[00:00:00] Cody Upp: I take a lot of pride in the fact that our robot isn't this shiny object, right? It's a very purpose-built utilitarian approach to a design that strips out unnecessary costs. That, that we, you know, we, we really started from the, the ground up to say, what is the most effective bill of material that passes as much of that dollar that I save G10 back into their pocket?

[00:00:22] Cody Upp: You know, it's, I think it's easy enough for any automation to save someone a dollar. That's, that's not the question. The question is, what percentage of that dollar flows back to G10 and what percentage of that dollar flows back to my business?

[00:00:34] Voiceover: Welcome to Supply Chain Now the number one voice of supply chain.

[00:00:38] Voiceover: Join us as we share critical news, key insights, and real supply chain leadership from across the globe. One conversation at a time.

[00:00:46] Scott W. Luton: Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be. Scott Luton here with you back on Supply Chain Now we've got a great show teed up here. Today we're diving into an outstanding case study that's gonna be focusing on the powerful and strategic impact of having the right automation approach at the right time, especially in the third party logistics industry.

[00:01:06] Scott W. Luton: We're gonna be getting into how one award-winning leading three PL has deployed innovative automation. Two. Draw big gains in accuracy, efficiency and throughput, as well as increase overall competitive and brand differentiation and. Grow, grow, grow. So, so not only all of that, but we're gonna be gleaning key insights into how and why they made the decision to partner with a leading very particular automation provider.

[00:01:33] Scott W. Luton: Uh, they're gonna be also offering critical advice for how other companies out there looking to better select, deploy, and leverage automation. Well, how they can do it better in an optimized fashion. So whether you're in logistics or operations. Or fulfillment, you name it, there's gonna be some big actionable perspective for here you here today.

[00:01:54] Scott W. Luton: I wanna welcome in our esteemed panelists, starting with Bryan Wright, CTO, and COO of G10 Fulfillment. And Cody Upp, head of commercial at Zebra Robotics Automation. Hey. Hey Bryan. How you doing? Great. How are you? Wonderful, wonderful. And Cody, how you doing? Yeah,

[00:02:12] Cody Upp: great. Thanks for having us.

[00:02:14] Scott W. Luton: Outstanding coast to coast here today.

[00:02:16] Scott W. Luton: Great to have both Bryan and Cody got a great story to get into. But before we get there, I wanna start with a little fun warmup question. And Bryan, we've done our homework on you. We've been doing, doing some Lurking on you. You call Wisconsin Home, you play a mean guitar and lead a really cool band, known as a Petty Thieves, and one of your passions is basketball.

[00:02:33] Scott W. Luton: Where you like me, still believe that Michael Jordan. Is the

[00:02:37] Bryan Wright: goat, is that right? Led to Chicago. Uh, watched Michael Jordan as a child growing up. Uh, loved the sport of basketball. Have played all my life all the way through college and, uh, still play today. So, uh, yeah, still believe in mj.

[00:02:52] Scott W. Luton: Outstanding. I gotta ask you a quick follow up.

[00:02:55] Scott W. Luton: What position did you play? Were you an outside sweet shooting point guard or did you, did you crash the boards inside?

[00:03:01] Bryan Wright: We didn't have the three point line when I played. Um, so I was an inside guy at, at the time, but now when I play, I love shooting three, so Love it. Love

[00:03:11] Scott W. Luton: it. All right, we're gonna have to have a little, uh, two on two game here, but uh, great to have you, Bryan.

[00:03:15] Scott W. Luton: Look forward to your story. Yeah. And Cody, now you hail from the great city of Chicago. I was there just a month or two ago. Uh, and when you're not doing big things in global supply chain, you love to hit the little white dimpled ball around. In fact, uh, I've met lots of golf fans here on the east coast, uh, in South Carolina and Georgia, where I've spent a lot of time.

[00:03:33] Scott W. Luton: But you, my friend, are a serious golf passionista. So what been one of your favorite golf moments?

[00:03:40] Cody Upp: Yeah. Yeah. So a couple weeks back, I took my wife on the course for one of the first times and was lucky enough to hit a hole in one in front of her and. Uh, wow. I think from, from her perspective, this was just par for the course.

[00:03:51] Cody Upp: This is what you do when you go on golf. And so it was the most anti-climatic hole in one of all time.

[00:03:58] Scott W. Luton: Cody man, a hole in one, and your wife was there to see it, and it was business as usual in her perspective. Is that right? She

[00:04:06] Cody Upp: went up

[00:04:06] Scott W. Luton: to the hole, picked up the ball, and went on to the next tee. Oh, I love it.

[00:04:10] Scott W. Luton: I love it. Well, Cody, I'm jealous of your golf excellence. I've had one hole in one in my life. That was back when I was 18. I hit a really bad shot and it rolled up to par three right into the hole. Uh, but you hit yours. I'm sure with a gorgeous arch, uh, like the pro that you are. And Bryan, we'll talk more basketball and, and, and talk about, uh, the folks that believe LeBron is a goat.

[00:04:33] Scott W. Luton: Got a, got a big ar argument there, but let get into here. So let's start with this so we get into the reason we're all here today. Uh, and, and look forward to learning from Bryan and Cody. I, I wanna do some level setting. So Bryan, I'll start with you. For the three folks that may be unfamiliar with you in G10, tell us a more about yourself and the organization.

[00:04:52] Bryan Wright: Yeah, so for myself, uh, you know, I've been in the logistics arena for about 35 years. Started in the development. Uh, and, and implementation, uh, arena, uh, worked with some big companies, Jockey International Craft Foods, helping to implement, uh, warehouse management systems. Probably implemented every WMS out there at, at one point in time throughout that tenure.

[00:05:16] Bryan Wright: And then, uh, eventually started my own company, uh, consulting, continuing to implement, wrote our own warehouse management software. Sold that to another company and then ultimately ended up at G10 Fulfillment. Okay. Even ten's been around since 2009. Uh, we have seven warehouses across the United States and Canada, uh, doing fulfillment to Amazon and, uh, third party, uh, customers.

[00:05:45] Bryan Wright: Um. You know, across this and outside of the country. Yeah. So that's, uh, that's kind of what I've been, uh, doing all my life.

