Supply Chain Unlocked
Supply Chain Unlocked delivers actionable intelligence for suppliers to Walmart and other retailers. Hosted by Dr. Matthew Waller—renowned supply chain expert, author, and trusted advisor—the show decodes the strategies, technology, and leadership required to win on the world’s biggest retail stage. Each episode blends Dr. Waller’s expertise with insights from industry leaders, innovators, and former retail executives, giving listeners clear and practical strategies to navigate compliance, harness technology, and build stronger partnerships. More than just commentary, the show provides the intelligence and actionable guidance suppliers need to stay ahead in today’s fast-changing supply chain.
Supply Chain Unlocked
Ep. 3 - Why Digitizing The Warehouse Now Cuts Cost, Risk, and Stockouts
What if your warehouse could flex labor across sites on demand, cut safety risk, and feed cleaner data into your WMS—all without a massive retrofit? We sit down with Brian Nachtigall, VP & GM of Vaux at ArcBest, to unpack smart autonomy that blends autonomous forklifts with remote teleoperation for a fast, pragmatic path to automation. No gimmicks, no buzzword soup—just a clear look at how deep learning, digital twins, and disciplined operations deliver measurable wins right now.
Brian traces his journey from Bain to Cognex to Boston Dynamics, sharing what he learned about scaling machine vision, building reliable autonomy stacks, and applying management systems that actually fit the culture. We break down the Vaux suite: robotic forklifts that map your facility, fleet management that coordinates traffic safely, and a human-in-the-loop model that lets operators “dial in” only when tasks get tricky. That pooled remote labor becomes a powerful lever for load balancing across DCs, smoothing demand spikes and reducing stockouts, late fees, and excess safety stock that quietly erode margins.
We also explore warehouse digitization and why data integrity is the real multiplier. By capturing accurate pallet locations and on-forklift dimensions with Vaux Vision, your WMS makes better calls, slotting improves, and the bullwhip effect softens. Beyond forklifts, Vaux's freight movement platforms accelerate shuttle runs, protect sensitive electronics for data center logistics, and enable scaffolding to move non-stackable freight efficiently. Throughout, Brian’s stance is grounded: automate what you can, keep people in the loop for edge cases, and compound gains over time rather than chasing lights-out promises.
If you care about safer operations, faster deployments, and resilient supply chains, this conversation offers a blueprint. Subscribe, share with your ops team, and leave a review with the one bottleneck you’d automate first—we’ll feature our favorite responses in a future episode.
I want to clarify that this podcast is distinct from my responsibilities as a professor in the Stan M. Walton College of Business. Nonetheless, it aligns with my aspiration to provide practical insights to professionals and business by showcasing companies and people that can enhance your ability to manage, lead, and strategize and market effectively in the retail value chain. And now without further ado, let's get into the exciting episode. I have with me today Brian Noctigall, and he is heading up Vox for ArcBest. He has an incredible background in consulting and automation that really positioned him perfectly for the kind of role that he's in right now. But today we're going to be talking about smart autonomy and the future of warehouse innovation. I'm really excited about this. Brian's background, like I say, is amazing. So, Brian, would you mean mind telling us a little bit about how you wound up in this position and your journey here?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, sure, man. And thank you very much for having me on the on the podcast. Pleasure to be here. Yeah, pleasure to be here. Uh it's been pleasure kind of getting to know you here in this role. But how I've gotten here, I'm really just thrilled to be a part of ArcBest and to be have the opportunity to be leading the Vox group and kind of taking the building blocks that you know that the team has created over the over the past years and being able to build a business out of it. It's uh it's it's an exciting time, exciting time in the industry, the evolution of technology and applying technology to warehouse automation, and uh and really just thrilled to be here having having a good time, you know, building this business. I would say uh, you know, how I got here, I it it just was an opportunity that I couldn't pass up. Uh it was it was too good of a fit with you know my background in industrial automation and and combining the sort of the early career and strategy and and uh kind of being able to put all of you know the um the sort of the lessons that I've learned in my past and uh to to work to kind of you know build this opportunity.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, you know, um when I first read about your joining um ArcBest, leading this initiative, I was thrilled, especially because of your background. Um, you know, you have several years of experience uh as a consultant with Baying Company, which is one of the best consulting firms in the world. Uh you have incredible background with machine vision, robotics, automation technology companies. And even earlier in your career as an investment uh analyst, that's a unique background for something like this. But I would imagine that it really informs your current role. Is that right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's funny. Uh it is funny how you you pick this bits and pieces. I imagine everybody does this in their careers, but you pick bits and pieces of you know your background and lessons you've learned and applying them. And uh what's exciting for me is I'm in a role now where where I'm actually getting to apply, I think, lessons from really almost nearly every one of my experiences. And so I guess you know, going back, uh as you mentioned, uh, you know, I have I have about 15 years of of industrial automation experience, but kind of going all the way back, yeah, I I graduated from Princeton University, and my first job out of college was with the the group that invests the endowment at Princeton, the called Princo. Uh it was a small group of of about 14 people