Why More Robots Don’t Always Fix Warehouse Performance

What if the real bottleneck in warehouse performance isn’t the tech, but the people, decisions, and systems needed to make it work together? Keith Moore says it plainly: software is easy, people are hard.

In this special Resilient Supply Chain roundtable, I’m joined by Mor Peretz, CEO of CaPow, Keith Moore, CEO of AutoScheduler, and Gonzalo Benedit, CRO of Aera Technology, to unpack what warehouse orchestration really means and why it matters now. For leaders focused on supply chain resilience, sustainability, risk, data, and visibility, this is a timely conversation about moving beyond isolated optimisation and getting the whole operation to work in sync.

You’ll hear how even well-equipped sites can still lose serious performance because the pieces don’t fit together properly, and why downtime can represent 10% at a really good site to 30 or 40% of the time just wasted. We break down why more automation is not always the answer, why companies so often become data rich but insight poor, and how orchestration can help teams act faster, not just see more.

You might be surprised to learn how often the real failure point is change management, not technology. We also get into energy as infrastructure, the cost of siloed decisions, and why the future is shifting from visibility to velocity. If you care about resilient operations, better decisions, and smarter growth, there’s a lot in here for you.

🎙️ Listen now to hear how CaPow, AutoScheduler, and Aera Technology are rethinking warehouse performance through orchestration, better data, and sharper decision-making.

 If disruption hit tomorrow, would you know where your supply chain was most exposed? In 15 minutes my free scorecard helps you assess 27 resilience statements, calculate your score, and turn the result into three priorities and a 30 day action plan. You can download the scorecard free at tomraftery.com/scorecard.

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Keith Moore: 0:04

Quite simply software is easy, people are hard. You can have the best technology in the world. The change management of rolling it out is everything. And and we still struggle right? We're in a bunch of major Fortune 50 organisations network-wide and there are still sites that haven't perfectly adopted the technology due to change management and how it's been rolled out.

Tom Raftery: 0:26

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. Welcome to episode 115 of the Resilient Supply Chain Podcast, and today we have a special edition round table in association with The Supply Chainer, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. What if the real constraint in warehouse performance isn't the software, the robots, or the infrastructure, but the people and processes needed to make them work together? In this round table with Mor Peretz of CaPow, Keith Moore of AutoScheduler and Gonzalo Benedit of Aero Technology, we get into the shift from optimising individual tools to orchestrating the whole operation in real time. And that matters because as Keith points out, downtime in a facility can account for anywhere from 10% at a really good site to 30 or 40% of time just wasted. If you are a senior leader in supply chain, operations, or industrial transformation, the big takeaway here is simple, better performance doesn't come from piling on more tech, it comes from getting decisions, systems and people aligned. And sidebar, if you haven't yet, sign up for Resilient Supply Chain+ to hear the first bonus episode, which went live on last March 27th on the topic of the war in Iran, its impact on global supply chains and why we need to reshore not just manufacturing, but also energy generation as well. New resilient supply Chain+ episodes available to subscribers only will drop every two weeks with timely, topical analysis of the events shaping global supply chains. Now let's get into it Mor, keith and Gonzalo, can you give me a quick 30 second intro of yourselves starting with Mor, and then we'll get into the conversation?

Mor Peretz: 2:34

Thank you Tom good to be here Hi guys so I'm Mor I'm the CEO of CaPow. In my background I'm a full professor of electronics focusing on hardware development primarily to the energy domain. Started CaPow a few years back with two of my PhD graduates. Now my co-founders Yeah that's about me

Tom Raftery: 2:52

Great and Keith

Keith Moore: 2:53

Sure So Keith Moore CEO of AutoScheduler based out of Austin Texas. We are focused on the topic of warehouse orchestration. So we built this unified control system to help plan out all of the work and how it flows through the facility. We help companies answer the question of what's going on right now, how well should the site be doing shift by shift day over day, and how close to optimal are they actually getting to that. And the third piece is when things change so people don't show up Trucks don't show up equipment breaks down, how do they dynamically adapt to make sure they're always doing the best they can and always performing to plan

Tom Raftery: 3:30

Nice and Gonzalo

Gonzalo Benedit: 3:32

Well thank you again Tom for having me So delighted to be here So Gonzalo Benedit I'm Chief Revenue Officer for Aera Technology I've been with the company for little bit more than six years now. And I'm experiencing a fascinating journey as we see the world evolving. Aera Technology is a platform that is there to enable the self-driving enterprise concept right. So helping them digitise, augment, and automate decisions at scale. So yeah exciting times

Tom Raftery: 4:00

And Gonzalo When people talk about warehouse optimisation today what would you say they're still defining too narrowly?