[00:05:53] Scott W. Luton: Well, and, and two things there. Uh, G10, uh, has garnered lots of recognition from the market, including a great place to work and, and for some of the innovation you are doing. And on the first part of your response, Cody, I'll know about you, but when I hear someone talk about lots and lots of imple implementations that they've been part of, oh man, the skeletons in the closet scar of those really tough initiatives all flashes through my brain coated.

[00:06:17] Scott W. Luton: Same for you.

[00:06:18] Cody Upp: Yes, yes. Many, many, many scar tissue around the body. That's for sure.

[00:06:23] Scott W. Luton: Well, Bryan, good stuff. I appreciate you sharing a little more about yourself. And Cody, same thing. Uh, it's great to have you here on Supply Chain Now. Uh, really cool to see the, uh, the innovative things that Zebra, you and the Zebra team are up to.

[00:06:33] Scott W. Luton: Tell us a little more about both yourself and the organization.

[00:06:37] Cody Upp: Yeah, so, you know, I've been fortunate enough to dedicate my life to the supply chain category. I. I grew up in my father's warehouse management software business. Had an opportunity to take that over and lead it to an acquisition to a company outta Alpharetta, Georgia, uh, called Appian.

[00:06:50] Cody Upp: Um, you know, following that went back into the consulting world on the WMS side of the business and then saw some interesting things happening, uh, about a decade ago out in Boston with autonomous mobile robots and had the privilege to scale up and, and sell another autonomous mobile robot business. And after that, spent some time at, at an integrator, uh, with all sorts of key automation.

[00:07:11] Cody Upp: And then really had an incredible opportunity to join Zebra to, to launch the next generation of persons de goods automation.

[00:07:18] Scott W. Luton: Oh man. Cody, talk about some holistic experience. Uh, when's the book come out, Cody? It's not. You go supply chain and golf. A little bit of family in there too. There you go. Well, good stuff.

[00:07:30] Scott W. Luton: I look forward to learning from you and man, some cool things going on in the A MR industry as you're alluding to. Uh, all right, Bryan and Cody, let's start to get into it. And I wanna start with you, Bryan, as we start to kind of unpack. Uh, the story here today, I wanna start with, uh, a good bit of your why.

[00:07:46] Scott W. Luton: So when you think about the specific operational challenges or the opportunities, uh, in your operations, which all led you to explore Zebra Solutions, can you speak to some of those and what was happening? What else was happening in the current state then in the operations that prompted you to really seek out new partners and new technologies?

[00:08:06] Bryan Wright: Yeah, sure. You know, we, as we grow and continue to grow, we're always looking for opportunities to become more efficient, become more accurate, be able to lower the cost to our customers, while increasing the accuracy and efficiency within our organization. And one of the areas that we were focused on is the area of picking and, uh, delivery to packing stations.

[00:08:31] Bryan Wright: Uh, and, you know, so we've been going to the ProMatch shows, looking at the automation that's out there for the last few years. And, uh, the last show we went to, we, we met up with Zebra and Cody and saw what they have done with the robotics and picking vehicles and, and the way it works that we'll get into in a few minutes here.

[00:08:52] Bryan Wright: But, uh, you know, that really, uh, they differentiated themselves in what they've done with, uh. With this equipment. And, uh, so we do think it'll help us with growth and, uh, easier training and, uh, getting people up to speed quicker in the picking areas and, uh, making them more efficient, getting better reporting.

[00:09:13] Bryan Wright: All of those kinds of things are, are kind of what drove us towards the solution.

[00:09:17] Scott W. Luton: I love that, Bryan. There's so much in that response there to dive into. And Cody, I'm gonna get you a comment before I keep going here. One of my favorite things he shared there is one of the last things he shared. Easier training, shorter learning curves with new hires and and folks in new roles.

[00:09:34] Scott W. Luton: Putting your people that beautiful human element that still makes global supply chain happen in position to be more successful sooner. Right. That is music to my ears. Cody, your thoughts up?

[00:09:46] Cody Upp: Yeah. You know, I think what's interesting, if you look at the autonomous mobile robot category over the last decade.

[00:09:52] Cody Upp: There was a move away from the operator. Really, decisions were being made in terms of the allocation of work to the robot, and then the robots were being placed into the active pick area without a recognition of where operators are, what they're doing, what their next step is, their proximal location within the facility.

[00:10:08] Cody Upp: And there wasn't any directed workflow for every step that they're taking in, in the workflow. Right. And so from our perspective, it was, it was a pretty easy lean into the ecosystem of Zebra. Uh, for us to digitize the operator again and to make sure that tasks aren't just being sent down to an A MR and kind of aimlessly being thrown into an active pick area, but rather really intelligently aligning, uh, where work is and then grouping that based upon proximal location of operators and making sure that these two are speaking with one another.

[00:10:38] Cody Upp: Um, and the way that I like to think about it's just we, we included the operator as an agent in the system again.

[00:10:44] Scott W. Luton: Okay. They're

[00:10:45] Cody Upp: a part of the allocation process. They're a part of the decision making when we drop work down to the floor.

[00:10:50] Scott W. Luton: You know, it's interesting, uh, it's like old saying, we just need, we, we need to communicate, communicate and communicate again.

[00:10:57] Scott W. Luton: And there's so many different layers. Even in this incredible golden age of supply chain tech, what's old is new again, and empowering that, uh, that instantaneous communication. But one of the thing you mentioned there. Uh, Bryan and your response, and I bet this is where it really syncs in, syncs up well with Cody and the Zebra team.

[00:11:15] Scott W. Luton: 'cause Cody, your team is laser focused. You know, Bryan talked about reducing cost and of course Zebra has been really laser focused on reducing that variable cost per unit. For the end users and, uh, Bryan, that dog will hunt, as they say here in Georgia. Is that right, Bryan? That's absolutely right. Yeah.

[00:11:33] Scott W. Luton: And, and Cody, I bet you're seeing, uh, demand for that and for that big focus of y'all's out across the market, huh?

[00:11:40] Cody Upp: Yeah, it's been an incredible growth story over the last really eight months since we launched the, uh, the solution. This has been the, the brainchild over the last five years of this business.

[00:11:50] Cody Upp: Uh, but really bringing it to life over the last eight months that the growth that we've achieved and the impact that we've had to our end users is something truly exceptional.

