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Hear from Vince Martinelli of RightHand Robotics about his career journey, from coffeeshop management to startups and warehouse robotics. hbspt.cta.load(192657, 'ee6f69de-cfd0-4b78-8310-8bdf983bdcc9', {});   Danny: - Hello and welcome to the IndustrialSage Executive Series. I'm joined by Vince Martinelli who is the head of product and marketing for RightHand Robotics. Vince, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series. Vince: - Yes, thank you Danny. Nice to talk to you. Danny: - Well I'm excited to jump into this conversation. I don't think that we've had you on the show before. I know that we were talking about it a little bit before how I think we did a quick interview at MODEX in 2020, and I think you guys were part of that. That was fantastic. But first time on the Executive Series, so we're excited. Vince: - Yes, thank you. Danny: - Before we jump into learning about you which is one of my favorite parts, if you could give me just a high-level on RightHand Robotics, who you guys are, what you guys do. Vince: - Yeah, so RightHand Robotics builds what we call a data-driven, intelligent picking platform for predictable order fulfillment. Now let me break that down just a little simpler, everyday language. Simply, it's a configurable autonomous picking machine, and it can move individual products in a warehouse such as from an inventory tote. It might be coming from an ASRS-type system like AutoStore into an outbound order or a box. At that junction between the inventory storage system and picking the products flowing out of the building, the robot can move items. One thing that's cool about that is an ecomm facility may have 50,000, 100,000, a million different products. Enabling a robot to pick and handle all those different things reliably is the secret sauce of what we do. Danny: - Wow, that's awesome. It's fantastic and super needed, obviously right now with ecomm growing exponentially, solving the big labor challenges, all kinds of stuff that I'm sure we're going to get into. But before we do that, I want to—this is the part of the show where we get to learn more about you, and really this is one of my favorite parts. Tell me, how did you start your career journey? How did you get into this space? Were you always in robotics, in product or marketing? Tell me how things started. Vince: - Yeah, so coming out of college, my background's in materials science, really semiconductor physics and so on. I got out of MIT, and I go into a semiconductor industry for different things. I learned a lot about designing of complex processor systems. Flash-forward another, I don't know, key moment years later—well first off, I switched from R&D side of the world to business side and product and sales and some marketing and all these things when I joined Corning and got into the fiber optics business. Again, my interest there was more about the material science of the glass and how you make these things, and it was all cool. To cross over and work there, I kind of grudgingly took a job on the business side. Danny: - Oh, you went to the dark side. Vince: - Yeah, on the dark side, exactly. That's the phrase. Found out I really liked it because there's a part of communicating to people how that technology works and what you can do with it that I found I had some ability to take these complex things, talk to the PhD guys in the research lab, translate it into ideas and things that customers could gravitate to. There I worked on new products, so one thing that's been consistent throughout my whole career is I'm always working on new products. While fiber optics was used for telecomm,

Mike Willoughby of PFS discusses his winding tech career, and how he's seen the ecommerce market evolve since even before the internet. hbspt.cta.load(192657, 'ee6f69de-cfd0-4b78-8310-8bdf983bdcc9', {});   Danny: - Well hello, and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I'm joined by Mike Willoughby who is the CEO of PFS. Mike, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series. Mike: - Oh, it's my pleasure Danny. Thanks for having me on. Danny: - Well I am excited to jump into today's episode. So you're coming in from Dallas, Texas, and for those who are unfamiliar with the weather going on right now, we were talking about beforehand, you've actually got snow going on there. Mike: - We do. It's unusual. Texas is not known for having a lot of snow events, but this is our second this year. We were actually talking earlier about the one we had last year, so we're definitely not getting a repeat of that, thank goodness. Nobody wants to spend a week with spotty power and the kind of freeze that we had a year ago. So just some nice, pleasant snowflakes going on outside my window. Danny: - That sounds nice, not like what you guys had last year. So glad it's— Mike: - Definitely not. Danny: - And like we were talking about here, it's crazy because it's 70-something degrees over here. Whatever you got's coming over here, so we'll see what happens. - Have fun with that. Danny: - Thank you. Alright, for those who aren't familiar with PFS, what do you guys do? Mike: - Well, so PFS provides order fulfillment services, to put it simply. We provide for our clients a premium order fulfillment solution, so if you think about brands that care a lot about their