and with about$10 billion to invest. And so just a really interesting mile-high view of the world of finance, you know, for uh for somebody coming out of out of school and kind of learning how the world works. But uh to me, uh, it was it was probably about 20 years ago that I that I made the decision to kind of get out of pure investing and wanted to learn a little bit more about how you know how how what decisions are made and what goes into those decisions to actually create value in society and in the economy. And you know, had the had the just great opportunity to get to to go to Bain and Company. And didn't you go to Duke first for your MBA? So I got I got my MBA at Duke uh while working at at Bain. So I spent a couple of years at Bain uh out in uh out in California, and then kind of returned to the East Coast and went to Duke uh to get my MBA at the Fuca School of Business, uh, and then returned to Bain. And that's what that's uh what brought me up to Boston, Massachusetts. And I you know spent about 15 years in in uh in Boston, kind of working at Bain initially for a few more years. And then uh when I when I left Bain, it was sort of that that itch again to roll up my sleeves a little further and really dig in and and uh help build businesses. And uh just had the had the great opportunity of getting onto this trend of you know machine vision and robotics and industrial automation that you know worked at Cognex Corporation, who's a a global leader in the industrial machine vision space and manufacturing and warehouse settings, had the opportunity at Boston Dynamics to lead their uh their warehouse automation effort uh with their robot that they call stretch and uh kind of create the other the business model out of out of stretch and build the team there. And uh, and then here, you know, at Box uh within ArcBest, sort of the just just as I mentioned earlier, the the thrill, thrilled to be able to take the building blocks that they've created and really turn it into a business and set ourselves up for growth going forward.
SPEAKER_04:You know, um my first academic research study um that got published was published in 1990. And it was the first academic research I'd really done. Um it was on flexible automation. This was 1990. And um and I did a few other studies um uh for a few years on flexible automation. Back then, the flexible manufacturing systems was it was a hot topic in academics. It and then it faded for a long time. But it's been interesting to me to see how you know automation and robotics in the industry back in 1990, I think we thought we would be further along by now than we are, but you got into it really at a great time, and now it's just taking off beyond imagination. And and I can't imagine. Um did you did you see that or did you just were were you just interested in that?
SPEAKER_01:Uh you know, a little bit of both. Um, you know, I grew up I grew up in a blue-collar town, manufacturing town, and uh so that the idea of using you know using technology to make you to make manufacturing more efficient was always something that was kind of interesting to me. And then really just had you know a couple of pieces fall into place, but uh had a consulting project at Bain and Company where we were helping a client understand how to how to you know track their product through their supply chain. And we would talk about how there are technologies to read you know barcodes and data matrix codes and and to be able to track product through. And and but you know, as a strategy consultant, you kind of get to the point where you say, well, there are a ways to do this. And then you you scratch a little deeper under the surface, you say, Well, okay, who are the companies? What are the solutions that do this? And you get some shoulder shrugs and some, well, you know, they they, you know, in quotes, they can do this. Well, who's they? And and you found that the technology wasn't necessarily there yet, or there were it wasn't clear who was providing these types of solutions. And this is back, you know, 2010, you know, timeframe or so. And so when I came across Cognix and the opportunity to join um to you know, Rob Willett, who was the you know the CEO at the time at Cognix, and um and see what Cognix was doing, I said, okay, here's a company that is dedicated to machine vision and you know, doing things like you know inspection using cameras and robotic guidance, but then also the the reading of barcodes using cameras and the 2D codes that uh that are used now. Um, I said, okay, the this company is onto something. There's a need here, and here's a and here's a business that is you know innovating and focused on building a solution for this space. And so that was what kind of made me think, okay, Cognix is a good place to put my energy. And sure enough, it was an exciting time for Cognix. The the five years that I spent with them, you know, they went from about$250 million of revenue to$750 million of revenue during that time. There's just a an exciting time, you know, when the industry was adopting some of these technologies, both in the manufacturing setting and in logistics space. Um, and uh to your point about flexible manufacturing, it was a time when people were realizing how to use machine vision to do things like reduce batch sizes and identify defects and then the track and trace things where you know the automotive industry is figuring out how to, you know, when they find a problem, you know, the the recalls in the automotive industry are so much smaller than they used to be because they can track a problem back through the supply chain back to where they um to where that defect actually happened. And they can all they can recall just the cars that um you know that that were affected by you know a problem that they were able to diagnose with much more specificity. Um so exciting time there. And then uh, but but really even at that time, you know, 10, 5, 15 years ago, a lot of it was rules-based. So you use uh you use machine vision, you you program rules around, you know, what should a robot do or what should a manufacturing system do based on the input that it's getting from a machine vision system. And what's what's exciting now is really over the last five or 10 years is this idea of deep learning. And so you go from a rules-based approach of, you know, I'm I'm looking for something specific to, you know, I'm looking for a specific thing in a specific place, uh, to I'm looking for, you know, something somewhere and and the and the system can kind of find something and uh and uh that that you don't necessarily specifically program it to do. And so as industry gets more comfortable with this deep learning approach, and then you know, I think the deep learning approach has led to all the the generative AI stuff that's been that's been you know that it's been really game-changing over the last couple of years, um, and how that leads to you know simulation technologies that allow these robotic systems to learn so much faster than they could before. It's it's a really an interesting time and an exciting time.