BONUS: The Future of Intralogistics featuring Siemens' Joel Thomas and Markus Thiel

0:00Robotics is also ergonomics. If you think about it, just the picking of product back and forth, if you can have somebody else do that, it saves them harm. Let the people go do something more valuable than do a repetitive pick. And so that's where robotics is helping the labor force. Welcome to Manufacturing Happy Hour, the podcast where we get real about the latest trends and technologies impacting modern manufacturers.

0:29Each week, we interview industry experts that are at the top of their craft and give you the tools, tactics, and strategies you need to take your career and your business to the next level. And now, your host, Chris Lukey. Hey, what's up, folks? We've got a bonus episode for you. And it's a bonus episode focused around one of our most manufacturing adjacent topics, logistics. We have Joel Thomas and Marcus Thiel from Siemens Intralogistics joining us on the show this week. And we actually met up at a brewery during the annual MODX show. This year it was down in Atlanta in the late spring. and we cover everything from what excites them about intralogistics, as well as trends such as why so many logistics companies are focused on standardization.

1:22We talk about everything that's going on inside the four walls of a warehouse, robotics, edge computing, and more in today's episode. So let's meet up with Joel and Marcus.

1:42All right, so we're here at Halfway Crooks here in Atlanta, Georgia, during the Modex show. And we're going to be talking intra-logistics today. And I think obviously very appropriate, but, you know, very much a German brewery where we're hanging out tonight. And Siemens being a German company, I think that's very fitting. So you're one of the partners on the event tonight, and we are about to fill this place very, very soon. So, you know, in the spirit of manufacturing happy hour and the fact that we've got some beers in front of us right now, you got your vice beers. I've got my Pilsner. Let's talk about intralogistics the way you would if you were just chatting with someone over a beer about it for the first time.

2:23Because for context, we got a lot of folks across the manufacturing industry that listen to this show. Some are within the logistics space, but a lot of them are in other spots. So let's start there. Joel, maybe if you kick us off, you've been doing this for over a decade. How do you describe intra-logistics when you're having drinks with someone? So when people ask me the question, what do I do, right? I think the easiest thing that I say is there's a lot of online retailers that are out there, right? And when you use that, you start purchasing something, and then you go from there and you place an order.

2:55Well, when you think about it, it is the delivery of that product to your house, for example, right? That is what we do. So it is the movement of finished goods within the four walls of a warehouse is really what Intralogistics stands for, okay? And that is what we do. And at MODX, we are, you know, working with a lot of the OEMs, the manufacturers, the integrators, and everybody, and the technology providers that work in this ecosystem that help figure the solution out. Marcus, what would you add to this? Perfectly said, I would just add it's the whole material flow and the corresponding information flow, which is, let's say, more of the technical description.

3:36But that's exactly as you said. It all comes together in the warehouse, and you fully automate the warehouse. And that's, let's say, the full stack of technology which we bring into that area. Yeah. I'm very interested to hear from your perspectives how intralogistics has evolved recently because you're one of the few companies that really brings the real world of intralogistics together with the digital world. Let's start by describing what the real world of intralogistics looks like. Digitization aside, let's talk about that and then we'll bring in that aspect. I think that'll highlight why it's so important.

4:15Yeah, I think we've seen evolution, right? You talked about manufacturing, right? And your client base talks about manufacturing a lot, right? So when you talk about warehousing and this aspect of warehousing, what we really look at is it started with pallet jacks, right? Some boxes on a shelf and how to transport this back and forth and what was the plan. Now you have automation and so you have additions of conveyors, right, to simplify the transport of these products. Now, you know, with the labor force kind of being a obstacle, we have added more automation such as robotics, AGVs, you know, all these other tools that can go inside a warehouse that makes it useful, right?

4:59And so how do you coordinate this? How do you make it happen? How do you put all of these together is really what has the evolution begun. And I think, Marcus, we can talk about our factory in Europe and what we do, because that's where we really get to test out a lot of these solutions as well. Absolutely. And maybe to add on some stuff, it's about really being more efficient and efficient means also being faster and also being more flexible because all of the material which is getting transported is being changed more often. So it gets more and more complex. And then talking about our factory, that's exactly what we do.

5:35Or actually today we're using all of that technology, which we are also bringing here to the show or to our customers. we're using also in-house. So we're first testing it in our factory, optimizing it, and then we can also, or it's the best way to showcase to our customers what kind of impact our technology has. And the good thing is we're also now currently rebuilding our factory or we're actually upgrading it. And also a new warehouse is going there and it's really showcasing what we can do in terms of technology. Yeah, maybe we can use that as a bit of a case study as well, where appropriate, because I want to break down a couple of the digital aspects of this in more detail.

