Detailing the Similarities Between Software Implementation and Warehouse Design

[00:00:00.000] Hello, Matt. How are you doing?

[00:00:01.290] I’m doing fine. How about yourself?

[00:00:03.060] I’m good. Thank you very much. It’s the end of the week.

[00:00:04.950] It sure is.

[00:00:06.110] Today, we’re going to be talking about a specific subject. You and I had the chance to work together on the project recently where we married the work on the physical design of things and the digital design of things. We put up a building for one of our customers, and your team implemented the WMS that they use. First of all, that was a very fun project when we get to and collaborate together. It also, as we know, marrying the physical processes and the systemic processes is very important. That’s what yields the best results for our customers. We cannot think about these two elements separately. They have to be thought together. That’s something that we know and that we’ve applied on that project, which led to great results. But something interesting that we learned on that project and that we discovered is that the steps leading to a facility implementation implementation in a facility construction are very similar to the steps leading to implementing a software. That’s something that we found was interesting. The idea today is to discuss these similarities to help the audience, the audience that are more tech savvy to understand the physical side of things and the audience that is more on the physical side of things to understand a little bit better how an implementation of a software goes.

[00:01:27.600] So that’s the idea.

[00:01:28.910] Sometimes it’s just fun to think of a building a software as a similar element because the software is very intangible. It’s difficult to understand what those different steps are and see it build out, versus if you think of a distribution center, it’s easy to think about, I’m finding the right field. I’m understanding how I’m building up the walls. I’m looking at how the rack is going in, and you see it build as you go versus software. A lot of times people think of it as I’m buying it and then it’s ready to use when there’s a lot of different steps that take place, very similar to the steps that take place and standing up the building and just comes to life throughout the different implementation. And that’s when we were speaking in the CAF and I thought of doing this podcast just because there’s a lot of similarities, and it Hopefully, it’ll help people visualize how systems are built through how distribution centers are built.

[00:02:21.010] Yeah, so let’s take it away. So the first step, and the way this is going to go today, I’m going to talk about the physical side of things and Then we’ll talk about the systemic side of things, and we’ll see the comparison side to side. The first element is, even before a project is planned, customers want to have an idea of what they’re getting into. That means for me, when my customers say, Hey, can we visit some sites? Can we see similar operations operating with some technologies, some equipment that are susceptible to make sense for my operation? Could we visit those sites? We often take our customers to some of our potential customers to some of our customer sites so they can see the process, the equipment, how is the layout laid down, how does it work ultimately altogether. Or sometimes you can even take them to what we call tech centers or innovation centers. Some integrators have facilities where they display a bunch of technologies that they offer. That is also very interesting for our customers because they can see different types of technologies, visualize them for their operation and say, Hey, this could make or that could make sense.

[00:03:31.420] So it adds a layer of trust as well at that point, because when we talk to our clients about new facilities, new processes, new equipment, it’s hard to visualize, but that helps them see sites in action and give them that level of trust that, Hey, you know what? It actually can function and it works. It’s a cool thing to do, and it helps convey the idea to our customers how their operation could look like.

[00:03:57.660] And it’s very similar on the technology side. So if you Let’s think about the pre-sale cycle. From a physical infrastructure, people have potentially designs or CAD designs to help them out understand what the facility is going to look like. There might be renderings of what the facility is going to look like, just different data is going to support that. If you go on the technology side, it’s sometimes a little more… You need to be a little more creative, like how the system is actually going to work for you because you haven’t been in the system before and you don’t really understand how the system is going to support the physical infrastructure. Sure. One thing that sometimes comes up, and I find it’s a really good question that prospects ask, but it’s very difficult one to demonstrate is when a client says or a prospect says, Hey, show me how the system is going to work for me. And you get pretty close to how the system is going to work for them. But ultimately, that’s what the implementation is about. It’s like a prospect telling you, Hey, show me what my DC is going to be.