Gonzalo Benedit: 4:09

When I look at today's reality so on warehouse optimisation but even in the broader scope of a supply chain what we see very often is human dealings with a level of complexity scale and speeds that they are unable to handle right? So basically the way they look at the problem it requires a lot of manual coordination today this is actually leaving a lot of decisions out there right. So a lot of decisions in the table So what our view is that there is better way of addressing this. There is a better way of working by leveraging technology that would help you do this at scale. That would help you have a better understanding on the situation, on a risk or an opportunity, come up with a recommendation that would trigger an action. So not just again so give you visibility give you an alert but come up with a concrete recommendation. Take the action and learn from that. We strongly believe in a better symbiosis between humans and technology to address and to cope with today's reality in a warehouse in an overall supply chain.

Tom Raftery: 5:09

And let's go straight into the tension in this conversation here. You know are we improving the system or just getting better at coping with its flaws? Mor how often are warehouses optimising around charging constraints instead of moving them or removing them?

Mor Peretz: 5:26

That's a really hitting the nail on the head. Definition of productivity today is still not considering all the available possibilities I would say. I really love to quote Henry Ford that he said like if you ask people what they want they would say stronger horses, just because sometimes not everyone aware of all the possible availabilities that out there to increase the productivity. One thing I do realise and I do see quite often is that the operator's nightmare is to see a worker wait with a product in their hand waiting for a robot to come. This is something that we see more and more. The spread of how to identify that there is an issue, and then what are the options to solve the issue there is still a lot of work to be done in that perspective gathering the data and then doing something with it, instead of just putting bunch of more robots or like adding more resources to the fleet

Tom Raftery: 6:25

Okay and Keith where do most warehouses still lose performance even when the software stack looks solid?

Keith Moore: 6:32

So there's only two ways to improve performance in a warehouse. You either work faster or you work more intelligently. And and both of them are very viable right? And there's different tool sets that provide both of those capability sets. And so when when you say working with more intelligence or working smarter one of the things that I I think a lot of people missed is that throughout COVID right So COVID accelerated a massive amount of supply chain innovation. I think that's pretty well documented at this point. But in the warehouse what that meant was we went from people went to buy things in stores, and then that changed to where e-commerce and online shopping became much more prevalent. So the layout of warehouses, the pick flows of warehouses had to change dramatically quickly. And so warehouses today it used to be alright these orders came in you go pick those orders you put em on a truck and you go. But now for every order that comes in there might be four different pick flows that need to be managed and they need to be brought to the pack station at the same time which has limited capacity which then needs to be brought to the right dock at the right time. And so how we're actually sequencing the maneuvers through the facility. Mor mentioned there's downtime or people waiting on things like. That downtime in a facility represents at any facility, anywhere from 10 at a really good site to 30 or 40% of the time that is just wasted in that operation. And so that's it's a huge area where they have a good WMS they have a good YMS but they're still missing the boat on productivity because the pieces don't fit together perfectly

Tom Raftery: 8:03

And how much of that is data I mean what's Gonzalo what's the cost of having good data then and bad decisions?

Gonzalo Benedit: 8:11

Data in many ways is everything. You cannot leverage the latest technologies. You cannot leverage AI if you don't have the right data Right So that is fundamental not just to execute on the decision but also to learn from the decision. And without the right data you're never gonna gain the trust from the humans which at this with what we do that is fundamental. But at the same time what I'd say is often organisations fall under the impression that fixing data is not possible and they cannot do that. And actually I challenge that I believe today there is enough so many technologies out there that can help you address the data You're not gonna boil the ocean but you're gonna fix and address all the data that is required for you to make the right decision to execute as kids would saying so smartly and with and with speed. We have a lot of examples where systems and we talk about the complexity of a landscape in a large enterprise. So there's organisations out there that might have hundreds of different transactional systems and they need to come up with a harmonised view on that data to make the right decisions. Today you can address that. Today You can fix that. today you can have that harmonised homogeneous view of the data to make consistent decisions for your business whether you're in the US or you're in Australia. That's gonna be consistent That and that's again it takes some time it takes some work but technology is really helping you on that endeavor.