6:14Let's talk about robotics and that's impact on intralogistics first. I think that's a great spot to start before we get into some of the other digital technologies that have come up. Robotics, yeah. Why is robotics becoming more and more important? I was just talking about flexibility, about increasing our flexibility, about adapting towards also different capacity situations. and so it's stepping away from more fixed not only storage but also sorting and everything and what helps you is robotics and also what joe was talking about it's about labor shortages so the less people you get to do the stuff the more you need to automate and the more also robotics is helping you in all kinds of facets in all kinds of ways and in terms of being mobile and flexible to move things around, but also to picking them, to placing them.

7:03So it's really a huge impact or a huge technology which is necessary or which is supporting interlogistics. Absolutely. And one other thing with robotics is also ergonomics, right? If you think about it, just the picking of product back and forth is just repetitive, right? And if you can have somebody else do that, it saves them harm, right? It's let the people that actually can do certain things, go do something more valuable than do a repetitive pick. And so that's where robotics really we see picking as a really instrumental piece that is helping the labor force as well. Yeah. So we're talking about, I would say, traditional robotics a little bit here.

7:40Let's take that a step further and talk about AMRs, autonomous mobile robots, and AGVs where appropriate as well, because I know a lot of people sometimes use them simultaneously, but in the industry, we know those are two very different things. Yes. Yeah, maybe talking about AGVs or AMRs in that regard, I was just talking about our factory in Europe, in Germany. So there we have quite a fleet and also different AMRs which are running around, which is doing really the material flow for a production line in this case specifically. And yeah, that is definitely a huge impact. And we also now have the capability of managing this fleet and everything because you have so many different vendors which are out there, which you need to orchestrate and so on.

8:26And all this needs to be managed in some kind of way. So, yeah, AMRs, they're more and more increasing. Again, it's about that flexibility thing. So you need to be as adaptive as possible. Yeah, absolutely. And then the different technologies, right? You know, we started with AGVs and now we're migrating into AMRs, right? You think about LiDAR technology, you think about all these sensor companies that are out there providing these technologies that are allowing us to innovate from a standard fixed location, AGV to an AMR type this, right? People are saying that AMRs someday could replace conveyors, right?

9:02I'm not sure if that's always going to happen just because, you know, I think still it's from a cost prohibitive standpoint. But we do see customers that are looking at using AMRs as their vehicle of choice to get transport from A to B. And how do you orchestrate it? And I think that one thing that Marcus touched on is one thing that we've seen as major challenges in the industry. Because a lot of these solutions don't have, you know, everybody has their own version, right? And, you know, and how do you do that? And one of the things that we saw was the orchestration layer of this was very, very challenging.

9:33And we needed to figure out how to fix that. And so we came out with a software that helps us because we saw it in our own factories and now we're providing it to our customer base. Yeah. Yeah. I want to go back to a topic. Well, actually, Joel, I'm going to ask you this question first. Have you seen anyone have more of a more or less a conveyorless operation yet? Is that I know you said people are talking about it, so I don't even know if that exists. But I'm curious if you've come across something that's even close to that. I can tell you that I haven't seen that 100%, but I do know we are meeting with a customer tomorrow, and that is one of the discussions we are having.

10:12All right. Okay. So people are thinking about it. We haven't necessarily seen it in practice yet. Marcus, I want to go back to something you were saying around interoperability. You were working with a lot of different vendors. As I understand it, there is maybe somewhat of a trend. People are looking for some standardization a little bit in this space. In what way are folks looking for standardization? Because to think of with all the interoperability strides we've made in logistics in the past decade or so, I'm very curious to hear what the appetite around standardization is right now. Yeah.

10:44So there's always two sides of the metal, right? The one thing is you want to be as flexible as possible in terms of vendors. But on the other side, and that's how historically all the things have grown, different sites are coming in, different distribution centers. You always look for the best cost solution. So you all get different vendors coming in and then you kind of like struggle. Okay, I have a system here. I have different spare parts here, different maintenance costs there. And I cannot kind of like scale also the solutions which I'm trying to roll out. So that's really the charming thing about standardization is to be repeatable and to not only do it one time, but also overall, it's really saving you operational costs in the end.

11:30Yeah. Well, let's dive into another area, and that's around edge computing in logistics operation. We've talked about robotics. We've talked about mobile robotics. We're going to get into some of the things that aren't as easy to see with the common eye. So Joel, maybe you can start us off on our edge computing part of the conversation. So edge is a very, very interesting topic, right? It's a topic that's been growing and growing and growing and more and more, right? It's that data layer. You know, Chris, actually, it kind of goes into hand in hand with the standardization topic, right? You know, if you think about it, what customers are trying to look at is how to find an even layer of truth, right?