unboxing experience, what it really means to get, say, a Chanel health and beauty product or a high-end luxury jewelry item, you're probably not expecting that to come in just a plain brown box with a bunch of air pillows around it. You're probably expecting that it's got some boutique-caliber experience. We do that for our clients. It's a very non-Amazon kind of experience where you would equate that with, if you were going to a boutique and you were going to shop that boutique, you're going to carry that package out. You're probably spending a decent amount for the product itself, and the experience that you're going to have when you actually receive that product yourself if you're shopping in the store, you want to have as much of that as possible if you're going to receive that package on your front door delivered by a courier. We provide a fulfillment experience across both the way that we manage the order as it comes into our systems, the way that we process payments, ultimately the way that we take the product out of our fulfillment centers, package it appropriately for each brand that we support, and then tender it to a carrier to get it to your doorstep and then provide the customer service that goes along with that, if you have a question about your product. And we want to do that in a way that reflects the brand, that we are not in the way of that at all. You're never going to see the words PFS on any kind of packaging, on an invoice, your interaction with a customer service agent. Our intention is to be on-brand and reflect the brand that we've been entrusted to support. So that's what we do. Danny: - Excellent, very cool. So yeah, very different than a traditional Amazon experience where the experience is the big piece of value, right? Mike: - Right. Well, you know with Amazon it's all about efficiency, and they do an amazing job of creating an efficient tra...

Chad Zollman of TGW Logistics shares major milestones of his career, and the challenge of making business decisions as markets regularly shift.   hbspt.cta.load(192657, 'ee6f69de-cfd0-4b78-8310-8bdf983bdcc9', {});   Danny: - Well hello, and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I am joined by Chad Zollman who is the chief sales officer at TGW Logistics. Chad, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series. Chad: - Thank you, appreciate it. Danny: - I am excited to get into our conversation. So we were just talking before; you are in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and it's very warm up there right now. Chad: - Yes, absolutely. It's swimsuit weather for sure. Danny: - Excellent. Before we get into the first part which I love is getting into learning more about you personally, but for those who aren't familiar with TGW, can you give me a little high-level of who you guys are and what you do? Chad: - Sure, so TGW is a global systems integrator for our customers. We focus on our core industries which would be fashion and apparel, grocery, and industrial and consumer goods. We actually design, implement, maintain highly automated fulfillment centers inside for various customers in various regions. And that's not only in North America; like I said, we're global. So what's unique from a TGW standpoint, I think is we have manufacturing that sits in Austria and Germany, so we have, on top of your traditional conveyor, your automated storage and retrieval systems that we manufacture, we also have a robotics company as well. Palletizing, depalletizing, automated picking solutions, et cetera, all within our realm and sphere that we offer to our customers. Danny: - Excellent, well it sounds like quite a nice footprint. So the manufacturing and the integration side, you bring engineered solutions, bringing all that together. Chad: - That's right. Danny: - Excellent. We'll get more into that because I think there's a little bit of interesting stuff going on with supply chain right now, and as we get into fulfillment and ecomm and retail and all these things. I'm suspecting you've been affected by this a little bit. I'm being a little facetious, obviously. Chad: - Right. Danny: - Let's jump into you a little bit here. How did you start your journey? How did you get into this space? Chad: - Clearly through my college courses because I have an economics degree, but actually I came in through a family friend. He got me into the automotive supply chain area, so it was in the 3PL industry. I actually started in one of the initial lead logistics operations for General Motors in working for Ryder. That was more transportation-based, so really optimized transportation design and execution. Then that particular solution morphed into just-in-time delivery, and that's where the warehousing portion came in. Really started working on, from a design perspective, warehouse layouts and effective solutions for just-in-time delivery, and then made my way through the 3PL industry. I worked for another organization, CEVA, for about 19 years or almost 20 years in various capacities, but eventually that led me to where I am today with TGW because the more the supply chain industry evolved, while the 3PLs were providing excellent solutions and there's a lot of benefit to operations excellence and lean practices, we had more and more customers asking for ways to reduce their headcount, so really looking into automation. And the more my team kept working on solutions for these large customers, the more we saw the need, the want,

