Zebra Technologies' new robots help 'accelerate' operations amid ongoing labor shortage: CTO

Tom Bianculli, Zebra Technologies CTO, discusses how the company's new warehouse robots are assisting human workers amid the supply chain crisis.

Video transcript

- Welcome back to Yahoo Finance. In today's "Rise of the Robots," we are chatting the supply chain disruptions. Of course, a lot of bottlenecks due to the pandemic, and not just warehouses, but ports, as well. Our next guest is working on the efforts behind using robotics to help alleviate some of those bottlenecks. And he joins us right now. Tom Bianculli is Zebra Technologies CTO.

And Tom, when we talk about this, it's interesting because Zebra, of course, bought Fetch Robotics earlier in the summer to roll out this technology a little bit more mainstream. Talk to me about what you've seen in warehouses implementing it and trying to help solve this problem we got.

TOM BIANCULLI: Yeah, absolutely. So as you said, we closed the acquisition of Fetch Robotics, which we're really excited about. Super talented group of folks out on the West Coast. We closed that deal for just under $300 million on August 10th. And what we really see, Zack, is the opportunity to leverage the collaboration between robots and humans to help get work done at the edge of operations. So we can talk a little bit about how robots are really assisting humans and working side by side with them, allowing them each to play to their strengths.

Just a real quick stat, if you look at picking operations at a warehouse, about 50% of the time is spent just walking. And we can eliminate more than half of that walking time, letting the robots do the traveling and letting the humans do the picking. So really exciting stuff, and great to have the Fetch team as part of Zebra.

- Yeah, Tom, that collaboration you just pointed to is something that we have heard many companies talk about as a long-term vision for some time. But I wonder to what extent that plan has been accelerated as a result of the shortage of workers so many companies are dealing with. What have you been hearing?

TOM BIANCULLI: Yeah, Akiko, well, as you're alluding to, it's the labor shortage, but it's also a space shortage, and then it's the acceleration of on demand economy because, as we're all experiencing, our consumer behaviors have shifted. Our patience for convenience has never been lower. I think everybody's expecting that they can order what they want, have it delivered the way they want it delivered, and really have it delivered instantly, whether it's a product or it's a service.

So really, we've seen the acceleration driven by all of those factors. And many of the customers we speak with and the operations folks associated with these facilities are talking about a five to seven-year acceleration in their plans around this automation. So it might be 2021 on the calendar, but it's 2028 in terms of where we are with the deployment of this automation type technology.

- Yeah, and in deployment, I mean, you guys obviously aren't the only ones building robotics here in warehouses to help-- to try and help alleviate some of the pressures. When it comes to how Fetch and you guys are kind of rolling that technology out, there's a couple of different strategies you can take in the sector, working with distributors to roll it out. I mean, what's kind of the strategy there in really getting this off the ground?

TOM BIANCULLI: Yeah, so right now, we're working-- well, first of all, I should back up just for a moment to mention that part of the synergy here is that Zebra Technologies does business with well over 90% of the Fortune 500. And we have the largest portion of our revenue in the retail space, followed really closely by transportation and logistics. So we're kind of right in the sweet spot of being engaged with the types of customers deploying billions of dollars of our products on an annual basis to help them get their manual workflows done. So it's a really natural extension to take that go-to-market model we have, direct initially, and engaging with those large brand names and logos that we all know from retail and transportation and logistics space in the Fortune 500 directly to deploy this technology in collaboration with the mobile computing and barcode reading technology we already have in the hands of their frontline workers.

And I just want to take a moment to mention that go-to-market synergy is-- it's really powerful for us, it's powerful for our customers because they have one provider, one strategic partner to hold accountable, but it's really exciting for the frontline worker because we have the opportunity now to leverage wearable technology we already have deployed on warehouse workers that put scanning technology on the finger of their hand. They put Android-based mobile computing on their wrist.

And by having that information and that integration already on the human, we can use that footprint to help collaborate the interaction or the dance, if you will, that occurs in the warehouse between the autonomous mobile robot and that human. And that's a big differentiator that we refer to as fulfillment edge, which allows us to coordinate the activity of humans and robots to get to optimal outcomes in terms of efficiency of operations, but maybe just as important is the worker satisfaction. So making that [AUDIO OUT] will be the best they can be by deploying the combination of those technologies.

- Fascinating to see how that technology has evolved. Tom Bianculli, Zebra Technologies CTO, good to have you on today.