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I have to say I'm impressed with your ability to describe things like that without using a bunch of jargon. That was that was impressive. Because I I was thinking of the jargon as you were explaining it, and uh that's it's good. But you know, the other thing that was really neat about your experience there is you got to see what it's like to scale up big time. I mean, going from 250,000 to 700 million, was it? Yeah. That's a big scale up.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and uh so so one of the things, you know, you think about management systems and building a business. So I'm and I mentioned I had the opportunity to work under Rob Willett at Cognex. So Rob had in his background, he had sold a business, a family business to Danaher Corporation and then spent 10 years leading, you know, running a business within Danaher and also kind of learning that that Danaher business system and and the the the management philosophy and the and the approach to measuring uh a business and managing a business that way. And then and then he brought, when he had the opportunity to lead Cognix, he brought some of those lessons. And I say some of those lessons because um because in a lot of ways, you know, sometimes that that business system, you know, at Danaher, it is part of their DNA. And they are they are just relentless in how they how they how they implement that management system. And so when you come into uh another business where you know you you have to take, you have to pick and choose which tools to apply. And I think Rob did a really effective job of that at the time at Cognix. And and I take a lot of lessons away from that in terms of how when I go into a new situation, uh, I don't just overlay those management tools, but you know, I've had the opportunity over this past uh you know half a year or so at ArcBest and with the team at Vox to really kind of observe and talk to people and and and see you know what are our products, who is our team, what are our what are what is our culture, you know, how how do how does this group do things? What puzzle thesis do we have? And now what you know, what aspects of this management system do we apply to this specific situation? And we're in the process of doing that, you know, right now and kind of changing the team. And um uh, you know, fortunately, I inherited a really strong team, you know, ArcBest and with the Vox team, they did an amazing job at pulling together, you know, really talented individuals. They've built a robotics engineering team and a mechanical engineering team to build their products. And so from an engineering perspective and a product management perspective, like a lot of the people were there. Also, ArcBest, they've been they've been investing in innovation for a long time. And they have this pool of really talented people doing you know data analytics. Uh, it shows up in things like their pricing strategies and their, you know, that in their and uh and their you know yield analytics to to to help ArcBest kind of be both competitive and price competitive for their you know to win business in the trucking industry, but also you know, selective in their customers and making sure that they're profitable. And it also comes in things like you know their route optimization, you know, uh to run the ArcBest trucking business more efficiently and effectively and more profitably. So we have you know this great pool of talent at ArcBest, and and they've just done a great job at put at putting those those pieces together. And now I think what I'm bringing to the table is you know how to organize those groups, organize those puzzle pieces in a way that we can um we can then then kind of overlay the the commercial side of it and the sales side of it. How do we how do we really focus our attention on the right on the right markets, the attractive markets where we can make the big biggest impact with customers and and have the most commercial success? And how do we streamline our decision making to uh to be to be moving fast and and agile with uh with building this business?
SPEAKER_04:You know, I've met a lot of these people you're talking about, and I'm super impressed with I even know some very recent hires uh in that area, data science and so forth. But um I think the culture there helps with recruiting top talent, you know, because people want to work somewhere where they're gonna enjoy it and they hear of other people enjoying their work. Um but um but in addition to that, uh you know, one of the things that I've always said, and uh the listeners know we have Northwest Arkansas has an unusually high concentration of logistics and supply chain talent. Not just not just um uh uh people that are actually in supply chain, but even people that are not. For example, if you go to these supplier teams in town, their salespeople can talk about logistics quite a bit. Which if you go to the stay with the same CPG company, you go to a sales team in another uh city like Cincinnati or Minneapolis, et cetera, they don't have that ability. Um there's just a lot of interest in logistics and supply chain here. So for me, I am particularly thrilled that Vox is doing this in Northwest Arkansas. To think that we're uh Northwest Arkansas is developing um advanced um uh automation and technology around logistics, entral logistics in particular, here is exciting. And I think it's uh it's noteworthy. Uh I'd like to shift gears just a second to um you know to set the stage, if you wouldn't mind describing a little bit about uh the Vox suite um as well as uh the mission of Vox within within the ArcBest mission.