12:15What are my factories actually outputting? What are my roadblocks? What are my challenges, right? You know, I know we tabled the digitalization aspect as well. But what really what we are seeing is that people are wanting to understand what are my roadblocks? You know, like where is my bottlenecks in my factory right now? Okay. How do I optimize that? Because is it relevant for me to just go out and go out and spend, you know, millions of dollars on a brand new factory? Or can I use and understand what is happening in my factory through the edge, right? And do in certain aspects of it. Predictive maintenance is another one, right?

12:49You were talking about AI. One of the things that we're doing across many industries is understanding. And before, we used to have to be able to, let's say, analyze a system, have some people in the background look at the data and say, oh, this is the action and this is the causation and this is your remedy, right? Well, now you can use AI to take a look at it for, and what we do is like seven days. It can track and get an idea of what's happening on a day-to-day basis, right? And then what you're looking for is anomalies, right? So like if you see variations, how does that variation now impact?

13:26And that is where AI, like, so not just in the US, people speak English, right? Well, you can use AI to translate that language into Spanish, right? German, whatever you want, you can use that AI to do different things for you. Also, the agents, you can use it to figure out what different things do you want to talk about, what do you want to ask it, and how do you help optimize your solutions? Yeah. Let's just paint the picture of we started with intralogistics in general, what the logistics world looks like minus digitization. Now that we've talked about these different ingredients, everything from robotics to artificial intelligence, where we are now, paint the picture of a digital first logistics operation.

14:11And, you know, we can go back and I would say we can all go back and forth on this. It doesn't necessarily need to be a one on one answer. Like, let's let's start, Marcus, what's one ingredient? What's one thing that fits into that digitized logistics operation of the future? starting first building the full thing digitally within your cad system for example so it all starts with the first design of an automated warehouse so and i want to bring that up in the first step well so no it's a no it's a great first step so designing digitally from the beginning joel i'm going to ask you this question paint the picture of what it looks like for an engineer in that scenario, right?

14:54If you have started from that digital first mindset, that digital first design, what does the day in the life of the engineer in that facility look like? So, you know, you, well, first you have digitalization, right? But even prior to that, you know, for the engineer aspect, right? You're thinking about what can you do? Think about what is it that we as engineers are, you know, my background is engineering. It's always reactive, unless you're doing, you know, product development, and then you're looking at the future future standpoint, right? When you have this digitalization, you could run so many different scenarios to understand how do you optimize, right?

15:28You know, I need to add this new piece of equipment. Well, instead of putting that and taking down my production, right? Can I now simulate that and understand what's going to happen? And what is that behavior? If you know, we're tying back to AMRs and AGVs, right? Well, what happens if I add five? What happens if I add 10? What if I don't need 5 or 10 and it's 7, right? These are things that engineers can do now with that digitalization model to really understand what your throughput analysis is and really look at bottlenecks. And that is the benefit that we're seeing because a lot of the designs that we're doing, what are we doing first when we start building a new factory?

16:08We built the digital twin, so pretty easy. Tell us about the digital twin in the factory a little bit. So digital twin, I mean, you were just starting and it's not only about building, having everything being digitally built, but also then optimizing it, of course, in the digital world. And then and the most critical thing which you have is always to really have the real time digital twin. So you need to get the data out of what is happening in the real world. and you were just elaborating on that topic edge is you need to get the data out of it and then consistently bring it back to the digital twin in order to further optimize it and then bring it back again to the digital, to the real world.

16:47So that's why we have our nice infinity loop just sticking to that because that's really describing it in the best way and it never ends. So you're always there digital, real, real digital. And so that's as easy as it sounds, that's how it goes. It's not as easy as it just sounds, but at the same time, You know, when you look at this, you know, energy costs are increasing, right? So what if you can actually digitally find out what is it going to cost us to operate that plan? Do you need, you know, if you're making a really large distribution center, do you need, you know, more power from the grid, right?

17:19So these are things that we can simulate before you ever do anything because now you understand what the real costs are, which are advantageous for, you know, a new setup. Yeah. we're going to switch gears here a little bit because I want to ask about your backgrounds because you each bring something different to the intralogistics world that we're talking about today. I'm curious, is there anything you wish I would have asked about intralogistics today, in the future, the digitization of these operations that I haven't yet? And we can come back to this at the end of the conversation, but I didn't want to leave anything hanging before we gotten to a bit more of a career conversation?