Tim Vargo returns with Stryten Energy to discuss the interwoven world of automation, infrastructure, domestic manufacturing, and the evolving energy industry. hbspt.cta.load(192657, 'ee6f69de-cfd0-4b78-8310-8bdf983bdcc9', {});   Danny: - Well hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I am joined by Mr. Tim Vargo who is the CEO of Stryten Energy. Tim, thank you so much for joining me on the Executive Series. - Great to see you again, Danny. Danny: - Well I'm excited to jump into this. For those who aren't familiar with Stryten Energy, tell me a little bit about who you guys are, what you do. Tim: - Sure, happy to do so. So Stryten Energy is a company that has 13 different manufacturing plants in North America, in the United States, over 2 million square feet. We supply a variety of energy storage needs across several different platforms. So we have multiple chemistries solving multiple problems, and really excited about our future given all the challenges we're having with energy storage today. Danny: - There are certainly a lot of challenges. Tim: - That's for sure. Danny: - I think you guys have a lot of work cut out for you, but a lot of great opportunities. Let's talk a little bit about—we can go into a little bit of the pandemic. What I think is interesting is just hearing from companies about how things have really altered that future for you. Some, it's completely changed it. Some, we're still the same. What was that effect for Stryten? Tim: - Our company is one of the essential manufacturing companies in the infrastructure of our company for both the military and stored energy. Our plants never closed. Our plants were open every single day from the beginning of the pandemic until now. We've had virtually no lost work days from a plant perspective. The demand for our products has been exceptional across the board in every segment that we serve. Our challenges have been, through the pandemic, two-fold. We all had to learn to work from home. That turned out to be a lot easier, I think, than everybody thought. Frankly, it's a little harder to get people back to the office now because everybody likes to work from home, me included. I think we're all sensitive, though, to the need to make sure that we're continuing to build the team. Communications are always a little better in person than they are just, how many Zoom calls can you do in a day? Danny: - Exactly, yeah. Tim: - Having said that, our other challenge is just getting a workforce that is robust enough to handle the demand for our products. Like all manufacturers around North America that I'm aware of, we're all short-staffed. We could probably all make more products if we had the employees to staff all the shifts and all the machines that we have. All of us are accelerating our plans to automate certain functions in the plant, so it's not an automation play that's designed to reduce the number of people we have, but I think we've all recognized we're probably not going to get too many more people. Yet our demand is very robust, so we've got to figure out a way how to automate and use the people that we have to make more products. So that's pretty exciting stuff in addition to the products that we're making have huge demand and a really, really bright future. Danny: - Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about the bright future, too. One of the things is that, this whole idea of going with net-zero carbon emissions by 2035. What is Stryten's role in that and your stance on it? Tim: - Sure. I'm going to focus just on the United States.

Florian Pestoni of InOrbit discusses the challenges of creating company culture, scaling robotics companies, and adopting industry automation. hbspt.cta.load(192657, 'ee6f69de-cfd0-4b78-8310-8bdf983bdcc9', {});   Danny: - Well hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I am joined by Florian Pestoni who is the CEO and cofounder of InOrbit. Florian, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series. Florian: - Yeah, Danny, thanks for having me. Danny: - I'm excited to get into your story. So for those who aren't familiar with InOrbit, if you could give me a little high-level, who you guys are and what you do. Florian: - Yeah, we're a data platform for robot operations. So essentially when you roll out autonomous robots or smart robots into the world, you still need to keep track of them. You still need to manage them. So we provide the infrastructure in the cloud to manage all these robots, everything from knowing what they're doing to stepping in when necessary. Danny: - Alright, excellent. Well that sounds interesting. It sounds like it's a very needed thing, especially as there is an exponential amount of robotics companies that are coming out, and there's all kinds of unique and different applications. I suspect that there's a nice challenge that poses that you guys are solving, and we'll get into that here in just a little bit. But before we do that, this is the segment where we like to dive in and get to know our guests a little bit better. This is where we want to know a little bit more about Florian. So Florian, if you could just give me some color on your background. How did you get into the technology space? Take me way back. Florian: - Yeah, I'll tell you Danny, it has not been a straight line. Danny: - It rarely is. Florian: - I think in the curves is where something interesting happens. Maybe a little bit about myself, I'm originally from Argentina, born and raised, studied there. Came to Silicon Valley essentially pursuing the best technology. Worked at research labs and then eventually got closer and closer. into the business. Did an MBA here at UC Berkeley. I went from big companies to start-up, back to big companies. Usually a lot of people will either pick one track or the other. But to me, it's always been just different ways to have an impact. I've worked at some of the very well-known companies like Microsoft and Atlassian and the company now known as Meta as well as a lot of those start-ups that you probably never heard of with various degrees of success, as start-ups go. I think what's been the common thread throughout all of that is really technology with a global impact. I had the chance to work on products, for example on video, on the internet when it was relatively new, when it was still being proven out. Being able to reach a billion people with my products was really fantastic. But then I've also worked in really new technologies like, for example image processing, cryptography, all of these foundational technologies that we're now seeing in spaces like the one I'm in, in robotics. So what's interesting is some of the things that I did very early in my career without being able to foresee where they were going are things that I'm utilizing these days in this new space of robotics. Then in terms of robotics in particular, the way I like to say it is I blame my cofounder for getting me hooked on this. He's had over 12 years of experience working in robotics. His name is Julian Cerruti. He worked with a research group called Willow Garage that was extremely influential. He started telling me about this recurring problem that robotics companies had,

Bruce Buscher of Jervis Webb shares his career history and Daifuku's journey navigating the labor shortage with AGVs and AMRs. hbspt.cta.load(192657, 'ee6f69de-cfd0-4b78-8310-8bdf983bdcc9', {});   Danny: - Well hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I am joined by Bruce Buscher. He is the vice president of sales of the Smart Handling Group of Jervis Webb. Bruce, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series. Bruce: - Thanks for the invitation. Glad to be here. Danny: - Well I'm excited about this for multiple reasons. We met at the assembly show in Chicago; this was in October-ish. I'm blanking on my time. Bruce: - Yeah, the 26th through the 28th. Danny: - Oh, perfect, yes. And we had a great conversation, and we got to talking. I was like, man, Bruce, you need to come on the show. And it just so happened that it worked out for our filming that you were going to be here. And so I'm super excited to have you in person. I think you are the first person that we've had in person since the pandemic and all that, so it's nice to have people back in the office. Now granted, we were doing a lot of this before too, and remote's way easier. So we were accustomed to it beforehand. But nonetheless, always love it when somebody can come in, in person. Thank you for coming in. So first thing is, for those who aren't familiar with Jervis Webb, if you can just tell us who you guys are, what you do. I know you've got Daifuku on your shirt. Maybe you could explain a little bit about just the company and the division specifically that you work in. Bruce: - Sure. Yeah, the company is Daifuku Corporation. They're a Japanese-based company headquartered in Osaka, Japan. Jervis Webb is a division, airport technologies division of Daifuku Corporation. Here in North America the Jervis Webb group is made up of two pieces: airport material handling equipment as well as automatic guided vehicles. My responsibility for Daifuku is the automatic guided vehicles for North America, and we cross over in the markets. We cross over in the automotive market. We also sell AGV systems for parts of airport baggage handling systems and things. The acquisition between the two, there's a lot of history between Daifuku Corporation and Jervis Webb going back actually to 1952. Daifuku Corporation became a licensee of the Jervis Webb company for our chain conveyor products to sell in the Japanese market to Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Subaru, and the other Japanese auto manufacturers. Then about 15 years ago the Webb family had decided that they wanted to exit the material handling business, family-owned, and at the time Susan Webb was the only family member of the Webb family that was active within the company, but there were 31 or 32 shareholders, Susan being one of them. She got outvoted by the rest of her cousins, nieces, and nephews, so the company was sold in December, 2007. And Daifuku Corporation actually purchased the company after a long-standing relationship going back to, like I said, 1952. It was a very good fit for Daifuku and a way for them to expand their business and footprint here in North America. Danny: - Yeah, that makes sense. Sounds like you got quite the storied history there with the company. So before we jump in a little bit more about specifically what you guys do and some of the challenges you're seeing, I want to get to know you.