SPEAKER_01:Right, right. So yeah, so Vox uh you know, Vox within ArcBest, uh it kind of represents some of the strategic pillars of ArcBest in general. So ArcBest, you know, ArcBest mission and has three strategic pillars. It's you know it's growth, efficiency, and innovation. And they really take that innovation piece seriously, as I as I mentioned earlier. Um, and you know, with things like you know, the pricing and the route optimization things are are some of the under the hood uh tools that they build. Uh, but then you have you know, Vox is really just a tangible illustration of that innovation that that is is is part of that ArcBest DNA. And and I really can't, you know, and you you you touched on you know the culture piece, but I also can't overstate how important that is as well, you know, of the you know, the the culture of ArcBest, the strength of character of the leadership team. Absolutely. And, you know, the the um you know, just just two of their of their sort of core values are you know, integrity and excellence, and how but how that that strength of culture just flows down through the organization, helps us in a lot in a lot of ways. Um so so getting in, you you asked about, you know, so what is the Vox suite of technology? So to kind of give a you know, you we're really kind of bucketed into you know three product groups. So I'll start with uh the autonomous forklifts. So you know, Vox is building a robotic forklift solution. And we believe that you know our solution is the fastest way for customers who are interested in automating their warehouse operations to apply and begin reducing their operating costs uh you know of their warehouse as fast as possible. So our approach is to automate the forklift operations as much as possible. And then we have a human-in-the-loop approach where the the portions of the tasks that are you know too challenging to automate, a person can remotely dial into those forklifts and perform those tasks via you know remote operation or teleoperation. And so by doing that, we we have a a low upfront infrastructure uh investment required. So uh we we can get you, we can come in and within you know four to six weeks be up and running at a customer. And uh a customer doesn't really need to change their infrastructure for us. We can operate within a customer's you know process. And so that's our that's our uh automated forklift business. We call it smart autonomy. Uh another piece of our business is on the uh it's really a relatively low tech, although there's there's smarts, you know, uh it's a it's an intelligent solution to it, but it's our we call it freight movement system, but these are these large staging platforms that allow customers to stage freight, and then it can quickly and smoothly roll that freight into and out of trailers. So that we have some patented technology into and how these rollers engage so that it can carry heavy freight, but then still roll around a warehouse or into into and out of trailers. And we're finding that's really effective for um situations where customers have either uh freight that can't be stacked. So we have a scaffolding system where you could you can make two or three layers of freight in a trailer that otherwise couldn't be stacked. So you can cut down on your on your number of uh number of trucking routes, you know, that way, or number of runs on your routes that way. We're also finding it's really useful in in applications where uh where you have shuttle runs, where the the loading and unloading time is high relative to the travel distance. So that's that's particularly effective in things like the automotive sector, where you have you know what parts warehouses relatively close to the assembly plants, and you're doing a lot of shuttle runs back and forth um in a situation like that. And then we're also kind of stumbled on uh the this opportunity in in the data center space, where we found that it's really valuable for for you know high-value electronics, um, where it's you know high value and sensitive electronics, where you know our staging platform allows it to be touched fewer times, and we can handle kind of the some of the vibration sensitivity over the roads. And so we're talking to players in the data center space that are that could be huge.
SPEAKER_04:That's such a big and growing business right now with uh all the AI and even companies taking data out of the uh cloud and back to their uh native uh servers.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's uh it's obviously a huge trend. It's uh it's it's it's on a lot of people's mind. There's you know the this build out of the data center space, and you know, we're uh we're doing our best to do our part to kind of help that industry move forward. There's a lot of these, especially the hyperscalers they're working on. Um they're working on kind of pre-fabricating or pre-manufacturing as much of the server infrastructure so that it can just be kind of rolled into place and plugged in as much as possible uh to make kind of the the uh the startup of the data centers as you know as as fast and as streamlined as possible. And we're we're helping customers in that space.
SPEAKER_04:You know, um, I know part of what Vox is doing is trying to make autonomous warehousing available to all businesses. Could you talk a little bit about that from a deployment type perspective?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So I mentioned that you know, we we believe that we're the we're the fastest way to automate your warehouse or your forklifts operations and pallet movement. And basically what I mean by that is we have a relatively low-cost method of outfitting kind of a network communications infrastructure in a warehouse, which is important because you need seamless connectivity when you're driving connected forklifts around in a warehouse. We have uh the technology to remote in and do this teleop approach. So, you know, the drivers of the forklifts, you know, we can, you know, from a from a safety perspective, we get people off the floor and you know, working more of an office environment as opposed to you know out on the warehouse floor. And um and we can um you know we we can implement that quickly in a customer's current process. So we're not asking a customer to apply or to change their process or put a lot of additional infrastructure so you know we can come in and um begin working quickly with the customer.
