IndustrialSage

IndustrialSage


Executive Series Highlights

July 05, 2020

In today's executive series episode, we want to take a moment and reflect on a few of our past executives and highlight some of their insights. David: Hey everyone, I'm David Caron with IndustrialSage. Today's executive series, we want to take a moment and reflect on a few of our past executives and highlight some of their insights. Let's start with Cory Flemings of JBT, who had some great insights about automated robots AMRs and AGVs growing in the workforce. Even in some environments we may not expect like hospitals or subzero freezers. Cory: Many people would, I guess, be surprised to find out that many of the hospitals that they go to actually have behind the walls are automatic guided vehicles running, running behind the scenes. Danny: Really-- Cory: For example Ohio State University, they have, I think, 64 vehicles at the facility and they, it's really an intralogistic system of the hospital. Danny: Yeah. Cory: You've got food to deliver, you've got dirty laundry to take out, you've got trash to take out, you've got surgical cabinets that need to move, supplies come in from the supply room that need to be distributed through the hospital. There's a logistics system that's completely automated in that hospital, that actually has elevators that go from the basement all the way to the 23rd floor. Greenville, South Carolina has a hospital that's completely automated. Danny: And that's all behind the scenes kind of thing-- Cory: The patients don't even know that they're there. Danny: Okay, interesting. Cory: What we're starting to look at now is moving with AMR assistance to move into patient rooms using these kinds of AMR vehicles as well. What's rather new in the marketplace is a vehicle that will actually work in minus 20 degrees centigrade temperatures. Think about how much it costs your labor if you have to, those of you who have at least freezers know how much you have to pay for labor to go work in a freezer all day. So these vehicles live in the freezer and they work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They get charged by, getting charged through the wall. The chargers can be outside the freezer, they plug up on the thing that comes through the wall and the vehicle stays in the freezer and keeps working. Revolutionary really, it's been something that the freezer companies have been asking for a long time. _______ David: Next, we had Tim Vargo of Exide who discussed business sustainability and addressing the desires of different generations within the workforce. Tim: Everybody's always looking for the easy solution and so lithium has come on board here over the last decade or so, people are saying "Lead acid is dead, lithium is the solution." Kind of forgot lithium's got a lot of stuff in it that people don't like either and isn't good for the environment and oh, by the it's not something that's completely recyclable yet and may never be. Danny: Really. Tim: And so, um, so we're, we're dealing with a couple of things, we do lithium today, we buy lithium cells, we assemble them, provide solutions for a variety of different energy needs from backup power to motive power for forklifts and that sort of thing. But, it's a complicated problem because the industry isn't old enough yet to have developed the full recyclability. So we've got to be good stewards of that product as well, though, and that's exciting. Now that I'm old enough to remember people saying that when I was young,