17:59I think the biggest change that I've seen in the industry, right? You know, and what has impacted to me is the growth, right? I mean, you were at Modex, right? You know, having this conversation. I remember when Modex was first started, right? You know. When was that out of curiosity? What year or so? I want to say it was before COVID. Okay. But not like, we're not talking like 2005 or so. No, Modex, ProMed was one that's been here around for a longer, right? Modex is more and more, you know, as every other year in Atlanta, right? Promat being the long-running logistics show and then Modex being what's, what characterizes Modex versus Promat?

18:37I would say more supply chain basis. Yeah, yeah, supply chain basis. But, you know. It's always cool to see when folks are talking about supply chain before everyone started talking about it in 2020. Yeah, 100%, right? You know, COVID changed everything for us, right? And then you see the explosion of growth with the number of vendors showing here, the different aspects. And what I would say is interesting is you never realize that how certain components really make an impact. But you would never think that a caster is an important, critical thing, but it is huge, right? And so that's where the association that puts on this event has all these different industry groups.

19:15And, you know, and people are there to promote the industry, help out the industry and, you know, really take off our hats where we work and help promote the industry. Right. So it's one of those things that I've seen the explosion of growth. Also, the different technologies. I would say, you know, if you asked me five, seven years ago, I would say that Europe was way ahead, you know, when it came to automation technology and what was happening. Now, I think the U.S. has caught up, if not, you know, maybe surpassed it. I think China is doing the same thing and they're doing lights out, you know, operations.

19:46And I think this is where it's going is that there's just more and more innovation and aspects happening in the industry. And I would just add, it's really sustainable growth because, I mean, what we are doing or the industry is doing is, you mentioned it in the beginning, right? It's about the delivery. It's about we're becoming more and more people. We want more goods. We want more individualized goods. And we want it faster, sooner. And so that thing will not stop. It will further accelerate. And it's great to see all that technology, which is helping to now also accelerate that development, right?

20:23So we've got about 10 minutes left in our conversation. I wanted to each hear about your backgrounds and how it's served you in this space. And Joel, I mentioned at the very start of the conversation, you've been doing this for over a decade. So, Marcus, we're actually going to ask you first, because as I understand it, you were working in the business unit at Siemens prior to this. And this is kind of your first entrance into the intralogistics world. As someone that's newer to this space, what are your first impressions? What has stuck out? Yeah, right. So, actually, it's only been since October 25, so six months now.

20:58Yeah, six, not even a year. It's not even a year. So I really, in terms of really industry deep dive, I just jumped right in. And it's from my point of view or some insights, it's really, really exciting because material flow is such one of the key and main things which you have in terms of value adding. because wherever you go, interlogistics is relevant. And that is really such an exciting thing. And talking about all of the technology, when we think about automation technology, everything is relevant for interlogistics. And to see that, and I mean, you just mentioned how Modx developed or evolved.

21:36And I was at Logimat in Stuttgart three weeks ago. The same thing, you see just so many exciting new developments going in that area and all of the vendors and the suppliers and everyone, the players, it's just growing and growing. And yeah, I'm absolutely excited to be part of that. And my background, maybe as we were just referring to, my background, so I'm coming more of the manufacturing operations area. So that was always, let's say, a part of my whole career. So I started also in supply chain management, actually, a couple of years back. And yeah, so now I'm really more than excited to be part of that interlogistics role in driving it further and working on all that great technology, which we have.

22:25Yeah. Joel, now you've been doing this for a while. What, I mean, we were just talking about it a little bit like pre-COVID, post-COVID. I mean, what are the things that stick out to you that have changed the most during those 10 plus years you've been doing this? That's a great question. I mean, personally for me, right? I'll just leave personally. It's not maybe the differences, it's the people, right? I come back to the people. I stay in this industry because I'm absolutely in love with it. I remember my first MHI conference, getting exposure into this industry. I asked the industry, the team from MHI, what can I do to be better?

23:08You know, and I remember we were just talking recently. I said, Joel, you're one of the people that came to us and asked, how can I help? Right. And it was always just taking off your personal hat. Right. And just being a personal person to go out and talk to people and just introduce yourself. You know, the one thing that you can in this industry, if you say, can I help? People are willing to do anything to help you. Right. And that's what this association has done for me, what this industry has. It has built a career for me and my family. Right. And that's what I can say is people that stay in Intralogistics, I don't think they like to leave at all because it is a great area to work.