SPEAKER_04:Brian, you know, of course, ArcBest has over a hundred year history. They made it through deregulation, the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 successfully, which was not easy to do. Very few firms have done that. Um and of course, after the Motor Carrier Act of 1980, the LTL industry started uh forming and um and because um ArcBest has been, I mean, they're in all kinds of areas of logistics now, but you know, after that they really specialize to um LTL. But LTL requires different types of trucks for line haul versus pickup and delivery, it requires cross-docking uh terminals, um, many things that uh other kinds of uh trucking companies don't need, um like uh full truckload trucking companies. But uh but since then, of course, uh ArcBest has expanded into many different other areas of logistics. So Vox uh has an advantage, and I'd love to hear what you think it is by being a part of this rich history and cap the capability set as compared to say a startup in the same space.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I think you know being a part of ArcBest is in a way it's it's sort of our superpower, right? Our hidden superpower. So we you know, we benefit from a in a lot of ways, just that inherent knowledge that the the other employees at ArcBest have about how real-world operations work. So when we have an idea of how to how to improve a process, or we or we talk to people about ways to improve their processes, we can we can kind of test those ideas or those hypotheses with people who can say, yeah, you know, this is how a person on a warehouse floor would operate that or would do that. And so we can quickly kind of narrow down how, you know, you know, how do we create a solution that can be effective in a real world environment? How do we handle real world freight and the challenges that come with that? Um, it's more than just having access to the to the test environment, which is wonderful, uh, by the way, to be able to take a take a prototype or a solution and test it in a real world environment and get that feedback. Uh, that's a that's a big that's a big benefit. But it's also just a team that inherently knows what's important and what it takes to do something in in such an industrial environment. So one example is is just the the IT team. And I mentioned how ArcBest invests a lot in innovation and and IT, but there's a whole team of people that understands the importance of a reliable IT network and uh in a secure IT network when we're putting uh you know advanced robotic solutions into facilities, that the cybersecurity topic is a is an important one. And we have a team of people that knows you know what what's necessary to have a good solution and something that our customers will be um will be nodding their heads in the right direction, you know, when you know, when we discuss, you know, the things that we're doing with respect to cybersecurity, with respect to safety uh and how much we invest and and the team that we have to to be looking at at safety and uh with our with our robotic solutions and and so forth, things like that.
SPEAKER_04:That is interesting. Um I hadn't thought of the safety aspect of it, but you're right. I mean, with with ArcBest having to operate these terminals and all the transportation equipment they have in the terminals, outside of the terminals, on over the road, et cetera, et cetera. And I know safety has been a big part of ArcBest's um approach, as long as I've known them. Um but I hadn't thought about that. That you know, that's something a startup wouldn't necessarily have access to that rich knowledge and background.
SPEAKER_01:Um Yeah, and it's it's also just um it's it's part of, you know, clearly for for almost any industrial company, safety has to be a part of their DNA, right? It's it's paramount, right? Um it's more than just a talking point. It's a it's the importance of you know, your employees have families to go home to at the end of the day. And so you have to do, you know, your job, or we have to have processes that that make it, you know, uh, you know, that that that show that importance, you know, that that our employees can can can go home at the end of the day. And um and and and sort of on on top of that, so clearly when when we're applying robotic solutions, the importance of putting safety systems in place uh is is critical, right? And we make sure that that is that is of utmost importance. Um, but then also the understanding of you know, for our customers, the cost of safety. So um, you know, when we talk about getting uh getting kind of people off the floor, part of it is is also reducing the liability of a company, you know, the and the the risk of you know, companies are paying insurance premiums based on the the the risk of a safety incident happening. And if you get people off the floor, and so our our systems are not just automating as much as possible, but the with the human teleop approach, the people that are then remoting in and driving those forklifts are in an office environment as opposed to on the on the warehouse floor. And so um, so you're you're you're further reducing that liability cost as well. That is really a great point.
SPEAKER_04:So I'd like to dig in a little bit more to the Vox smart autonomy. Um and um I was really intrigued by that. Um and and of course, as I said earlier, it's it's exciting to know this kind of technology is being um developed here in Northwest Arkansas, but it's really already developed. It's not like it's developing, it's it's uh it's a product that's usable today. But um, but you're still trying to develop it further. Um but if you wouldn't mind tell us a little bit about the building blocks of that. Yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_01:So um I would say at a at a yeah, at a basic level, it's it's that it's that network communications infrastructure that we go in. We you know, uh we we will install that at a customer. It's the IT integration so that we're can we can both you know connect our remote um our kind of the the remote teleoperation labor. Um and then the um and then on the on the robotic forklifts themselves. Well, before I get to the robotic forklifts, it's you have the communications network, and we'll go in and we'll map a warehouse. So we've effectively we're creating a digital twin of of a warehouse. And you know what you have that map of a of a warehouse and you we apply the robotic forklifts or the automated forklifts to that to that map uh to operate in that setting. So then the the additional kind of technology stack is the the fleet management. So when you have multiple uh vehicles operating in a warehouse and the and the sort of the traffic management of those vehicles is one layer of the stack. There's the safety layer of the stack that you know I touched on earlier to to make sure that the vehicles are are operating safely. They have all the sensors and the awareness of what's around them to uh to operate. Uh and then it's that that teleop uh setup as well. So we can operate you know um autonomously as much as possible. And we have we have the the sensor suite and the autonomy stack to do that. And then the um the teleoperation interface so a team a you know a uh someone can kind of see when a when a forklift kind of raises its hand and says, hey, I you know, I have you know below threshold confidence in a in a particular task and raises hand, and a teleoperator can can dial in, can see that, dial into that uh to that forklift and perform the task and then turn it back over to to the autonomous mode.