Keith Moore: 9:36

Gonzalo just said something I think a lot of people miss which is when you think about analytics and decision making, very often companies say well we need to go get all of our data, and we need we need to standardise our data before we do anything. And the piece that everybody misses and Gonzalo I'm gonna butcher what you said but you need to be able to map your data to the decisions that need to be made. And everybody seems to miss that process. And so they spend all this time building a data lake with a bunch of data in it that never gets used because it's not the data that informs the decision. So people that just start with data and don't actually map the data to decisions often then go back to the start two years later

Gonzalo Benedit: 10:17

I think that's a fascinating conversation. We have this customer right? They were telling us Hey, we spent I don't know how many years and and a lot of money millions and millions of dollars in moving from being data poor to becoming data rich. So all of a sudden we have all this data, we have access to all the data but actually we dunno what to do about this data. We have no insight. So I said okay we're gonna move from being data rich, we got to being data rich but now we move from being insight poor to insight rich. Again another set of tools on top of the data lake to say okay now we have all the insights. We have the predictive analytics Now we know what's what the problem is now we have the alerts but we're action poor. What do we do with these insights? This is again today technologies like Aera can help you take action on the data again moving from action poor to action rich. Ultimately that's what generate the outcomes is being able to take the action

Tom Raftery: 11:14

Yeah and

Mor Peretz: 11:15

Can I please dive in one one layer deeper in in that? We talk about like accessibility to data or basically accessibility to productivity enabled features. What I see like one of the resisting paths is that we we we need to explain better at what cost. How much headache this transformation is gonna add to my organisation. If you talk about data, asking the right questions it takes an effort to organise that thought. Speaking of what we're doing in CaPow like we worked extremely hard to make it effortless to integrate this power in motion productivity enhancement solution to cut down the time that robots spend away from the route that creates value to the facility. And and really one one of the more critical points that we've been asked is would I stop the process when I integrate it as a retrofit? How much toll it would embed on the organisation changing the shift in this type of operation Like whether it's an hardware adjustment, hybrid hardware software or just pure software, it's still a mind shift that that you need to do. One of the primary things that we need to at least aim to is being of course platform agnostic and with seamless integration as possible changing or having minimal to no changes of how the operator runs their processes at least from from a training perspective. Then the evolution towards the productivity enhancement is seamless rather than takes a a significant effort in boost training because this is something that we see more and more of like being being a roadblock, not penetrating or or or even not willing to look at the data or look at at another possibility to enhance an option or get an enhancement option, just because it would take a lot of toll on the engineering guys on the product guys on operation guys, and that can be a major setback. One one of the critical points is to influence on seamless operation, with seamless operation, seamless integration being fully agnostic to the platform, installation, or or facility

Tom Raftery: 13:19

Okay and Mor what's the bigger mistake today for the likes of seamless integration? Is it adding more automation or failing to orchestrate what's already there?

Mor Peretz: 13:30

I would say a little bit of both with tendency of just boosting like dumping more equipment on the same problem. When a facility gets more and more pick events and they're getting stressed out And the pick to average ratio becoming more and more hurtful, like if it comes on like on a daily basis from two to 4:00 PM every day then the organisation started get stressed. Sometimes this creates not the the most rational decisions And you know most of them would be just to dump more more resources not necessarily getting really the optimisation you you really need but getting the bottom line at what cost At cost of more complexity, more maintenance fees, more operational headaches. That's what we're here for to change it.

Tom Raftery: 14:15

Okay And Keith what's your take more automation, or more orchestration?

Keith Moore: 14:19

Depends. Yeah You know my company would would have me obviously say orchestration's always the right answer but in some cases It is more automation right? What are you looking for as a facility? Orchestration gives you capacity to a degree but It is only to the degree at which you can produce work with the actors. And I say actors because it's people and robotics in different process right? The actors that are available inside of any node of the supply chain that you're trying to optimise. And once you hit peak capacity and really peak capacity can be measured by the utilisation of those people towards gainful work, productive work in the operation. So picks towards customers, put aways of product, things that are meaningful. You're running a really good site if you're at 85 to 95% for all of your assets all of the time. Almost nobody is there because we inherently have a unique problem in warehousing and supply chain, warehousing specifically because you have eight to 12 hour shifts and orders don't come perfectly in eight to 12 hour shifts, right? How the supply chain operates and how consumer demand works is still a great mystery in the ether. And that that's a joke right? It's just a a forecasting joke for those that appreciate them. So for a warehouse you still have to employ people for 40 to 50 hours a week. so when you're getting 85 to 95% utilisation of those people then it is you need to add robotics or you need to add automation, if you need to add capacity, or more people, to grow the operation.