Renan Devillieres of OSS Ventures explains their highly-successful business model of uniting the disparate cultures of manufacturers and tech companies.   hbspt.cta.load(192657, 'ee6f69de-cfd0-4b78-8310-8bdf983bdcc9', {});   Danny: - Well hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. I am joined all the way from France. I have the CEO of OSS Ventures, Renan Devillieres. Did I get that right, Renan? Renan: - Excellent. Danny: - We practiced that many times. Sorry, my French is not that great. Thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series. Renan: - Thank you for having me. Danny: - I'm super excited about it. Again, I hope I didn't butcher things too badly. But hey, before we get into the episode, I want to know a little bit about OSS Ventures. What do you guys do? Renan: - Sure. So we are a venture builder. A venture builder is a special kind of investment fund. Instead of investing funds in companies, start-ups, technological start-ups that already exist, we invest a meaningful amount of money, time, and resources in companies that do not exist yet. We provide the ideas. We provide with the partners, and we create companies out of nothing. And we are specialized in manufacturing. Danny: - Interesting. That sounds really interesting, and we're going to get more into that here in a little bit about, specifically, some of the challenges that you're solving and maybe how you're doing this because it sounds very intriguing like a different business model. But before we get into that, I want to learn a little bit about Renan. So tell me. How did you get into the manufacturing space? How did your career start? Renan: - At the start of my career—I was a nerd, so I was good at math. I did a school in France where they pay for your studies which is really good but then you have to give back up to two years in public service. I was an economist at the OECD, and I was studying industry at 20-year timeframe, the whole world. After two years doing that I told myself, I cannot go on not dealing with reality anymore because it was all so virtual and so long timeframes. And so I told myself, I like the subject. I like the topic of industry. I'll try to go work in a factory. And so they got a very young guy with a mathematics degree, a theoretical mathematics degree trying to go work in a factory. And I think I sent something like 50 letters, got 50 no's from factories. But I got one yes from the McKinsey & Company consulting arm specializing in factories. They were saying that I was good enough to give some advice to factories. So I did just that, and that is how I started my career in manufacturing. After four or five years working for McKinsey & Company, I went on to lead planning and then quality and then be a site director. And so the eight first years of my career, I was deep down in manufacturing, and I loved it. Danny: - That's awesome. That is fantastic. That's pretty cool. That's a great story. Sometimes you hear people that come in; they didn't start from day one. What's kind of interesting, it sounds like you jumped into it, and you found a love for it. I think what's interesting is the–– and I shared that a little bit with you in a different light, that I never thought that we would be working in this space. This was several years ago. Having come into it, it's awesome. It's pretty amazing. But what I think is interesting in your story, you said you sent out, you said 50 letters? Renan: - Yeah. Danny: - And you got the one response. Renan: - Yeah. Danny: - And then that opened the door. Renan:

Joe Yanoska, CIO of TRG Solutions, joins us to discuss the vital importance of transparent and accessible data in supply chain and ecommerce. hbspt.cta.load(192657, 'ee6f69de-cfd0-4b78-8310-8bdf983bdcc9', {});   Danny: - Hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. I am joined by Joe Yanoska, who is the chief information officer at TRG Solutions. Joe, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series. Joe: - Thank you very much. Happy to be here. Danny: - I am very excited to jump into today's episode and learn a little bit more about you and about TRG Solutions. First off, tell me a little about TRG. Who are you guys? What do you guys do? Joe: - Well, we're a managed service provider in the enterprise mobility and payment space. Really the easiest way to think about us is if it scans a barcode, we can help you figure out what devices are right for you. We can help you source them and deploy them out to all of your locations. And then while they're in the field, if they experience a need for repair, you can ship them back. We can repair them, and then certainly at the end of that life cycle, if they need to be securely destroyed or whatever, we can help you with that as well. And then certainly, if you want to replace them, we will help you do the whole cycle all over again. So really being experts in that space and trying to help our customers use these however they need to, whether it be warehouse management, point of sale, whatever, we're there to show you what devices work best in your environment and then can help you manage that entire lifecycle. Danny: - Great, awesome. So before we get