SPEAKER_04:So uh earlier Brian mentioned digital twins, and you can think of it as um if you think back to just regular discrete event simulation where you simulate something to figure out how you should maybe lay something out, design something. Um digital twins are a little different in the sense that it is simulation, it's simulating it, but it's doing it over and over in real time. So every time something changes, it's simulating the process. And um, as it simulates, then uh decisions can be made based on the output. Uh it's behind the scenes, people don't see it, uh, but uh but that's basically uh what it is.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there's the there's the simulation piece of of testing and building our technology, making sure that it works when it goes out into you know into the world. Um, and that that that's you know part of what's helping us as well as a lot of a lot of companies across the across the robotics ecosystem to you know to push these things forward. Um and then you know, when we talk about digital twins, you know, one of the other things that I'm I'm just excited, really excited about is how we are putting these technologies together to improve the data integrity for um you know for for for a lot in a lot of ways for for other systems. So uh our customers and a lot of businesses out there, they have you know WMS systems, warehouse management systems. Those that WMS software relies on good data about where the freight is. So a WMS system can can provide guidance on, you know, move this freight from from here to there, here's how the flow of freight should go. But uh sometimes when you have manual operation within a warehouse, that those pallets get put you know in different places that that you know, you uh it's easy to lose sight of exactly where your freight is. When you have a robotic or um or an automated approach to moving pallets around, you know where that where that freight is. And so I see kind of at a you know, at a if you step back, a lot of what we're doing here is part of this warehouse digitization trend of of improving sort of the amount of data that a business has about where its freight is in the warehouse, which just excel kind of kind of amplifies the value of things like WMS systems.
SPEAKER_04:That is a great point. Um Yeah, one of the things that struck me, and you know this, um when I first learned about Vox and what was going on is uh a problem came to my mind, and that is that you know companies have distribution centers in different regions, and uh sometimes the demands on those regions vary somewhat unpredictably. You might be able to know the total demand, like if you have if you have 20 distribution centers across the country, uh if you look at the total demand, it's fairly predictable. But if you get down to a specific DC, uh it may be that the demand on that DC is low when the demand on another DC is high. And this can be happening because of many reasons. It can be happening because of, you know, seasons shift over time, naturally. You know, you may need more gardening type supplies in one region earlier than you thought you would. And you may have it there, but you've got a constraint of labor um there. Uh and you've got labor in another facility that you wish you could teleport them there to use it, but you can't. Um and then you've got, you know, distribution centers where, well, it's um they're opening on the east coast before they are in the other parts of the country, and then they're closing on the west coast uh way after uh other parts of the country have closed. And and then there's just random variation that you can't really explain, but it exists. And so when when I first heard about this, I thought this idea of low uh you know load balancing would be a big benefit to many industries, especially retail and certain areas of consumer goods. Would you mind speaking to that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. And um, you know, we could probably we could we could probably nerd out for a while and talk about you know stochastic analysis and you know the the the quantitative analysis on on how do you handle you know these the the volatility and these things, but um, and and I even draw upon you know we talked about earlier about you know previous experience, you know, it's has similarities to things like portfolio theory and yes and uh you know spreading spreading the risk around by diversification. So so yeah, a a customer that has multiple warehouses, say across the country, and they have you know uncertain demand, and they're trying to match their supply of labor for for in in our specific situation, we're talking about forklift drivers labor, and they're trying to match that planned labor to the demand level. And the demand level may vary based on seasonality, uh based on the uncertainty in their um in their labor, you know, people you know, they have to be they have to account for whether people may call in sick or you know, be be available. And if you have multiple sites across the country, if you can pull that demand, you uh you're basically smoothing out the um smoothing out the you know your your volatility in demand. And so we're enabling you to pull that demand. So things like you know, the availability of labor kind of gets smoothed out, then also the timing variability there. So if a season out a seasonal business that, let's say, you know, in this in the springtime, you you know, based on the weather pattern, if when it gets warmer, people start to want to get out and do their spring cleaning or get out and and do their yard work and or you know, do their DIY projects a little sooner. So, you know, the building supply or the home improvement stores want to, you know, get their product onto the shelves sooner if you have a relatively warm you know end of winter. And um, and they might, they may or may not plan for that in their labor planning. And what we do is by pooling that labor together, they could turn that labor on quickly across their network of warehouses uh rather than have to plan ahead of time, either either, either overstaffing, uh, which costs money, or understaffing, which means that they end up with some you know stock out problems uh and not having the product on the shelves or available in their in their supply chain uh as early as they might at, you know, they might have it exactly when they planned to have it months ago before they knew how the weather would plan out, would pan out, but you know, too late relative to you know a relatively warm spring in that example.