23:44It's a great area to focus. And then Marcos is saying how every single aspect uses Intralogistics or material handling, right? It doesn't matter if it's an automotive sector, if it's consumer goods, right? If it's food and beverage, they all need to distribute products, right? And so all of that needs to, and there's been this growth. And the singular, you know, when you said singular, most impactful, I would say e-commerce. Yeah. That is the growth engine for all of this, right? You know, e-commerce, the kegger on e-commerce is just crazy. And it just continued to grow. And so as soon as, as long as that is going, there's just more and more people coming into this industry and this entire ecosystem.

24:23Well, it's interesting because one of the last things I wanted to ask was how do we get younger folks into the industry? And I know you're actively working in your efforts with MHI to make that happen. So maybe describe what MHI is, since we haven't necessarily mentioned that in this conversation. We've been talking about MODX, but describe what MHI is and then how you and MHI are going about getting the next generation into this space. So MHI is the association that puts on these trade shows, but they're also, I call it like the governing body that helps us understand what material handling is, right?

24:58How do we create some of the standards that we're talking about? How do we create a community where people that have the same mindset come together and say, this is what's best for the industry overall? That's why I said, take off your hats, put your company aside, talk about what's best for the industry, and how do we impact with that? I can tell you that one of the first things that MHI did that impacted me was, and made me think about stuff differently, was this aspect of how many engineers we need in this marketplace, right? And I remember a study that was done in one of the industry reports, and it said we need a million more engineers in this market than we are outputting right now and gaining in this marketplace.

25:40I can tell you that it ignited a passion in me. I serve on the board for the Mitchell Hanley Education Foundation. And one of the coolest things that I get to do is I get to give out scholarships to students. So at MODEX, you will see student days on Wednesday. And that is a number of colleges and universities coming together, high school colleges, bringing a bunch of supply chain, like-minded individuals that are young and impersonable. and we take them out to all these different booths and show them what it means to be in this industry, right? Give them a glimpse and then hopefully they want to stay in this industry and they're excited for this industry.

26:19And so it's a huge opportunity for us. It's a passion of mine because the way that I feel is, you know, the industry has given me so much. How do I give back to it, right? And this is, you know, like the biggest thing for me is when I see these kids that I have walked around these shows with, they, you know, we follow on LinkedIn and they will ask me for career advice, you know, in the future. We stay friends, right? And it's just been... Are you a mentor to any of these that have entered the industry since you've met? I'm very curious to... Absolutely. And that's what I said. People ask me for advice on what it is.

26:52I always tell them to get in LinkedIn with me and just have a conversation. It doesn't matter if it's this company or B. I don't care. I just want to help the industry as a whole and bring more people into the industry. So you're starting to see folks that you might have interacted with, like at a show five, six, seven years ago, be in these type of whether it's engineering roles, maybe even leadership roles already. You're like following along with them as well. Absolutely. It's so fun to watch that. Well, this is going to be a tricky part to top at this stage as we wrap our conversation. You were Marcus.

27:26I knew actually you were both talking about this earlier. What is the thing that excites you the most moving forward? We've talked about how with the rise of e-commerce, not even the rise of e-commerce, just that it's even more ubiquitous than it used to be. That's only going to cause the industry to grow. That was one of the exciting elements we talked about. Anything else stick out? Maybe for me to start off, the whole transformation towards more software defined, I would say. because that's, let's say, also giving an additional impact of where the next level of automation and everything is going to.

28:05And that combines everything we were already touch-basing. And we also had various chats, I believe, also in the past days. More and more is going into that direction, IT, OT. Everything is going more into the IT-style world. And I think that is really another driver or impact or changing force in terms of technology, which is really exciting. And we hope to be playing a significant role there and helping the industry, as you were saying. Yeah, I think this ITOT layer is really the, we're touching the surface of it. There's a lot of people playing in this and we're trying to figure out what that is going to be.

28:45But software-defined automation is going to be the future because, you know, there's a lot of variabilities out there. and standardizations and software-defined automation. What are people programming in? It's not going to be the same languages that we programmed in before, and that's making a big shift, right? Because people are very used to programming in Python or some other software IT-based languages, and we're starting to see a big push into that from an industrial world. Well, I look forward to a part two at some point, diving further into software-defined automation. I wouldn't be surprised if that occurs at automate sometime in the near future might be appropriate spot for that.

29:26But with that, gentlemen, thank you so much for jumping on. Prost as we wrap our conversation. Prost. Thank you. Cheers, gentlemen.

29:39Hey, folks, thank you for listening and thank you to Siemens for jumping on this episode. And thank you for being one of Manufacturing Happy Hour's 2026 partners. Truly appreciate the folks at Siemens for sponsoring this episode. With that, that is a wrap this week. Stay innovative. Stay thirsty. We will catch you again next time. Cheers. Thanks for listening to Manufacturing Happy Hour. Powered by the Industrial Network.