[00:11:58] Scott W. Luton: Okay, I like it. There's a lot more to that. We're gonna get into it. Uh, all right. So Bryan, I'm gonna come back to you here. Okay.

[00:12:03] Scott W. Luton: Uh, so beyond the incredible supply chain. It's like the greatest show on Earth at Proma. 50,000 people were there this year. I can only imagine the getup that Cody and Zebra had. They might not have had a really cool band playing that attract people, but they had one heck of a story. Uh, so let's go back to some of your, some of the why here.

[00:12:23] Scott W. Luton: So, Bryan, speak to us beyond what you've already shared, some of the core reasons that really led you to partner with Zebra over other. A MR autonomous mobile robot. For those out there that may not know that acronym, uh, for over a other a MR solutions that are available out in the market, what are some of those other reasons?

[00:12:42] Bryan Wright: Yeah, so Zebra had a great setup out there where they had the robots, uh, driving around. I think the biggest piece that, uh, wowed us was the. Robots are detached from the carts, so they use the same type of picking cart that we use today. Uh, the wire mesh carts and the robots, uh, move under those mesh carts, attach to them and drive them to where they need to go somewhat ahead of the picker.

[00:13:09] Bryan Wright: Okay. And we had not seen any, uh, anything like that before and any other competitors. Competitors basically had the cart and robot as one, a single unit. And then as we dug into it more, we saw that the picker is really detached from the cart. And, uh, so they're walking around being directed to the next cart to pick from.

[00:13:31] Bryan Wright: And, uh, so now you're not worried about how fast cart's going and, uh, pacing the picker. Uh, they're really just walking location to location. And all of those were things we questioned early on when we were looking over the last two to three years. And when we saw this with Zebra, it really spurred a lot of ideas of how this will work for us, how it can grow over, you know, the future here, uh, future ideas of what it can do for us.

[00:13:57] Bryan Wright: But those were the main differentiators. Which minutes us go, wow, let's, let's get in into this project and make this work.

[00:14:05] Scott W. Luton: Bryan, love it. Uh, I'm hearing a big, big plus on the optionality, uh, and what these op optionality, which is so different than, than many other, uh, competitors out in the market, how it, it unlocked new efficiencies, um, for the organization and certainly for especially to picking operations as somewhat I heard there, Cody, what else did you hear in Bryan's response?

[00:14:26] Scott W. Luton: Yeah, so when you look at kind of.

[00:14:28] Cody Upp: Technology over a period of time. There are moments where there's a disruption where all other vendors have no choice but to kind of follow suit. And this is one of those moments where we are acknowledging this power of detaching a cart from an A MR. And I firmly believe that everyone else in this space will, will come to and, and follow our lead here.

[00:14:46] Cody Upp: And that's great. And I think it's, it's a fantastic movement for the industry and it's because there's a lot of power in, in this idea of decoupling these two elements, these two agents in the system. You know, I'll touch on a few. First and foremost, the cubic capacity of these cards makes a tremendous impact to the overall solution design.

[00:15:03] Cody Upp: Um, in the most simplest of terms, when we can increase the capacity of the vessel that we're picking to, we need less of them, right? So if we could fit more orders on a card, if we can fit more orders on a robot, inherently we need less robots. So that's more of a cost reduction utilization argument. The second argument is really around performance.

[00:15:19] Cody Upp: And so when we can increase the number of orders that we're processing at any given time, fundamentally, what we're doing is we're decreasing the distance between pig locations, so we're able to increase the density of the allocation logic that that powers the system by increasing the capacity of the solution.

[00:15:35] Cody Upp: The third is really around the utilization and this idea of leveraging carts as a means of accumulation and buffering rather than using really expensive robots at workflow points like induction, like workflow points at takeoff. Where instead of having a queue or a conga line of robots that are costing you money every second of every day waiting for an operator to put work onto them, you can do these processes concurrently.

[00:15:59] Cody Upp: You don't need any robots present at Induct. You don't need any robots present at takeoff. And that was really our initial punch into the market was, hey, we can, we can get greater or equal throughput with about 30% fewer robots relative to what these designs have been in the past. And that kind of unlock is something that that doesn't go unnoticed.

[00:16:19] Scott W. Luton: Cody, man, that is big. I was trying to keep note of, of some of the differentiators you were sharing there, and then you got me with that conga line of robots and that just, that brought a visual that just, just completely distracted me. But. Less costs, uh, of course, uh, greater performance, uh, uh, working on decreasing the distance, uh, within the operation, increasing capacity, being able to run those concurrent operations.

[00:16:45] Scott W. Luton: When I hear something like that, always reminds me of the old, um, old saying, you know, when you wash clothes. Do you put everything in the washing machine and then just sit there and watch it and wait for it to be done? No. You do other things, right? You do other things right. Uh, so I heard a lot there, Cody.

[00:17:00] Scott W. Luton: I wanna, I wanna make sure we get it all out 'cause it's a big story to tell. But from your perspective, any other, uh, differentiations from other personal goods assisted picking solutions out in the market? And then I want you to speak to kind of the development of the solution and, and kind of how you got here.

[00:17:17] Scott W. Luton: What would you share?

[00:17:18] Cody Upp: Yeah, so I think one of the things that I found having built a few of these businesses, or been a part of building a few of these businesses in my past is that they were designed with a very specific use case in mind. And that was the picking application. And there was this kind of false promise given regarding the extensibility of that solution for other workflows in the operation, be it put away replenishment, returns, processing, right?

[00:17:40] Cody Upp: When fundamentally, the form factor of that robot was designed for a very specific use case. And that was picking. And this limiting factor kind of prevented our clients from continuing to sweat the asset, continuing to drive greater utilization, additional workflows with the same investment that they already made, and that that premise gets thrown out the window.

[00:17:59] Cody Upp: The moment that you can detach the picking element from the. So I'll give you a really good example.

[00:18:06] Scott W. Luton: Okay.

[00:18:07] Cody Upp: Maybe the picking element that we're using for, um, for G10 today is not the, the, the proper form factor for their put away or for their replens or for their returns processing. And so instead of having Zebra design manufacturer sell, deliver, and deploy a brand new robot for additional workflow that follows its own return on investment schedule.