SPEAKER_04:You know, I I think that when people first hear about this kind of technology, they think, okay, we reduce labor cost. And it's true. Um as you pointed out, you can reduce liability costs and injuries and things like this. But this ability to load balance, as you're describing so clearly, yeah, it reduces stock outs. That in some cases winds up being more valuable than anything. Because you know, especially if you're a supplier to the retail channel, if you wind up having late deliveries, not only do you miss sales, which is expensive, but sometimes you get charged for being late, and that's expensive. Um but the other thing is you uh if you can smooth that out, you don't need as much safety stock. So you need uh less safety stock. And I think it reduces bull whip. And this is something for those of you that don't know, uh bull whip is the idea that small perturbations in demand or uh requirements usage at the bottom echelon of a supply chain get amplified as they move up the supply chain, which causes additional problems like stockouts and safety stock. It becomes a vicious cycle. So anytime you can pool like this and st and really get to the root problem of these kinds of things, the whole supply chain operates more efficiently.
SPEAKER_01:And really just it's it's reducing that volatility, which reduces that bullet effect. But then all and then also the the greater data integrity of knowing what's in your warehouse is another, it's just another source of volatility. Uh, you know, sometimes they have to you know overstock because they don't necessarily know exactly what's in their supply chain. So both the data integrity and the ability to make decisions later in the cycle, you know, all reduces that, you know, that bull bull with the factory.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I hadn't thought of that, but you're right. Um that information accuracy solves a lot of problems. And and it makes people more confident when they're making decisions to know that the data is accurate. Brian, could you share an example of how Vox has moved the needle for a customer?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think the kind of the the clearest one in my mind is a customer that we worked with who was a little uncertain about using our remote labor. They love the idea of automating the forklifts, getting their getting their drivers off the floor, and but they wanted to use their own, you know, their own labor in in their facility. And so we were working with them on that. We were we were up and running, we were helping them, you know, with our robotic forklifts in their facility, and their labor was just in an office setting off you know to the side of their warehouse floor. But then, you know, you know, unfortunately, they they had a week where, for a number of different reasons, the the people that they had staffed to be manning their forklifts, you know, remotely operating but on site, were unable to be there. And they came to us and said, hey, you know, we we've already integrated our IT system. Uh, we're kind of in a bind here. We have product that needs to move, and our guys aren't here this week. Uh, can we, you know, is there any way that we could turn on, you know, Vox's remote labor to help us move this freight? And we were able to, you know, within about four hours, get you know, our our guys up and running, connected in to the to the forklifts operating in this customer's facility, and we were moving their freight for them that day. And uh, and you know, uh, you know, shortly after, you know, I was talking with the head of strategy at this business, and you know, he was just saying, yeah, that's a, you know, that this idea of being able to leverage, you know, a pulled group of remote labor is is really an area where where our feelings on this on this topic have matured over time or evolved over time because uh because it was so seamless of a transition to using this labor that you know is really you know very far away. And just but but connecting in and you know and operating in our facility and it worked and it worked really well. And so um it was just a it was a very uh poignant example of where you know you kind of saw the kind of the light turn on for a customer and how and how they saw well, wow, this this can be even more valuable than we even thought. Very impressive.
SPEAKER_04:Where do you see Vox going over the next say three to five years?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So in some ways, I'm really excited at just further penetrating the market. We have a solution that works and just getting the word out and working with more customers, solving more customers' challenges and you know, it with getting this solution out there and and applying it and rolling it out and making a difference for more and more customers. I think, you know, I think about some of some of the research and development that we're doing, in addition to continue continuing to to improve our product and our and our solution, but um some of the the the real game-changing things are this, you know, this furthering the idea of digitizing the warehouse and and providing even more data on you know the location of freight and um and to to enable their um to enable you know things like their WMS systems and their visibility of their operations and their workflows. And um, I see that as a way that we can really um have a really large impact on, you know, it's not just you know, while we can reduce their cost on things like moving freight on our, you know, on our MPs, you know, in and out of trucks, and we can reduce their operating costs in their forklift operations. But when we really show them the great, the the amount of uh the greater data integrity, the amount of information that they can have about you know the location of their freight in their facility with the you know the digital twin technology and things like that, you know, taking moving that forward is is something that's got is gonna be game-changing in the industry.
SPEAKER_04:So I know I've been around ArcBest for 30 years, and I know they've got a very human-centered approach to business. And um and I know it goes way back before I was ever introduced to ArcBest. And Vox is focused on robotics and automation. So I'm just curious, um, how do you balance that um with the human-centered approach?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So so one of our leaders recently said, you know, in an interview, you know, technology drives change, but it's the people that make it happen. I like that. And it's it's kind of, you know, if you take a step back to like how ARC best treats its technology in general, right? We're not turning systems over to AI, you know, agents. We're using technology as tools for uh for our people to help our customers more and more. And so uh and and Vox is you know, what we're doing here is we're we're bringing tools and solutions to our customers that allow you know people to um to be more efficient, to use those tools to to just be more productive. And um, and I think that's a lot what we're you know, what we're doing.
