's one thing.

But the other thing that I think is going to be really exciting is when we start working with digital twins.

So some of that stuff that we were talking about, like if I were able to stand up a twin of what I'm doing and I could simulate, if I mess around with picking, what does that do to my receiving?

Those are some of the things that will be coming, I think will be really amazing with the software that's coming out, being able to test before you do something, you know, with a digital twin.

So and simulate and try different things.

So I think that There will be a lot of focus on that as, as well as continued focus on the network inventory visibility discussion that we've had in the past, you know, knowing where my inventory's at.

So software, I think will be the key over the next few years.

And Kim, is there anything else that, that you've seen, People?

Because I love this idea of like, yes, let's take a.

Let, let's evaluate after we've already made the investment.

But my guess is that a lot of retailers, especially executive teams, who are deciding how much money you're going to continue to put into this are, are asking like, how, how else might you get a, a better picture of how to better invest the second time around?

Are there any other tools.

You mentioned digital twins, but are there any other tools that you're seeing retailers use or, or automation teams use to try to sell through and say, like, this is how we're going to do it better next time?

Yeah, I, well, I don't know if it's a tool.

Well, you know, I think that simulation gives both sides an opportunity to say if I don't, if I do this, it impacts that.

But I think that the really important thing to do is think about pulling in somebody that can support you and act as a cons, even a consultant.

Right.

You know, to say you have to consider all these different things, like how will this one thing impact another?

And I think people have learned.

Covid probably taught us, if you put a band aid, I don't know how to give you a picture in your head, but it's like, you know, I got it.

Let's say that I've got a hole in a hose and one part of it, the water is just gushing out and I've stamped that over and then there's still a little trickle over here and that becomes the next thing you got to try to deal with is.

So I think that people have learned and also be right why some people aren't jumping in to make large investments now.

They're trying to tackle things from a holistic perspective.

So without doing, using software and AI and some things like that, the next best thing is studies inside of a building and the automation.

And that's what we've done traditionally.

Right.

So what the AI and the digital twin will give you a speed.

Okay.

They just make that process get you to your answers or to your optimizations much more quickly than having to manually do that process.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

They probably enable you to do things you can't do in with regular studies too Right.

They get you into new arenas as well.

Right, Kim?

Yeah, because you know, one of the hardest things to do actually is to justify putting in an automation in an existing building because people are working, operations are going, some of our customers work, you know, three shifts.

So, so that's why it's also really hard to justify doing anything inside those buildings is because you have to have downtime to put in automation.

But I think that, you know, that's another beauty of having the simulation because you can't necessarily stop an operation, say turn this switch on and then run it this way and see if that's better.

Right.

It doesn't work like that.

So that's why I think the software will be really exciting.

And I have to imagine that also comes into or brings into question kind of like people and what the people's tasks like you mentioned are too.

Not just how the automation is working, but where you might want to deploy your human workforce versus like, is this a place to add automation, add robotics or to speed up the process?

Is that what you're finding?

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, when you think about anything that is the last touch before anything, a product reaches a consumer, you don't necessarily want to give that to automation.

So when you're doing value added services or you're doing that last confirmation that things are accurate, which is super important when you're dealing with E commerce, those things are, you know, meant for humans.

The other thing that we're, we're learning and you'll hear more about soon from us is a partnership that we're going to be coming out with and you guys will be talking about soon, I think.

But you know, the company that we're partnering with has learned it has to do with fulfillment.

You know, there's, and using your stores for fulfillment basis.

Right.

So there's.

When you take a store employee, we, we've talked about this too in the past.

So you take a store employee who is all about customer service and I want to make you happy.

Well, they should be.

That's their job.

I'm in the store and I don't, you know, I want to help the customer and you try to make them run a piece of equipment.

Those two things do not go together necessarily.

So those are things too that we learned.

It's like, you know, use people with certain talents to do certain things and people with other talents do other things.

Um, but I think it's the, where the human touch doesn't go away is those things.

But right before that product is going to touch my.

My door or your door, My experience with it, the brand in a store.

You want those to be accurate.

So, yeah, it's a great question, Anne, because, yeah, it's, it's.

I mean, the other aspect of Digital Twins is like, you can't redeploy your.

Your workforce in these buildings either, because they're working three shifts.

So you've got to, you gotta use, you know, simulations like that to get to the right answer.

All right, Kim, let's get you out of here on this.

You know, I think Anne and Anne and I would lose our pundit card, our media card, if we didn't ask you this next question.

And that is around tariffs.

Okay.

There's been.

Oh, yeah, we're gonna do it.