[00:18:27] Cody Upp: It's merely a fabrication exercise for my organization to determine what is the best form factor, what is the best cart size, uh, what is the best configuration of that cart to handle that workflow? Um, and what that allows, you know, the G10 team to do is really take that initial investment and start to accelerate the return even further.

[00:18:44] Cody Upp: So I, I go back to the extensibility of the solution. Like for us to be able to take this one design to be able to do all those workflows that I just mentioned, but also have the same, the same technology operate, the case picks the ox, the uh, the irregular shaped items. It's really important that we have a singular solution design that addresses kind of the breadth of needs that an operation has.

[00:19:08] Cody Upp: Alright, so

[00:19:09] Scott W. Luton: Cody. Clearly you've been there and done that. Uh, so for, so, uh, for those that may think slower and act slower like me, uh, a couple of the big rollup benefits I heard there is the customization, uh, the ability for the Zebra solution to really replace other solutions. So you're getting more, um, you know, more single use.

[00:19:31] Scott W. Luton: And you talked about the extensive, what'd you say, the extensibility of the, uh, Zebra solution, but also all of this, all of this rolls up to. A greater return on investment with a quicker payback period is my hunch. Is that right, Cody?

[00:19:44] Cody Upp: Yeah, that's right. And like when we think about, ultimately our goal is variable cost per unit reduction.

[00:19:48] Cody Upp: There's only so many levers that a vendor has and and it's really, it can be kind of boiled down to three levers. The first is performance, the second is utilization, and the third is the cost structure. These are the things that are in our control that allow us to deliver free cash flow to our end users.

[00:20:04] Cody Upp: Uh, from a performance standpoint, the premise was really get into a fully directed workflow. Have this one to many relationship between operator and a MR, uh, where we can flex up and down the number of robots that they're assigned or picking to at any given time, which allows us to have this dial, if you will, operation to increase performance, increase throughput, uh, you know, bias cycle time.

[00:20:26] Cody Upp: We have the flexibility there. The second lever around utilization. Is, is really thinking about where are the robots spending their time and where are the operators spending their time? And we're only really creating value when that, when that robot is picking. Yep. And so to the tune to about 30% reduction, like there's a, there's a, there's a saying in supply chain where a dollar saved is a dollar earned.

[00:20:48] Cody Upp: And so that's a 30% cost avoidance for the same throughput and the same performance rate that the market had available to them. In years past. And then the third is really around cost. So I take a lot of pride in the fact that our robot isn't this shiny object, right? It's a very purpose-built utilitarian approach to a design that strips out unnecessary costs.

[00:21:09] Cody Upp: We really started from the, the ground up to say, what is the most effective bill of material that passes as much of that dollar that I save G10 back into their pocket? You know, it's, I think it's easy enough for any automation to save someone a dollar. That's, that's not the question. The question is.

[00:21:26] Cody Upp: What percentage of that dollar flows back to G10 and what percentage of that dollar flows back to my business?

[00:21:31] Scott W. Luton: I like it, Cody. I like it, and, and clearly the market likes it too. So Bryan. Now that clearly ever the market's weighed in, they agree with us at, uh, mj, uh, number 23 is the best of all time.

[00:21:42] Scott W. Luton: Let's get back to the story here. You've already touched on a little bit, uh, you and Cody both have about the bottom line results, right? And once the system there at G10, that Zebra, that Cody and Zebra team are implementing once it's fully operational, tell us more about some of those big time, tangible benefits that you and the G10 team expect to realize, especially.

[00:22:03] Scott W. Luton: When it comes to efficiency, accuracy and of course delight the customer,

[00:22:10] Bryan Wright: you know, well, of course the 30 to 40 in labor and the increased lines and ages per hour all play into it of the fact that Zebra is really, uh, partnership versus, you know, they're just throwing some robots in our facility and expecting us to figure out how to use them.

[00:22:25] Bryan Wright: That's not the case at all. We're working very closely with their tech team and, and everybody. To make sure this is successful here at G10. Uh, but some of the, uh, peripheral areas are the reporting that it's gonna be able to provide us around labor and tracking and picking accuracy and specific surround, the people picking and all of those kinds of things are, are certainly gonna be, uh, beneficial.

[00:22:52] Bryan Wright: The front end of grouping the orders together and the best possible, uh, you know, pick paths or tours as they're called by, by Zebra is gonna be a significant savings. And we looked at that, you know, over the last two or three years. I think that was the one of the biggest areas that the competition, you know, they all had the same type of algorithmic ways to save you money and grouping orders and those types of things, but the ability for.

[00:23:18] Bryan Wright: Zebra to do some cubing and mix orders and, and really look at the kick bath. We're really excited about using that and, and the savings that that's gonna bring. And then, you know, all the, all the normal things like order accuracy. But I think one of the biggest things, and Cody just touched on it, is the future and the ability to use these robots to do replenishment and to put away and returns.

[00:23:41] Bryan Wright: You know, again, without having to buy specific new pieces of equipment and being able to leverage the technology that's there, and you know, every day we talk with Zebra about ways that we are seeing that we could potentially together improve the application as it's working today, and they're very open with the roadmap and adding to the roadmap.

[00:24:02] Bryan Wright: It's a very impressive roadmap as to where this is going to go. So really excited about all of that.

[00:24:10] Scott W. Luton: Hey, me too. And I'm not even part of the story. You got me excited. Ready to run through the wall. Back behind me to Bryan. Alright, three things there. I'm gonna kind of take themes I heard there from Bryan, Cody, and I'd love for you to, um, kind of respond.

[00:24:22] Scott W. Luton: We're gonna talk about the future before we wrap here today, folks, my hunch is Cody, you'd welcome a conversation with anyone that might be curious and wants to kick the tires on what you're doing. Is that right, Cody? Let's just put that out there. Of course. Okay. Alright. A couple things. I think it's really important from Bryan's last response.

[00:24:37] Scott W. Luton: He talked about how, uh, you, um, and the Zebra team don't just throw robots and, you know, see y'all later. It's that aftercare and, and how you linger and you make sure they're optimized, it's implemented well, and then you stick around for the second point. Therefore, that for continuous improvement opportunities, how can we not just implement.

[00:24:56] Scott W. Luton: You know, he, you know, and be done. But implement, build a relationship, grow as your business grows and, and conquer new things that helps you get the most outta the uh, uh, the investment. And then the other thing that he mentioned on the, some of the labor reporting, and we all know if we can't see it and we can't measure it, we certainly can't manage it.