SPEAKER_04:So Vox is um you know creating a lot more visibility and information that's useful to systems like WMS, ERP, et cetera. What are you thinking about there and how do they link in and help?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think that you know, a lot of that there's a lot of potential. And there are companies out there that are selling the dream of of what can be done, you know, in a future world where you know there's a there's a perfect digital twin for everything. And then you could you could have a simulated kind of uh you know, a simulated version of of what of what's going to happen and have you know a lot of information about that before you actually do things in the real world. And um the reality is that the data in the real world is very imperfect, and but the the more data that you can provide and collect and have that data integrity, the more you can simulate kind of decision making, you know, simulate decisions going forward or simulate workflows or provide guidance on uh so in our world, it's how to flow freight around in a warehouse. Um and there are a lot of other companies that are in all walks of life talking about how to how to create these these digital twins that can simulate decision making, whether it be in the defense industry or or otherwise. Um but we are we are doing our part of this, uh, you know, in you know, intralogistics or in the warehouse. Uh so Art Buzz Box, we're focused on, you know, how are we moving, moving freight around or moving pallets around in a warehouse and providing better data uh for that. Things like, you know, and I didn't even haven't even really spoken about it yet, but our Box Vision product, which is which is a new product we're working with early adopter customers at this point, but it's an on-the-forklift dimensioning capability where you know cameras and sensors that can be installed onto a forklift will capture the dimensions of freight. It's used, you know, it's important to anywhere you have multiple parties that are passing freight around, whether it's a 3PL moving freight for another customer or a vendor sending freight through a B2B distributor where you know they they want kind of good data integrity around what the dimensions are of that freight, which helps them move the freight, you know, either either price the price their services more effectively or more accurately, or move the freight more efficiently through their supply chain. So we're excited about that and bringing that solution as well.
SPEAKER_04:That's great. So what advice would you have for, say, a leader in a company that's trying to future-proof their um intralogistics capabilities and operations?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, what I would say is you know, from my experience in the robotics space, I'm I'm a real believer in what we're doing with the human-in-the-loop approach, to not try to fully automate everything and make that large and upfront investment in infrastructure to have a fully automated lights out system. Um, you know, I'm I'm a believer in applying automation where you can. And but the the human in the loop approach that that we have is is what I feel like is the right way to say, let's automate what we can. Let's have a human kind of dial in and do what's challenged what's currently challenging with existing state-of-the-art technology, but we can continue to push and push the ball forward. I think it's the right balance to make a real impact on real world operations, reducing operating costs, um, but kind of moving the ball forward with automating and improving. You know, it's it's all about continuous improvement. And, you know, we're getting to a world where, you know, we'll have a lights out warehouse, and but that's that's a pretty far down the road. Uh too far for me to make, you know, a uh to justify a business case for building a business. Um and I really too far for I think for our customers to be justifying their spend on robotics. But I I really believe, you know, the approach of saying let's automate what we can, and this this human-in-the-loop approach to uh you know to to handle you know the cases that are challenging, it's uh it's at least my advice on how to how to make improvements and make your investment in automation uh pay off quickly.
SPEAKER_04:You know, um of course I think if ArcBest could have said, okay, we're gonna design someone's experience so that they're perfectly suited for this job, you you would fit that. But my question to you is, and you've already moved the needle. Um I've heard just your uh ability to articulate what Vox is about, where you're going, uh is impressive. But what are you most excited about in leading Vox in the future?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm excited to be a part of Art, part of ArcBest. I mentioned the cultural elements of that. It's a it's a group, it's a team that I'm just proud to be a part of, I think is one. Um I'm excited to be making, you know, have a an opportunity to build this business that can really make a difference in how, you know, where how our customers and are are performing their warehouse operations and making a difference in how you know, kind of the the efficiency of the supply chain. We're doing our part, you know, to to make the supply chain more efficient and and lower cost and and everything. And uh, and it's exciting to be to be helping customers in that way. And you know, and honestly, the more the more customers we help, the more um the more jobs we create for for our own team. So I believe, I believe we've got a great culture and we've got a great business and a great team to be to be building. And so, you know, creating jobs that are uh that are rewarding both emotionally and financially for for our team members and our employees is is what kind of is a big part of what it's about and what what makes me gets me excited about about things. And so um really having having a really good time, you know, basically with the people I'm working with, with the customers I'm able to work with and the technology uh being at the forefront of this technology um is uh is great.
SPEAKER_04:Well, Brian, this has been so much fun. I I really feel like I've learned a lot through this and about what Vox is doing, where you're going, the benefits. Um thank you for taking time to to share with us about this. We really appreciate it. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, Matt. It's really uh really a pleasure to be here with you.