more into the business and challenges and all that stuff, this is a special segment where I like to go in and learn about my victim—I mean my guest on the show. Joe, tell me a little bit about: how did you get into the industry? Joe: - Well for me, I started from the technology standpoint. I went to college to be a developer, an engineer, software engineer, and spent some time at Key Bank out of the gate. Then my second stop was at American Greetings where we spent a lot of time trying to save the world one greeting card at a time. One of the interesting things we got into there was personalized greeting cards. We really started to figure out the logistics of, obviously, taking something online, personalizing the card. But once you've taken that order, you've got to print it. You've got to kit it. You've got to ship it, and hopefully that it's all right. If you think about Christmastime, you might be shipping out hundreds of cards to somebody or shipping them to everybody on their list on their behalf. There was an operation there to figure out how all that worked. And then that dovetailed into my time here at TRG Solutions where we really help people in those areas, especially around any of the mobile devices that are required to help any of their supply chain needs from, again, warehouse management to shipping to retail. You have all these touch points that need to happen along that way, and really these are the devices that are helping you collect that information, get it into your ERP systems so companies can manage their data, their inventory, all that stuff, as seamlessly as possible. Danny: - So you're specifically, maybe some sort of RFID scanning. You said anything that basically has a barcode, essentially. Joe: - Barcode, RFID, anything that you're able, helps you figure out where–– whether it's a product, whether it's luggage from an airline, whether it's whatever, it's got a barcode on it. And usually you want to know where that is all along the wa...

Guy Courtin of Tecsys Inc. returns to share how post-COVID public awareness has transformed both supply chain and industrial sales. hbspt.cta.load(192657, 'ee6f69de-cfd0-4b78-8310-8bdf983bdcc9', {});   Danny: - Well hello, and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. I am joined by a familiar face, Mr. Guy Courtin who is back in the studio no less for another episode here. I'm super excited about this. If you aren't familiar with Guy, he came on before. It was a couple years ago. I think we've interviewed you a few times. Guy: - A few times, yes. Danny: - But Guy is the VP of industry and advanced technology at a company called Tecsys. Not to be confused with the state, I'm sorry we have to say that. Guy: - We're in Canada. Danny: - Okay, so polar opposite. So anyways, Guy, thank you so much for coming on the show again and also to be in person. I'm excited about that. Guy: - Danny, thanks for having me on the show. I guess the first few times I didn't screw up, and you've brought me back. But I'm really happy to be back, and to be back in person is fantastic. Danny: - Well it's super—yeah, I'm super excited about this. I'm excited to unpack, get into some of these things that we were talking about a little bit in the preshow. I think there's no lack of great content here. First and foremost, for me and for our audience who maybe is not familiar with Tecsys, what do you guys do? Guy: - Sure. First and foremost, we're a Canadian-based company. We are a supply chain company. We solve supply chain problems. We focus on a couple of big areas, healthcare, retail distribution. And when it comes to the solutions we provide, think of us as really helping solve a whole host of supply chain problems, so warehouse management, transportation, order management, things of that nature. Really exciting from that perspective of being able to provide solutions to customers' supply chain needs. We are, again, based in Montreal, Canada, but have global presence in Europe and elsewhere. I've been there now for almost a year. It's really exciting. I think we are continuing to grow, even during the pandemic. I look at the solutions that we have are really addressing today's needs for tomorrow's desires by our prospects and customers but also from their customers. That's who we are in a nutshell, and like you said, yes we're T-E-C-S-Y-S out of Montreal, not the great state of Texas. Danny: - Alright, perfect. Well good to know. Well it's supply chain. I keep hearing things about this. I don't know. Guy: - Yeah, it's funny. It's come up a lot recently in the past two years. Danny: - I don't know why, but I guess there's things. So let's talk about how things have changed a little bit since the last time you and I spoke, which I'm a little gray on when we—I think I ran into you at MODEX in 2020. Guy: - 2020, correct. Danny: - You came on in 2019, I think. Guy: - Correct. Danny: - What's changed? Guy: - A different world, right? Entirely different world. From my perspective, I think we all have lived it, so I'm not going to rehash it. But I think what has changed—maybe not necessarily what has changed, but what has been exposed by the pandemic is, I think, what we should focus on.