[00:25:18] Scott W. Luton: And, you know, supply chain has come a long way. Global supply chain's come a long way in terms of the visibility. We still got a long way to go, but it seems like to me that Bryan and the team there at G10 has garnered more visibility, so they probably can get even more value and savings and, uh, capability out of the Zebra system.

[00:25:38] Scott W. Luton: Cody, your thoughts there, respond to that.

[00:25:41] Cody Upp: Yeah. So really three things. We have this kind of topic around commitment of success. We have this continuous improvement initiative, and then just advanced analytics and reporting. So I'll start from the top. Yep. Um, you have to put your money where your mouth is and I think, you know, Bryan can allude to some of the things that we've done to make contractual commitments.

[00:25:59] Cody Upp: Like it's one thing to be able to say that you're going to have a performance rate. It's another thing to put your money where your mouth is. And I think what that does is it provides the proper incentive structures. These incentive structures live within third party logistics and their contracts with their end users all the time.

[00:26:14] Cody Upp: Pain share, gain, share models. And for us, we really wanted to securitize the investment, and not only for G10, but for all of our clients because we have that much conviction behind the technology and the rates that we're gonna be able to achieve. The the second topic really around continuous improvement.

[00:26:30] Cody Upp: I have an unordinary goal, which is to sell as few amount of robots to G10 as I can, and the idea there is if I can continue to drive increased utilization and increased performance rates to G10 over time, through our roadmap, through key capabilities that we can discuss later on if necessary, what he can do is he can take that one investment and continue to sweat it.

[00:26:52] Cody Upp: Like with the way that I want Bryan and the G10 team to think about this investment. It's cost of capacity. I have this cost of capacity when I did it manually. I have this cost of capacity when I'm doing it with an automation solution. And if Cody and team can continue to drive utilization and drive performance, I can flatten out his growth curve.

[00:27:09] Cody Upp: He can grow as fast as he can, so long as my improvements follow in step, he can continue to use that same investment in the same number of AMRs that, that he and the team invested in, you know, uh, a handful of months back for many years to come.

[00:27:22] Scott W. Luton: Cody, I like that. And it does run to your point, counterintuitive, but clearly you're convicted with that and you're very passionate, uh, about that viewpoint, and I admire that.

[00:27:30] Scott W. Luton: Really quick aside, before I come back to Bryan and talk more about differentiation, uh, and some of the gains they've made here with this Cody, uh, as a entrepreneur, you given the background you shared earlier. It sounds like to me, I'll let you say it, not me, but it sounds like Zebra really embraces that entrepreneurial mindset, especially when it comes to in the Endless as old Lexus commercials.

[00:27:52] Scott W. Luton: You say the endless, the relentless pursuit of perfection. Remember those commercials back in the day? Is that part of the culture there at Zebra Cody?

[00:27:58] Cody Upp: Yeah, absolutely. You know, there's this, there's this relentless commitment to delivering on promises. There's a saying I, I have, which is we'll create immediate and lasting value in your business, right?

[00:28:09] Cody Upp: That is the promise. From day one and then throughout the term. Um, that is, that is the guarantee that we make and, and to the point that I made earlier, like, we are putting our money behind our mouth in that capacity.

[00:28:21] Scott W. Luton: I like it. I like it. Uh, you're talking in, in good southern business terms, Cody? Uh, it relates to me.

[00:28:27] Scott W. Luton: Uh, all right. So Bryan. Uh, another big picture theme here, based on everything you've shared about the G10 story and the march forward and, and all the success you're finding with Zebra and kind of just in general, how does this technology and this partnership allow you to continue to strategically differentiate G10 in a very.

[00:28:52] Scott W. Luton: There's no shortage of three pls out there, so really being able to differentiate yourself is really important. Speak to that here.

[00:28:59] Bryan Wright: Yeah, I mean, I, I believe embracing technology and being able to bring customers out to our facility and, and show 'em solutions like this is Zebra solution is, is a great way to get our customers comfortable.

[00:29:14] Bryan Wright: That, that we are always looking for better ways to. Improve our accuracy. Im improve our operations and all the kinds of things as well as improving cost to our customers. So as much as we can save ourselves labor, we can pass that directly onto our customers and, uh, be more competitive in the, uh, in the area of three pl and, uh, you know, just the innovation and the, and the future.

[00:29:41] Bryan Wright: Ideas that we have of how to use this product and be able to share that information. I think all of that, uh, puts us in a great position as well as being partnered with a company like Zebra. I mean, Zebra's been around a long time, worked with them on projects, you know, but before like this, it's always been successful.

[00:29:58] Bryan Wright: Big name in the market, you know, we know they're not going anywhere. Great to be at ownership with Zebra, and I think it's gonna go a long way in convincing our customers that we are on the right path.

[00:30:09] Scott W. Luton: Hmm. I love that. And Cody, I bet you'd love to hear that too, huh?

[00:30:13] Cody Upp: Yeah. You know, I think I have the privilege of working with third party logistics executives daily, and, you know, the, the ability to differentiate is, is really difficult.

[00:30:23] Cody Upp: Um, the value proposition that many position is, is largely the same across businesses. And so I, I, every time I meet someone, I pose a question. If you're using the same technology as everyone else, aren't you, definitionally, undifferentiated? And I think that that kind of hits at the heart of why a new entrant in the a MR space in the person's a good space was really necessary.

[00:30:46] Cody Upp: It was necessary so that we could unlock unfair advantages for these third party logistics providers, um, when they go out and bid on new projects and to have a really concrete understanding of what the performance rates are in the building so that they can build with confidence or they can, um, bid with confidence and attract new clients into their organization.

[00:31:05] Scott W. Luton: I love it. Bidding with confidence. Is there really any other way to bid? Uh, Cody, I love that perspective there. And really quick folks, you can go learn more about G10 fulfillment and the story that, um, in the organization Bryan is, is leading@gtenfulfillment.com. And you can also see when I said award-winning, you know, from workforce to leadership to fast growth.

[00:31:26] Scott W. Luton: The market, um, has looked kindly upon what y'all have been building there for quite some time. Bryan, what are some of the feedback you're getting, whether in general or the feedback that helps y'all refine future deployments and product development and new products for that matter? Cody, what are, what are you hearing?

