[Bryan]: One of the challenges that's being faced,
which everyone in this room has faced in the last couple of years, is on labor.
Labor is probably one of our biggest challenges.
Here in the state of Texas, I think we're right about 89 job
seekers for every hundred job openings.
surrounding states are even worse.
Labor is one of the biggest challenges and So putting a dollar figure
on that labor shortage, but also knowing that there's a lot of growth
going on in the state of Texas and planning for that future.
So you put a dollar figure on the fact that we've got, right now,
we've got 20 people doing hand palletizing and I can't hire them, right?
We heard that a lot.
So now you're looking to go into more automation.
So that's going to drive your automation decisions, whether you're doing robotic
palletizers, you’re doing autonomous forklifts - things of that nature.
So a lot of that's going to drive, that cost up, Initial start up of a multi
million dollar system
is a lot more expensive than that $50,000 head count that is out there.
So planning for that is a challenge we’ll all be facing here shortly.
[Nils]: We saw a lot of that in COVID.
With COVID we had these warehouses that were operating with forklifts
and they call up and say, “I can't come in.
I’ve got a problem.”
And so it’s just crippling the operation, is what it was doing.
And so a lot of people were coming to us and saying, “hey,
what technologies can I use to be able to help supplement that?”
We were using the autonomous forklift truck is what we were doing.
And then as they were looking at the ROI to be able to justify that.
You can go right to H.R.
and you can find out about your burden cost for that individual.
You can look at your leasing on your forklift truck that you currently have.
You can look at the maintenance costs another thing
that, we've asked them to look at is being able to onboard individuals
because it's tough to be able to do that and also the training.
And so you throw those metrics together, sometimes you'll find
that your ROI can be just a matter of a few years.
But the more complicated and integrated systems that we seem to deal with,
you need to be able to understand and project out what's the life of
the system is going to be at the same time and throw that into the equation.
Because if you look at larger integrated systems, maybe it's an ASRS,
with conveyor, and AGV fully integrated with the software control systems.
That life of that system, it better be 15 year plus, is where it better be.
And so you again throw that into the equation on that ROI for that total cost.
[Mitch]: I'd like to sit on this labor thing for just another minute or so.
This is a little bandwagon thing for me because I think it's a big deal,
a demographic strike.
You hear a lot about demographics
and the changes in baby boomers leaving the marketplace.
Those people born from 1946 to 1964,
you know, they're aging out of the workforce.
That's 132 million people.
The United States only has 330 million people.
So who's going to backfill those positions?
So what it means for us as automation people,
whether we're in distribution or automation companies,
is we've got to figure out how to supplement that.
Right?
So this understanding, how to do IRR you know,
the return on investment will become even more important.
I think,
as it relates to your
question is what do you do when you don't have people?
We talk about justifying
the removal or displacement of people
traditionally with our ROI.
But today, what do we do if we don't have people?
So your initial investment goes up, but who's going to work the job?
Who's going to do the job?
And so I think that is a real critical one of how do we handle that today
or how do you do it in the future?
[Bryan]: You know, on top of that a lot of that labor,
you're taking away hands on labor workers.
But we also have to replace that one when we’re putting these automated systems
in because skilled technicians to work on that material.
So it kind of changes that element-- [Mitch]: The skill set.
So the worker.
Yeah.
[Nils]: That's what we talked about yesterday is we were looking
at the automotive industry and I believe it was a decade ago
they let 600,000 people go and the reason why is because they
brought in automation.
That automation came in.
And yet today they're looking at to be able to go
ahead and onboard 600,000 people that they need for the technology
now that they're put it in place. And so
the individual
is never going to go away, they’ll always going to be required.
We just need to be able to repurpose them
because of the shortages that you were talking about.