Tom Raftery: 15:48

Okay Gonzalo?

Gonzalo Benedit: 15:50

We see a massive opportunity for organisations to have more orchestration but also drive more automation. Starting on the automation side Tom what we see is again, today you are able to look at the level of frequency and granularity that was probably not possible in the past. And so that allows you to move a lot faster. Taking the example of one of our customers they were saying well today we process we accept millions of decisions, recommendations, actions, many related to warehouse management. So to inventory related decisions. So that's more than 2 million per year. And what they're saying is 90% of those decisions were not looked up in the past. So nobody was taking care of these decisions And why? Because they didn't have the data on time, because the business was moving too fast. Now they can take care of that but then you don't need humans. You just need humans to supervise that, not to go all the way. So we call that concept as humans on the loop, not in the loop. So they're supervising, they're guiding the machine to make the right decisions but in some cases it's humans out of the loop. Now on the orchestration there is massive room for companies to drive more automation in the repetitive decision and actions that need to be taken every minute, every second, every every hour. On the orchestration side what I'd say is too often what we see is organisations continue to operate in silos. Silos that are not truly connected with each other right? So they don't speak the same language. They have different priorities that look similar but they're not the same. And so how do you make sure that you are able to break through the silos so that whatever you end up taking as an action is the right action for the broader interest of that company, for a certain customer that is a strategic customer of yours. This is where orchestration is key. And again today there's massive opportunity for companies to do to do a lot more of that We have a number of examples. So there's this pharma company using our technology to support the clinical trial process. Well, there was a gap in the silos between the team that was expected to receive the medication for the patient, and the team that was doing the shipment of the medication from the center. Through technology they were able to identify a risk and they expedited the shipment so that the patient was able to receive that drug on time. It was critical. It was like the patient was waiting for that drug on that day. It was like not like it was a nice to have So again this is where I think technology can truly help orchestrate and ultimately allow to be a lot more successful

Tom Raftery: 18:58

Okay And Keith what does warehouse orchestration do that a WMS on its own can't?

Keith Moore: 19:05

So WMSs they've been around for a long time. The underlying technology hasn't changed dramatically and and the reason why is we run a critical operation right? 10% of us GDP basically stops if warehouses stop working. That's what supply chain is. And if it doesn't make it through the warehouse, your whole supply chain shuts down. So it is mission critical operations. You have to be running it full tilt all the time. And so by nature WMSs are really good at two things. They're really good at inventory management. They are the ground truth data layer for every warehouse. So it tells you where everything is with ideally 99% plus inventory accuracy. And the second thing that it does is it integrates with the tooling on the floor. So the scanners your your forklift operators are using. And it enables for task management. So when I scan a pallet it says I need to bring this to staging bay 42 because it's loading out to Walmart there. So it kind of informs me of how to do actions without having to drive back to a desk but it doesn't do broad based sequencing to understand that the pick I'm making right now is a full pallet pick. There are seven other work queues so work streams, that are not full pallet pick that are associated with orders on that particular truck. I need to make sure that I have all of those happening at the exact same time because I have 14 doors in my operation and 42 orders that I need to work today. So I need to be able to turn this door without spending a bunch of time getting things to staging. So that by itself is a complex mathematics problem to figure out how to do all of that work optimally in a finite period of time to manage my resources effectively. And so that's where there's a gap in the market today. And just that level of mathematics and analytics doesn't exist in WMS which is really good at data management as well as the tasking. And so that's where orchestration fits into layer on top provide an additional layer of data from other systems that aren't the WMS and think through the whole picture of what needs to happen.

Tom Raftery: 21:04

Okay, and Mor?

