Seasonal Surge: How to Put Automation to Work – Today & Tomorrow

Next week, Seegrid, the leader in self-driving industrial vehicles for materials handling, brings together a speaker panel with more than 30 years of experience leveraging automation to accelerate innovation and growth initiatives for companies like Walmart, Amazon, and FedEx. The Seasonal Surge: How to Put Automation to Work – Today & Tomorrow webinar, scheduled to broadcast live on Thursday, November 14 at 2:00 pm EST, will have experts discuss the growing complexities and pressures of seasonal peak demand, sharing first-hand insights into how automation plays a crucial role in boosting productivity, safety, and operational efficiencies to lower costs, solve labor challenges, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Ron Kyslinger — whose prior roles include SVP of fulfillment engineering at Walmart and executive director of worldwide operations, engineering, design, and innovation at Amazon — brings direct perspective to the panel. “In today’s ever-changing e-commerce environment, it is absolutely essential that companies continuously evaluate and implement innovative strategies to provide efficiency and productivity gains,” explains Kyslinger. “In order to facilitate improved operations, processes, and results, corporations need to make a commitment to adopting new technologies to combat these extremely intricate challenges. The pressures of peak demand during the holiday season only reinforce this need.”

During the holiday season, online order volumes can surge tenfold, but experts advise that optimizing performance and safety is a year-round requirement. “In e-commerce fulfillment operations, increasing demand makes it more difficult and complex to drive operational costs down and achieve logistical effectiveness,” explains August Drake, director of application engineering at Seegrid. Drake, who oversees more than 200 automation applications in facilities per year, brings a unique perspective to the webinar, as she facilitates the strategy, design, and successful implementation of automation solutions across Seegrid’s customer base. Drake formerly worked with GENCO (now FedEx Supply Chain), where she was responsible for designing warehouse layouts and processes for key logistics and e-commerce customers.

During the live webinar, experts will discuss how automated guided vehicles (AGV) and robotic handling solutions can improve safety when extra shifts and overcrowding is common, how to boost labor productivity in a time when finding and retaining quality personnel is increasingly difficult, and how to increase consistency during unpredictable periods when stability is crucial. Sharing learnings from their personal experiences, experts will also explain what to contemplate when considering automation, provide insights on best practices for leveraging automation, and provide attendees with an opportunity to ask questions.