Marin Tchakarov, CEO of Kindred AI (Powered by Ocado Solutions) returns to share his thoughts on the rise of AI and robotics in ecommerce. hbspt.cta.load(192657, 'ee6f69de-cfd0-4b78-8310-8bdf983bdcc9', {});   Danny: - Well hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series interview. I am joined by Marin Tchakarov who is the CEO of Kindred, Powered by Ocado. Marin, thank you so much for joining me again on the IndustrialSage Executive Series. Marin: - Pleasure to be here, Danny. It's been a while. Good to be back. Danny: - It has been a while. A lot has happened since then. Maybe for those who didn't watch the first episode when you were on—and if they haven't, they need to go listen or watch it right now—but for those who aren't familiar with Kindred, tell me a little bit about who you guys are and what you do. Marin: - Sure, we're a smart robotics company in the ecommerce fulfillment vertical space. We were founded in 2014 by a collection of brilliant artificial intelligence and machine learning engineers and scientists. Fast forward to 2017. We productized what today is known as SORT which is a smart robot solution that automates a manual sortation station, or as they are called, “put walls” in ecomm fulfillment centers across the country. And so the essence of what we do is, we utilize artificial intelligence that powers machine vision to singulate—that is machine-vision speak for seeing—an item set, the items within it distinct and separate from one another. And then we have a patented AutoGrasp technology that identifies where we will pick a particular item to then effect a successful scan and stow. We essentially automate via smart robotics-type, machine vision-type solution, manual put walls in ecomm fulfillment centers. Danny: - Excellent. Well there's no, I'm sure, lack of challenges or opportunities in the industry right there, specifically as we look at ecomm and what has happened over the last several months. Really another big thing happened and a big change since when we had spoken last. I think it was probably, I think it was February, March, or April of 2020. I'm totally forgetting the time. Marin: - Perhaps a little bit later than that. I want to say July or so, but yeah, sometime in 2020. Danny: - It was definitely—it wasn't BC, before Covid, it was after. Marin: - That's right. Danny: - Certainly there are some things that have happened since then. There was an acquisition that happened. Tell us about that. Marin: - Yeah, extremely exciting. We closed the acquisition by Ocado Group in December of last year, of 2020. An extremely exciting endeavor for the company in ways that it affords us the ability to accelerate our product development, our initiatives. And so we were very much on path to do ambitious things prior to the acquisition, but many of those would have been serial in nature. They would have been sequential. We would have chosen one or two to do at the same time, if that, and then sequence them out in our future. Now, with the backing of the powerhouse that Ocado Group is, we can focus on a few things at a time. We have four key focal areas for Kindred in front of us. In no particular order, one is to invest in our technology stack to improve our capabilities, to enhance our capabilities to handle a variety of items. In other words, to enhance and expand our item set capabilities. It's extremely exciting.

Patrick Moorhead, CMO of Pricefx, returns to share about the evolution of digital pricing software, and where AI may be leading the industry.   hbspt.cta.load(192657, 'ee6f69de-cfd0-4b78-8310-8bdf983bdcc9', {});   Danny: - Hello and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I am joined by Patrick Moorhead who is the chief marketing officer at Pricefx. Patrick, thank you so much for joining me again. This is a second—this is a follow-up interview from before, so thank you for joining me again. Patrick: - Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here. I'm glad to be here again. Danny: - Well I'm excited to jump into this because a lot has changed, like a lot a lot, not just Covid and all that good stuff. A lot has changed for you, and I'd love to hear that. But before we completely jump into this episode, for those who aren't familiar with Pricefx, just tell us, who are you guys? What do you guys do? Patrick: - Yeah, we are a cloud-native, SaaS pricing optimization and management platform. We sell to billion-dollar-plus-a-year enterprises as a B2B service. We are designed to drive profitable growth and efficiency within those large organizations by helping them better understand their transaction and customer data in the context of how they price their products helping them then implement those insights into flexible price management strategies that are executed within the software with a high degree of speed, accuracy, and flexibility and ultimately deliver the gains that you can get off of that into their distributed global sales organizations through profitability solutions like CPQ, like rebate management, channel management, et cetera, et cetera. We've built what we believe is the leading SaaS pricing platform. We are one of the only companies that is a pure SaaS