Mor Peretz: 21:05

Can I add a little bit on that? When we just created the Kapow as a product, we set up on top of the hardware some kind of a governing software primarily for support you know that will have cloud control management ticketing system. We start gathering data on the robots and their energy status and their location status along the route, and how they interact with energy along there And really starting to get information of how the WMS behaves or lack in indicating higher level of complexity tasks. The WMS as Keith mentioned is the ground level. It manages the floor. It sends the robots from point A to point B basically but there is much more to it. as Gonzalo said component sensitive operation and other tasks that can really optimise the routes that each and every robot take in each and every task are critical that most WMS systems don't consider. I'm saying most because I'm I'm not sure if if or careful not to say all but we really see that. So with the additional layers that we can provide like either with our system as an API any other additional data manipulation benefits it becomes a really productivity enhancer. I can also like say that we with even some customers that already came back to us and say we really cut down the production losses in the facility like from material perspective because less material is actually being deteriorated because the the robots are executing the routes faster. For time sensitive applications the production line pauses less often and other layers that are not visible with the conventional WMS system and really with small additions or even just different perspective on the data can add a great benefit which translates millions of of dollars on a daily basis right?

Tom Raftery: 22:54

So would you say that energy now is infrastructure or part of the orchestration layer?

Mor Peretz: 23:01

So we would like to consider energy as an infrastructure. That's how we view it. If we treat energy as an infrastructure all the time we would eliminate many problems that are then to come when you need to fix a problem then resolve it in advance. We at least in CaPow look look at energy as an an infrastructure more and more

Tom Raftery: 23:22

And I'm curious Mor what changes operationally when charging stops stop being a scheduled interruption.

Mor Peretz: 23:31

We we can talk about the e evident benefits Like you can get rid of the the chargers and get more area and expensive real estate because the most of the time chargers are located in close proximity to really expensive real estate in in the warehouse. More than that the primary effects that we identified is that even the the routes or the circulation, or the tasks are getting shorter. It's not only that we're cutting down the time that the robot spends on a charger but now it spends less time in queue because the management software now can adapt better. And there would be less waiting times even for the robots that are doing their same route. We have an example that robots were queuing up for like 60 seconds each time that they're doing a cycle. It was able to cut down to 15 seconds. One five. Four or five times shorter spending time in the queue and actually working. We really see benefits of those nature more and more apparent as we eliminate energy from being a bottleneck as a concept. Downtime is one factor of it which is the most obvious But it's not only that it's the actual routes that the robot naturally take, it's the managing between several robots interacting that is become much more seamless and and and flowing that these are the really moneymaking benefits that are on top of that like getting this bulk 30%, 40%, downtime effect.

Tom Raftery: 24:57

Right, so the robots don't have to stop for a cigarette break every half an hour or whatever

Mor Peretz: 25:02

Exactly Yeah

Tom Raftery: 25:04

Gonzalo where have you seen decision orchestration then deliver measurable value fastest?

Gonzalo Benedit: 25:12

Companies are looking at decision intelligence in a different way. Back like a number of years ago it was okay I would want to deploy this kind of approach, this type of technology to address a particular need in my business whether it's around again warehouse management, inventory management, logistics whatever it is. But now that has evolved to a reality where companies are leveraging this approach and this technology to in many ways redefine the way work is done. So they have a broader ambition and they look at this as okay what if we deploy if we deploy decision intelligence across the board again to break through the silos to gain velocity, to be a lot more intelligent. And this comes from almost a board mandate to say okay let's redefine how we operate because we believe there is a massive opportunity. When that happens when the journey starts like that and when for us our customers right So they themselves embrace the technology and actually trained and so embrace the self-service nature of the technology, this is when you see acceleration, because it makes sense because it's not yet another piece of technology that is somebody's dropping or yet another project here or there. This is part of the journey moving forward for the organisation but it's it's really important that they look at this in this way. The beauty in in our model is the fact that every single recommendation the platform makes, the decision or or a company and some ends up making is associated to a value impact So it's not about improving your process, it's not about providing analytics, it's about impacting the top or bottom line. It's how do I get better. And every single individual decision is measured, is tangible. Some might be wrong some might not be the best possible decision but you're gonna be able to measure and very importantly you're gonna be able to learn. So I'd say bigger vision, people that are embrace the technology get trained on it and and move fast in trying new things

Tom Raftery: 27:15

And if we start talking about lessons learned, what didn't work, what leaders still get wrong, Keith what turned out to be harder than expected You know moving from optimisation theory to orchestration in practice?