[00:31:45] Cody Upp: Yeah, so I think a lot of our clients at this point have gotten a taste for what that utilization improvement actually means, their business. And so the next question is, what is the next dial that we're gonna turn to to kind of dump the fuel on the fire? How do we continue to drive that utilization improvement?

[00:31:59] Cody Upp: And there are really exciting roadmap items that set off of that 30% reduction that we initially had with the launch of our solution. That'll. That'll get us another 30% over the next 12 to 24 months. That's a really exciting outcome that we're, we're looking forward to delivering to our end users. The second is something that we've talked about, which is the extensibility folks like Bryan and, and many others are pushing us hard and fast into other workflows, into their building.

[00:32:24] Cody Upp: Um, it's the logical path. Like I think it, you know, if you really rationalize the ability to increase pick rates. It boils down to your ability to control replenishment, to control slotting, to control the decisions being made at the ow level. And then once you optimize there, you have, you've kind of increased the, the total potential for, for optimization across the building.

[00:32:44] Cody Upp: So that's, that's where our eyes are set. That's where everyone's pushing us. And that the last bit is really around analytics and I, I think I failed to mention kind of the labor reporting in my last comments. I'll touch on it here. Yeah. There's really interesting set of data points that come when you're used an autonomous mobile robot solution.

[00:33:00] Cody Upp: So, uh, you know, for example, Scott, like if you were to use an RF gun in a picking process, let's just say on average you're capturing, call it 10 to 15 data records, who picked it, what order they picked it for, when they picked it, what LPM they put it into, what was the card id, uh, what was the skew they picked?

[00:33:17] Cody Upp: You know, you're, you're maybe capturing again, 10 to 15 data points. When you process a line, when you process a pick using an A MR solution, the number of data records is a function of the telemetry. The robot data that we're capturing approaches a thousand data points for every line. Wow. The question we ask ourselves day in and day out is, how do we make meeting and how do we create value out of these data points?

[00:33:39] Cody Upp: And it's manifesting itself in a really, really great way. But what it does more than anything gives you a full picture of where all time is being spent. Versus, you know, I, I make a transaction on an RF gun, then I have a black hole until I make another transaction, and then I have another black hole until I make another transaction.

[00:33:56] Cody Upp: We have full visibility, full line of sight as to every moment in the day where operators and where AMRs are spending their time. And that's the starting point. You have to have that in order to be able to drive improvement.

[00:34:09] Scott W. Luton: Cody, um, good stuff. And you're talking Bryan's language is my hunch, uh, with a lot of what you just shared, but two things I wanna call out.

[00:34:17] Scott W. Luton: Going back to the first part of your response control, there are so many things out of our control, uh, at all times. It goes and it's inherent with. Global business and global supply chain, certainly, but especially in these VUCA times like we're going through now. So every opportunity, every lever that we can pull to regain some operational, some organizational control, or in our facilities, you name it, Hey, we're pulling those levers hard.

[00:34:41] Scott W. Luton: It's really important. And then secondly, the analytics. And the larger truckloads of data that clearly you and the Zebra team are delivering so that we can, we can convert that information and do something with it. Uh, it's a lot of good stuff there. Uh, Cody. Alright, so Bryan, as we navigate and start to come down to home stretch here today, you are talking about the future earlier.

[00:35:07] Scott W. Luton: Uh, so we're now we're gonna see if your crystal ball is working. Mine's been broken, as I mentioned, at least for about four or five years. So, but Bryan, when you think of the future and you think a little further out, maybe your long-term vision, how do you envision the role of automation continuing to evolve there at G10 over the next few years and?

[00:35:27] Scott W. Luton: What other areas out there do you see potential for further automation? Your thoughts, Bryan?

[00:35:33] Bryan Wright: Yeah, I, you know, we're, we're always looking at automation. We're always attending the big shows, Matt, the, you know, seeing what's out there. Uh, people come to the show with, with new ideas. So, you know, we go in with an open mind, um, and, and we'll, we'll look at things, but we.

[00:35:49] Bryan Wright: Won't necessarily jump, jump in on it until we are, you know, comfortable that it looks like it's the right solution. One of the reasons we kind of held out till we saw these Zebra robots out there, but you know, with all the data being gathered, like, uh, like Cody mentioned with the analytics and those types of things, there's certainly some AI side of the, uh, equation that we can look at and leverage.

[00:36:14] Bryan Wright: Even more robotics as we, uh, you know, see a lot of that at the shows. But, you know, for the future, the, the near term future, I think the ability for us to have been working with a lot of the Zebra engineers as we implement out here, and me being a more technical type person and asking very specific questions about some of the.

[00:36:36] Bryan Wright: Future ideas that we could implement together here. I think those things in the next 12 to 18 months are going to really be the major improvement for us here near future. But you know, down the road three, four years, I'm sure there'll be some automation again, I can't say what that'll be because it's probably gonna change significantly with, with AI and the computing capabilities that we have these days.

[00:37:03] Bryan Wright: But we are keeping our eyes open to see what, uh, becomes available.

[00:37:07] Scott W. Luton: Keeping the eyes open, but we're in shades 'cause the future is so bright. Rights. I think that's right. I think that was a, a great tune back in the eighties. And to your point, it's so true. You know, we, we talk all the time, Cody and Bryan, about the velocity, uh, and the growing velocity that, that global business, global supply chain's moving at, and certainly technology.

[00:37:25] Scott W. Luton: And gosh, it is tough to, to look out three to four years. Sometimes it's tough to look out three to four weeks, you know? But rest assured that there's anything that we can probably guarantee. Is the cool things we're doing today, whether it's Zebra or what G10's doing well, we're gettinG10 x that, uh, in the months and the years that come.

[00:37:43] Scott W. Luton: Right? So love and, and it's fueled by stories just like this one. Partnerships just like this one. Um, Cody, speak to that, uh, the future. Before we get on, we're gonna get you to offer some advice to all the folks out there in just a second, but speak to the future. Bryan was painting a pretty practically optimistic future, at least in, in between my ears.

[00:38:04] Scott W. Luton: How about you?