We're gonna talk about it.

We're gonna talk about it.

We're gonna talk about.

This could be the understatement of the year already, but there's been a lot of noise on this topic of late.

We don't know which way they're going to go either.

Let's be frank.

We don't know which countries are going to affect, you know, how they're going to roll out.

So my final question to you is, how do you think tariffs will impact what we've been discussing thus far on this podcast, if at all?

Like, what do you think?

What do you think?

Well, I think the unfortunate thing that would happen is it will delay investments even more because somebody's at a pickup, depending price, the cost of.

Of increased cost of goods.

Right.

So first it'll be the retailer, and then it'll be the consumer, and then we're talking about not spending money again.

So, you know, without getting political, I think it's a bad idea.

I mean, I think people are starting to realize that it's, you know, there's going to be a session at the Retail Industry Leaders association meeting in a couple weeks all around tariffs.

And when we were planning for it, we were talking about, you know, China and the.

And southern Asia.

Right.

And what those might be looking like.

But now we're having.

They're having to have discussions about Mexico and Canada, which, you know, it's not easy for a company to completely change its supply chain and where you're getting things from.

So that having to do that means they stop doing everything else.

And they're trying to figure out where, you know, where do I get product from now?

And standing up, it sounds lovely.

Like, if we can make everything in the United States, but we can't afford to and the timeline to have that happen is pretty long.

So I think I'd like not to talk about tariffs.

I like not to think about them, but I have to think about them every day as part of my job.

We have to, you know, we are keeping a really close eye on how they're going to be impacting our customers.

So, yeah, I mean, Kim, it brings up a question though, like, maybe not, but is there a possibility that adding automation or even sweating your existing automation, this cool new term that I've learned this, this session, but like, is there an, is there a chance that that's where retailers could recoup some of these costs that they're getting that, you know, instead of passing those tariffs on and their full amount to the consumer, is there an opportunity for them to, because of the flexibility of the automation, for them to be able to take some of these out?

Somewhat, I just don't think to a great extent, unfortunately.

I think they're going to have to be focusing on keeping their profit levels where they need them to be.

Right.

So sure.

If, if it impacts their bottom line and they can't.

I mean, I'm sure that, yeah, automation always saves human, human labor.

Usually it should.

Right.

Otherwise you don't put it in.

And I don't say just save.

Sometimes you don't have people to do the job in certain places.

Right.

So there's a labor component, there's a space component which is becoming more and more important.

But at the end of the day, you can only do so much to eke out savings.

I'm not an economist, so I can't give 100%.

I just think at the end of the day the tariffs will not be good for the end consumer, which then therefore will not be good for our customers.

Right.

So I don't know even if we.

Don'T go that far, Kim, I think I go back to what when you corrected me in the beginning you said, and there's also uncertainty.

Certainty is a factor here.

And so what I hear or what I think about is, you know, uncertainty is never good for investment because you want to know what you're investing in and what the outlook looks like.

And so as long as we stay in this degree of uncertainty, there is a legitimate question about the level of investment we'll see, you know, particularly in this topic around supply chain automation.

And that's already been constrained given the factors we've already discussed.

So, yeah, it could potentially exacerbate that to some degree.

I think uncertainty is not our friend, so.

Well, one Thing we are certain about Kim, is that as the retailers and our audience are listening right now, you are an exceptional resource for them to have and for them to be able to reach out to.

If they were listening to this conversation, they're really, they're struggling with how to kind of make these things figure out the next best move or make these types of automation work for them.

Is there a great place place for them to reach out to you, to get in contact with you?

How do you want people to reach out after this, this event?

Kim?

Well I'm on LinkedIn just Kim Beaudry B A U D R Y and of course our, our website dematic.com d e m a t dash I c dot com or I'm going to give you my very long email address because I have a really long first name.

When you spell it all the way out it's Kimberly but it's K I M B E r l e y.b a u d r yematic.com any of those places you'll get through to me.

Well Kim, we love having you on.

I mean I, I, I just get the total level set for the year about like how to think about what's coming.

And so as I'm talking to companies, I'm talking to retailers, I'm talking to, talking to technology solutions, this always level sets me for like okay, how are people thinking about this?

What are they going to look at?

What are they not?

So I, I, on behalf of Ann and myself, we can't thank you enough for joining us again for what is it the fourth or fifth time to start out 2025.

So, so Kim, thank you for sitting down with us and thanks to all of you that hit download and listen to today's podcast.

And as always, on behalf of Anne, myself and all of us at Omnitalk Retail, be careful out there.