cloud offering. A lot of pricing software providers offer hybrid solutions that, at some level, require customers to install hardware in their facility that require custom coded, hard coded software solutions. Ours is completely configurable and 100% delivered online which makes it very flexible and speedy. And apparently the industry likes that because our growth has been significant. In fact, our growth has ranged from 70 to 80% year over year for three years running, even through Covid. Danny: - Wow, that's fantastic. It sounds like there's a win. As a follow-up to that real quick before we'll jump into a little bit more stuff here, but from a very basic, fundamental level, how does that work? Let's say from a manufacturing standpoint. Is it plugging into, like taking ERP data and customer data and looking at trends and whatnot? Patrick: - Yes, yes, that's exactly right. Another way to think about Pricefx is it's sort of a middle-office management layer. We're able to ingest a significant amount and variety of data, so we can ingest and do ingest ERP data. We ingest CRM data. We can ingest data from financial services systems. For some customers we ingest data from web scraping services. In the case of one customer in Europe we even ingest and interface weather data as relates to their lift ticket business. So we're very data-omnivorous, and then we're able to transform that data by pooling it into data marts or lakes as the industry would call them to generate insights that then can lead into centralized, flexible price management. You'd be surprised to find out that in our estimation somewhere between 30 and 50% of enterprises above a billion in revenue manage their pricing via spreadsheets.

Dean Cohen of Quantum Storage shares how much the company has been able to grow while avoiding a lot of common industry pitfalls. hbspt.cta.load(192657, 'ee6f69de-cfd0-4b78-8310-8bdf983bdcc9', {});   Danny: - Well hello, and welcome to today's IndustrialSage Executive Series. I am joined by Dean Cohen who is the vice president of Quantum Storage Systems. Dean, thank you so much for joining me today on the Executive Series. Dean: - My pleasure. Glad to be here. Danny: - I'm glad to have you on here. First order of business for those who are not familiar with Quantum, Quantum Storage Systems, tell me and our audience who you guys are and what you do. Dean: - We are a manufacturer of plastic storage bins and storage containers. We marry it up with wire shelving systems and supply to a wide array of customers complete storage systems in any way to organize your space. Danny: - Great, yeah. I imagine you're in a whole host of different industries and niche segments. Can you give us a little bit of a flavor of that? Dean: - We're fortunate to cater to a number of different markets. The markets include industrial and material handling, food service, medical, supermarket, food service, electronics, retail. There probably isn't an industry or a sector that probably is not using or organizing with storage bins. Danny: - Gotcha. You said you're a manufacturer; you're manufacturing those as well. Where are those facilities where you manufacture? Dean: - We do all of our manufacturing of all of our bins here in Miami. We've been doing that since 1988, so we've been doing it a long time and have our own injection molding company here in Miami where we manufacture all the products. Danny: - That's great. Okay, well cool. I think we're going to jump into a little bit more some challenges, some things I imagine that just like everybody and all the manufacturers, no one's been left untouched relative to Covid. I'm sure there's been some challenges but also some great opportunities. But before we jump into all that, I'd really like to know more about you. I want to learn a little bit more about Dean. This is where we focus on the executives that we have on here. So tell me, how did you get into this space? Take me way back. Dean: - I'm very, very fortunate that my father who was a very, very large influence on me was always involved in plastics and introduced me to the plastics world when I was a teenager. I had an opportunity to come into a custom injection molding business when we were looking to begin our own product line and our own name brand which was the origins of Quantum. That was my original foray or entrée into the business when nobody knew what a Quantum bin was or nobody had any idea that Quantum even manufactured storage bins. Those were my original beginnings, and very lucky to be where I am today. Danny: - Is this a family-owned business? Dean: - It is. Danny: - Okay, alright, and so your father started it; is that what I understand? Dean: - My father and first cousin. Danny: - Oh, excellent. Are they still involved in the business? Dean: - My first cousin is. Yes, he is. Danny: - Okay, excellent. So you got in really, you said you were young. You were a teenager. Was it 16? Was that right? Dean: - That was my original entrée. I came out of college actually having nothing to do in the business world. I was actually a tennis player, and all I wanted to do was play tennis and travel the world playing tennis. Danny: - Oh, well what happened?