[00:38:05] Cody Upp: Yeah, I think your comment resonates really well with me. Like the rate of change has never been faster and it will never be slower again. And so it's the times that we're living in it, like if there was a time to live in it's, it's right now and it's incredibly exciting. Everything seems to be following Moore's Law, um, in terms of where Zebra Robotics moves next, we really start to look across the business.

[00:38:29] Cody Upp: Uh, so Zebra is a market leader and many, many things. Uh, but most recently within RFID and Machine Vision, and so there's this thread that we're sewing across the expansion businesses within Zebra Robotics, this umbrella called Intelligent Automation Solutions that we're really excited to pull really intelligent solution designs together across all three of those business units to drive outcomes across third party logistics.

[00:38:53] Scott W. Luton: Uh, outstanding. You're not sitting on laurels. Cody by no means sitting on laurels, huh? We didn't come here to, uh, take part, that's for sure. Oh, I love it, man. Bryan, this guy, uh, I love it. Cody, I really admire your passion and better yet how you're acting on it and the cool things you're doing out there, and it's not just me.

[00:39:12] Scott W. Luton: My hunch again is Cody, you're up for a conversation on any aspect of this story or other, other components of the solution there at Zebra. Is that right? Cody? Yeah, of course, of course. Come one, come all. Okay, so let's do this. Uh, Cody, uh, we're about the, we're gonna make sure folks know how to connect with you both.

[00:39:30] Scott W. Luton: Uh, we got some great resources we're gonna share here in a second. You can learn more about Cody and the team at zebra.com/fulfillment. So y'all check that out. But, but first, Cody, I bet you, I bet you and Bryan both could offer up some powerful advice. Parker could write that book we were talking about on the front end, but.

[00:39:51] Scott W. Luton: If you had to build a short list of advice of really been there, done that advice like you have been, that you'd offer up to other three pls considering a similar shift towards meaningful bottom line outcome producing automation with AMRs in their operations, what would that advice be? You know, we, we've

[00:40:10] Cody Upp: mentioned proma and modex a handful of times on this call, and if you look, if you're a three PL executive and you're walking that floor, there's no shortage of options that you could invest in.

[00:40:20] Cody Upp: And then there becomes kind of the practicality of the investment as it relates to the constraints within your business. And those constraints manifest themselves in a lot of different ways. They manifest them in, you know, the nature of the contracts and the term associated with the contracts that you have with your clients being as short as they are.

[00:40:36] Cody Upp: The variability across clients as it relates to order profiles, as it relates to product profiles, as it relates to distribution channel. And so really that breadth of, of options shrinks down to a pretty narrow select group of solutions. And if you were to categorize, if you were kind of find a common denominator across all those solutions, what you'll see, the, the automation solutions that are applicable to you as a three PL executive find this balance.

[00:41:02] Cody Upp: They strike this equilibrium between flexibility and productivity or flexibility and performance. And flexibility kind of comes into play in a couple of different ways, whether it's financial flexibility, whether it's capacity as a service, whether it's the ability to have, not a solution that's just a point solution, but a solution that can handle breadth of capabilities in the building.

[00:41:22] Cody Upp: These are things that you'll start to have to weigh in terms of more tactical guidance. What I would offer up is this ambition to get to a client level p and l. So very, very few, three pls that are multi-tenant, three pls. Can do appropriate cost attribution back to the client level. And so if you were to ask any operator, any executive, which of your clients in your building are profitable and which are not?

[00:41:47] Cody Upp: Uh, many, many would struggle to answer that question. Then even further, if you were to stack rig the profitability of each one of your clients on a revenue per square foot basis, what would that look like? And very, very few are able to articulate this. And so, you know, when you have business level conversations with executives around, why is my gm, why is my gross margin so low as a three PL executive, that's, that's where you have to start.

[00:42:07] Cody Upp: You know, you could be operating with clients that are unprofitable and you need to go have a conversation around the nature of that relationship. Uh, or you need to do something about it from an automation standpoint. And so it starts there like get a, get a firm grasp, or at least have ambition to get to a client level p and l statement, and then you'll have visibility as to where you should go and automate.

[00:42:26] Cody Upp: The third piece of advice is to match the capacity of your automation solution is closely to the demand of your building, the demand level of your building, because everything in between these two lines is waste. That's capacity that you're paying for, that you're not using. And so with the onset of autonomous mobile robots, the beauty of it was the modularity of the capacity.

[00:42:50] Cody Upp: So there is virtually zero need to overdesign the system. You know, there's the expression, supply chain. Don't build the church for Easter Sunday. And, and many times you've had to, you've, you've had to, because it's fixed infrastructure. It's fixed, fixed infrastructure. And what that means is you have to account for year over year over year growth.

[00:43:06] Cody Upp: The next three to five years or whatever the amortization schedule is on that capital initiative. You have to design the growth into that building where it becomes obsolete if you hit your growth plans. And so my. Big message is don't overdesign. Think about it as a cash flow statement. As I'm paying my vendor a dollar at the start of the month.

[00:43:25] Cody Upp: How many dollars are they giving me back in labor savings at the end of the month? And that's, uh, that's probably what I'll leave the, the audience here with.

[00:43:32] Scott W. Luton: See. Love it, man. I've got a bunch of Cody Upp-isms here today. Bryan. Is he always throwing these Cody Upp-isms at you when you're in person as well? I mean, these are really, uh, it really.

[00:43:44] Scott W. Luton: Helps you follow along and figure out what's most important. Is he always like this, Bryan?

[00:43:48] Bryan Wright: Yeah. Yeah. Cody's, Cody's great to talk to. He, uh, we, we share a lot of perspectives. We have, uh, great conversations. We challenge each other, um, and it's great. I, I love somebody who can and talk at a level and we challenge each other.

[00:44:04] Bryan Wright: Like I said, those are the conversations that I love the result in. Great ideas and Zebra across the board has been that way, um, throughout this project.

[00:44:13] Cody Upp: And if I may, Scott, like, I think one of the thing that's just so unique about G10 is you have an operations leader that is equal parts technical and like it is a very, very special combination to have someone like Bryan Wright co-leading this business because there's, there's the application of the technology, but then there's the domain understanding of how work gets done.

[00:44:32] Cody Upp: And it's, uh, it's a special recipe for success that I've been, um, again, privileged to just bear witness to.