Keith Moore: 27:27

Quite simply software is easy, people are hard. You can have the best technology in the world. The change management of rolling it out is everything. And and we still struggle right? We're in a bunch of major Fortune 50 organisations network-wide and there are still sites that haven't perfectly adopted the technology due to change management and how it's been rolled out. Making sure you have a really good strategy not just for what you want them to do in an ideal state but also the people that work in facilities. So I'm gonna say plants or warehouses are really smart people. They're really capable of doing the job. That's why the facility is managed to run. And so when you go in and say Hey I've got this technology that can hopefully help you do your job a little bit more effectively You have to be very careful not to say this is gonna replace you because that's not really the intent. These are the most valuable people in the operation. Hopefully it frees up 95% of their time in an automated way as Gonzalo kind of was mentioning so that they can go do more value added activities for the facility. And so that change management piece is so critical to get right and you have to do it multiple times at different levels with different personas, working with a site manager is very different than working with somebody who's a warehouse coordinator on the floor and getting that right also takes iteration to make sure that you can do it effectively.

Tom Raftery: 28:47

Mor or Gonzalo do you wanna jump in on that one?

Mor Peretz: 28:50

I absolutely agree. One of the the major trusts would be when the C-suite like the CROs the COOs and such would have access to the impact that this type of productivity enhancements can provide. So we can work both ways bottom up and top down. When dealing with enterprises or penetration with enterprises with new technology, typically the way it is done especially for new companies it is that you work bottom up. And then the journey is tedious that's how it is. That's the startup world and that's the entrepreneurship the pleasure of being an entrepreneur but yeah getting more visibility to the guys who are really seeing the revenue not even the bottom line the top line I would say that the access and they would see the impact that it can add to their organisation and to their top line value would add a great deal when we're talking about productivity in general and especially optimisation of their facility. you know the saying say if it ain't broke don't fix it But the problem is that it's not broken It deteriorates and like it's like one small thing another after the other And then only when you look it in perspective you see the the big difference that you can do. The enabler would be to link between those more efficiently from the guys who work the floors and from the guys who see the actual big picture for the revenue and really show the benefit for both

Tom Raftery: 30:16

And if we look ahead a little Gonzalo what does decision orchestration look like three to five years from now that still sounds ambitious today?

Gonzalo Benedit: 30:27

What we see is that what's happening today and I think this is only gonna accelerate there's a shift from visibility to velocity right? So we still today have a lot of problems around control tower and getting more visibility, more analytics. What's gonna change now is the ability to compress that time between the disruption and the corrective action. So if something happens something is happening every day. It's no longer the COVID or or the Suez Canal, now every day something is happening. So it's more about okay how do you build in that agility and that again velocity to react in the right way to a certain disruption that you know it's gonna happen. So I think that shift will continue to happen and will only accelerate. So companies need to, in a way we're again helping them in in embracing that. Secondly is we look at this obviously we have our own decision lens but it's like the value chain is becoming almost a decision network. And again how do you going back to the silo conversation how to break through the silos and actually design, so come up with a more cross-functional design of the decisions. And again not look at okay I need to optimise my logistics cost or I need to optimise my inventory days. It's like I need to improve the service to my customers. And what does that mean in terms of who's making the decision to optimise which metric and how do I monitor this? How do I make sure that finance and supply chain speak with each other? That the pricing strategy is in proper alignment between sale or the promotions right. That's a good example right? So that I'm not spending promotion money in things that I don't have that I'm not overproducing. So all these things that cross-functional design to me is gonna be critical. Lastly Tom I'd say it's in this world of agentic, so now more and more we're seeing agents evolving from being assistants to being actors. What does that mean to us? How do we? We support companies enabling the self-driving enterprise. What does that actually mean? How do you set the guardrails? How do you define a governance? How do you make sure you are able to trust that? We didn't talk much about this but to me trust is a critical element also when it comes to adoption. I strongly believe in what I think it was you Keith saying earlier on, are we're super lucky because we work with super smart people every day. These people are like have such such great experience and how do we learn from that, but also listen to them and how do we come up with solutions that will again they feel like okay this is the right solution for my business, for my role. So that combination of humans and agents working together being able to trust technology to make the right decisions to make the right take the right actions for my business I think that will require quite some work in the coming years.

