60 Seconds with… Dwight Klappich, Research Vice President, Gartner

Dwight Klappich, Research Vice President, Gartner

Title: Research vice president and Gartner Fellow

Location: Atlanta, Georgia

Experience: 43 years of experience in supply chain management, including 22 years at Gartner.

Q Modern: A lot has been happening in the robotics space, especially since the start of the pandemic. How do you sum up the state of the market right now?

A Klappich: First, it’s about labor, and based on research we did at Gartner at the end of 2021, it’s about labor constraints and not labor costs. Finding and keeping labor is driving the interest in materials handling automation, and not just robotics. What I found interesting at Modex is that even the highest-level automation companies were focused on robots. Robotics can’t do everything that conventional automation can do, but they can do what they do faster and for less money.

Q Modern: What caught your attention at Modex?

A Klappich: First, so many more companies are offering robotics today than two years ago. And, there are so many options, from robot-to-goods systems to goods-to-person systems to sortation systems. The challenge is that there are almost too many options. The customers I talked to at Modex were almost overwhelmed by the options and were trying to figure out what to do. I saw that in the data in your research study, where 62% of respondents said they were in the discovery phase.

Q Modern: Speaking of the survey, what else jumped out at you?

A Klappich: I think the state of the market is that people don’t know where to turn for assistance. In the survey, 67% and 63% respectively look to MHE suppliers and robotics vendors for help. That’s partially due to the fact that the traditional consulting organizations were a little slow to develop robotics practices.

Another issue is that not all solutions are at the same level of maturity. For instance, picking robots are getting better, but the success rate is less than an autonomous mobile robot that moves from A to B. If piece picking robots can’t pick in the high 90% range, users will go back to humans.

QModern: We also heard from respondents who are already using robots.

AKlappich: First, I noted that 28% of those were already adding more robots to their fleet. And, they weren’t just expanding the existing fleet. They planned to add different robotics platforms. That’s significant, and it suggests that the technology is working out for those who adopt robotics.

QModern: The early adopters of voice started with picking, and then began to look for ways to use voice in other processes. Is robotics headed in that direction?

AKlappich: Yes. I believe that in the next decade, a high percentage of medium to large companies will have heterogeneous fleets of robots.

QModern: What is it going to take to integrate all of those different pieces together, and then integrate them with a larger automated system?

AKlappich: The good news in the survey was that 86% of companies plan to increase their robotics fleet over time, and they’re looking at other robotics platforms. The bad news is that this introduces a new challenge, which is: How do I integrate the work across a fleet of robots and integrate the robots with other systems?

It’s not an issue yet, but it’s going to be as the use of robots expands. The industry needs to be cautious that system integration doesn’t become the barrier to adoption because in traditional automation, it is the issue. Systems integration has to be flexible, adaptable and easy.