[00:44:38] Scott W. Luton: And I bet Bryan, he, he, he referenced earlier, Cody, Bryan talked about some of the tough questions he can ask. I bet Bryan can ask some really tough pointed questions,

[00:44:47] Cody Upp: right. There's friction, makes fire is what I'll say.

[00:44:50] Cody Upp: There's, there's, there's always a healthy debate, but that's, that's how good outcomes are made, right? That's right. The pressure chamber is what produces the good outcomes.

[00:44:57] Scott W. Luton: That's right. And my hunch also is that you're up for all the tough questions, Cody and Zebra team. Okay. Cody, before I share these resources, you talked about waste.

[00:45:07] Scott W. Luton: Uh, you know, we gotta think about Muda in all of its forms, right, in all of its forms. Uh, and then secondly, kind of more of an overarching thing. Um, one of the themes I'm picking up here from you, Cody, 'cause there's so many, there's so many technologies and, and competitors and approaches out there. But never settle.

[00:45:25] Scott W. Luton: Never settle. If it's not delivering the return on investment, if it's not delivering the analytics and the visibility and capabilities. And if it can't scale with you, what are you doing? You're wasting time. So, uh, Cody, I kind of felt that in my bones as you are sharing your advice to folks out there. Uh, alright, so let's share some resources to, uh, the folks here.

[00:45:45] Scott W. Luton: And again, folks, reach out to Cody if you wanna learn more about anything we touched on here today. He is ready, ready, and willing, able to tackle your questions. So we're gonna share a couple resources from, from, uh, Cody and the team here, starting with this great resource here on automation. Your strategic advantage, unlocking profitability.

[00:46:05] Scott W. Luton: That's not a bad word. Profitability for third party fulfillment operations. So check that out. We're dropping links right here. A, we try to make it really easy. Easy is good these days, right? We got it right here. One click away. From where you are here. So check those out and let us know what you think. Um, okay.

[00:46:22] Scott W. Luton: Big thanks Cody and Bryan. What an outstanding story. I really appreciate the approach and the authenticity and the transparency that you, uh, told it with here today. And Cody, I, my hunch is before I make sure folks know how to connect with y'all, my hunch is if anyone wants to explore and test. Cody, your and Zebra's team, your laser focus on reducing those variable costs per unit for those end users, whether it comes to performance or utilization or the overall cost of the commercial structure.

[00:46:53] Scott W. Luton: My hunch is you're ready for that conversation wherever, whether it's at Pro Mat or anywhere else. Is that right, Cody?

[00:46:59] Cody Upp: Yeah, and I think, you know, our, our commitment is to only do projects that we can be successful in. And there's a, a tremendous amount of due diligence that happens on the front end of these to ensure that we're all aligned as to what good looks like and what great looks like.

[00:47:12] Cody Upp: And that's all part of the due diligence and simulation process. And so we're excited to learn more about your operations. But before I pass it back to Scott, I do wanna highlight G10. So any merchants here, take a serious look at, uh, G10 fulfillment. It is an incredibly well run. Respectful, trusted third party logistics provider in the space and highly, highly encourage you to reach out to Bryan and team.

[00:47:34] Scott W. Luton: Thank you, Cody. That's right. Whether you wanna talk, uh, three PL or if you wanna talk, uh, Michael Jordan, or if you wanna talk some really cool tunes and how to play a guitar and lead a band, all of that stuff. So Bryan and I play right? What's that? Bryan? Work hard, play hard. Work hard play. You got to, you got to.

[00:47:50] Scott W. Luton: So Bryan, let's, let's make sure we can make that easy as well. So Bryan Wright, CTO and COO of G. 10. Uh, G10 Fulfillment. Who's on the move? How can folks connect with you? Bryan?

[00:48:02] Bryan Wright: Uh, yeah. bryan@g10fulfillment.com. Uh, I am on LinkedIn. You catch me there. Um, and I, yeah, if anybody, uh, has any questions or wants to see anything, happy to a oblig.

[00:48:18] Scott W. Luton: Outstanding. And really quick, what is your, one of your favorite tunes that y'all cover, uh, that the Petty Thieves covers? What's one of your favorite cover tunes? Well,

[00:48:26] Bryan Wright: I'll go with the Tom Petty Tunes since that's kind of how the name came about. We'll do American Grill, I guess as always a oh I love it.

[00:48:32] Bryan Wright: Gets the crowd on the dance floor.

[00:48:34] Scott W. Luton: Gone too soon, man. Tom Petty was, uh, quite, quite, uh, a legendary artist. Yeah. Um, free, free fall and so many, so many tunes come to mind. Um, learning to fly perhaps one of my favorites. Yeah. But anyway, I digress. Uh, alright. So, Cody Upp with this truck full of Cody Upp-isms. How can folks track you and the Zebra team down?

[00:48:53] Cody Upp: Yeah. Uh, feel free to reach out to me at codyupp@zebra.com. Uh, we'll be sure to set up some time to, to learn more about your operations. Uh, you can also visit us at zebra.com/fulfillment. There's tons of great assets and information to learn more about everything we've discussed today, but, uh, conversations are best, so please feel free to reach out.

[00:49:15] Scott W. Luton: Conversations are best. So folks, check out zebra.com/fulfillment and also about G10, G10, the numeral G10 fulfillment.com. Check that out. And we're also dropping, uh, we're dropping resources. We're here to deliver resources. Folks, we're dropping Cody and Bryan and their LinkedIn profiles and URLs right there.

[00:49:35] Scott W. Luton: What an outstanding show here today. So big thanks. Uh, Bryan Wright with G10. Thanks for your time here today. Thank you Scott. You bet. Good Looking forward to having you back Cody Upp. Great to have you and the Zebra team with us here today. My pleasure, sir. What a great, great story here today and big thanks to all of our global audience for tuning in.

[00:49:55] Scott W. Luton: But you got homework. The on is on you to take one thing, just one thing. From today's conversation and put it into practice. Tell a friend, tell a colleague, do something with it. That's how we're gonna con keep transforming global supply chain and leave no one behind. So with all that said, on behalf of the whole Supply Chain Now, team Scott Luton challenge.

[00:50:13] Scott W. Luton: You do good, get forward, be the change that's needed. We'll see you next time. Right back here on Supply Chain Now. Thanks. Bye.

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