Tom Raftery: 33:12

Nice. I'd like to try now doing a quick lightning round where I ask you two questions each and it's one sentence answers. Y'all up for that?

Keith Moore: 33:27

Let's do it

Gonzalo Benedit: 33:28

See how it it goes

Tom Raftery: 33:30

Okay Mor you first So first question better batteries or less charging?

Mor Peretz: 33:40

Definitely less charging no batteries.

Tom Raftery: 33:43

no batteries

Mor Peretz: 33:44

Eliminate them altogether especially in in warehouse operations, close compounds. Definitely no need for batteries

Tom Raftery: 33:51

Okay, and what's the bigger waste, idle robots or idle floor space?

Mor Peretz: 33:56

Short term robots, long-term floor space.

Tom Raftery: 34:00

Okay Very good Keith, more robots or smarter flow?

Keith Moore: 34:05

Smarter flow before you consider more robots.

Tom Raftery: 34:10

Okay And what breaks first in a badly run warehouse?

Keith Moore: 34:14

The people

Tom Raftery: 34:18

Very good Gonzalo faster decisions or better decisions?

Gonzalo Benedit: 34:22

Faster decisions

Tom Raftery: 34:25

And what should no executive still be deciding manually?

Gonzalo Benedit: 34:29

Decisions that could be made by a machine by technology

Tom Raftery: 34:35

Okay Short and sweet Love it Good now we're wrapping up at this point We're coming towards the end but for each of you, a final question, if listeners should take one thing away from this round table should they start thinking of warehouse performance less as automation and more as system orchestration, for example? Maybe Mor you go first

Mor Peretz: 34:58

if it was like a one-liner I would say downtime is a choice and we have to stop stopping

Tom Raftery: 35:05

Okay Very good Keith

Keith Moore: 35:07

We have put ourselves in a position where system orchestration drives far more value than anything else inside of your operations and your broader supply chain to the top and bottom line

Tom Raftery: 35:22

Okay lovely Gonzalo?

Gonzalo Benedit: 35:24

I believe in a concept that yeah many of our customers are now talking about which is grow without growing. To me today there is an opportunity for organisations to achieve a lot more with available technology just by looking at a problem in a different way, just by redefining the way work gets done.

Tom Raftery: 35:45

Okay fantastic We're coming towards the end now folks if people would like to know more about yourselves or any of the things we discussed on this round table today where would you have me direct them? Mor, you wanna go first?

Mor Peretz: 35:59

Visit our website CaPow dot Energy and also my LinkedIn profile Mor Peretz at LinkedIn

Tom Raftery: 36:05

Okay great Keith?

Keith Moore: 36:07

Same answer, except with a different website and a different LinkedIn. So AutoScheduler dot Ai we have a great team that would happily help anybody with any questions. We have a lot of good resources there. Or if there's something that I said that really triggered a response and and you want to chat with me add me on LinkedIn and I'm happy to chat if you can't tell I'm very passionate about the topic of warehouse orchestration, and AI

Tom Raftery: 36:30

Okay great Gonzalo

Gonzalo Benedit: 36:32

Yeah, I would be delighted to share more about what we're doing and so what our technologies is able to unlock. You can reach out to us just going through our website so Aera Technology.com. Myself Gonzalo Benedit you'll find me on LinkedIn. Otherwise Gonzalo dot benedit@aeratechnology.com so feel free to reach out directly

Tom Raftery: 36:52

Perfect Great gents That's been really interesting Thanks a million for coming on the Roundtable today.

Keith Moore: 36:58

Thanks for having us.

Mor Peretz: 36:58

Thank you very much

Gonzalo Benedit: 36:59

Thank you Tom

Tom Raftery: 37:00

Okay. Thanks everyone for listening to this episode of the Resilient Supply Chain Podcast with me, Tom Raftery. Every week, thousands of senior supply chain and sustainability leaders tune in to learn what's next in resilience, innovation, and transformation. If your organisation wants to reach this influential global audience, the people shaping the future of supply chains, consider partnering with the show. Sponsorship isn't just brand visibility, it's thought leadership, credibility, and direct engagement with the decision makers driving change. To explore how we can spotlight your story or your solutions, connect with me on LinkedIn or drop me an email at Tom at tom Raftery dot com. Let's collaborate to build smarter, more resilient, more sustainable supply chains together. Thanks for tuning in, and I'll catch you all in the next episode.