[00:04:56.870] I want to walk my DC. You can’t really walk your DC busy before you actually stand it up. So similar to what you were saying for a client visit, if you think from a technology perspective, the closest that you’re going to be able to get, and that’s where you need to stay creative as someone that’s going into a digital project is understanding, Well, there might be a showroom. So you can think of a showroom as a demo with some demo data. So it’s not exactly your operation, but it’s going to be as close as it’s going to get before you complete the implementation or talking to a reference, similar idea. So it’s not going to be exactly what you’re going to do, but you know that a similar industry is able to be supported by those features. So there’s an element of trust that has to be built at that point, because although you’re going to try to get as close as possible, in a technology implementation, you are building those blocks to see how the tool is going to work for you. So very similar idea whenever you’re in the selection process of a distribution center or a software.

[00:05:52.040] Yeah, good.

[00:05:53.760] So now that the client is convinced that the technology or the different equipment actually They trust us. They know it’s going to work. Well, really, now we have to plan out their specific project because obviously every project, every customer has some particularities, and we have to adapt to these. So now the idea is to plan the project. So for example, on the physical standpoint of things, one of the first things you want to do, if we’re talking about, let’s say, a new facility, is where do we want our facility? We want to understand, where is the heat map in terms of what region do I serve the most? There’s a logical location for our distribution center to be, where is that? First of all, we can figure that out for our customers to help them conduct site searches. The other element will be to have a very high level idea of the size of the facility. Not necessarily going into really laying it out, but having a general idea of, Okay, well, your facility should have 200,000 square feet. Therefore, you should look for a 400 or 500,000 square feet site. Really help them guide those site searches.

[00:07:00.080] Also, it gives them an idea of budget because obviously, to have a go, no go, if you talk to the board of directors, for example, you have to have an idea of the investment that you’re getting into. It’s at that phase where we also get rough order of magnitude budgets to give them the idea of this project is going to cost X, Y, Z. That’s when you engage also the key stakeholders to have their buy-in. And really, they can start making up their minds about the project at that point. So it’s really everything that comes pre-project.

[00:07:29.470] The One thing maybe I’d add, and I think it’s a good parallel, is also how once you’ve defined, to your point, where is going to be our building, what’s the size of our building, where are the key components that we’re going to need to it, what is the budget associated to that? If you think a system point of view, it’s a very same high-level planning of understanding where are the different softwares that are going to be included in this implementation, where are the different features, are there going to be any integrations, what are our integration protocols? Not necessarily understanding the mapping of these, but just understanding what systems are included, what systems are talking to each other, what systems may be stand-alones. So just understanding that high-level architecture similar to that high-level building budget, but also a project plan. And a lot of people, when they think about technology implementation, they say, Oh, it’s very different from building a building because a building is very traditional, very waterfall type of approach. And I agree, but at the same time, I feel like they’re very similar in a way where a building is going to have a waterfall project implementation method methodology where you can have these gates and you’re going to have these sign offs to be able to move to the next step.

[00:08:34.740] Technology has a very similar way of working where you’re going to want to confirm the design. You’re going to want to do initial configuration before going to intent testing, so on and so forth. It is very similar in terms of Waterfall methodology, but where there’s sometimes a bit of a debate is there’s going to be some iterative feedback in each one of these steps, which is going to be similar in a construction way of how you plan a project. You’re going to plan a high level project plan with these different gates, but then you’re going to iteratively work through it and you’re going to make these validation, get the feedback from the client, and adjust as you go so that you’re not waiting till the end to see the finished product. You’re seeing the product evolve. So maybe that’s the only thing I would add in terms of a very similar feel Where a lot of people, when they think of construction, they think very waterfall, when they think of implementation, very agile. The reality is no, it’s a mix of both because you need to have some structure to both these projects and some flexibility inside each one of these steps.

[00:09:29.310] Absolutely. I agree. It makes a lot of sense. Now that the team is on board, everyone’s on board.

[00:09:38.380] Ready to go, stakeholders are in.

[00:09:39.690] We know the project is viable. Well, the idea, really, when you What we’re going to end up a building is to come up with the layout. We had a general idea in the first phase, right where we said, Okay, it should have 200,000 square feet. Now we’re really getting into the details. What’s the size? The exact size, the exact configuration? What equipment goes in that facility? Do I have single deep racking, pushback racking, shuttle system, any type of automation, conveyors? What equipment should go in that facility, which obviously ties in very closely with the The services that are going to be in place. Any structural element, ultimately, the column spacing. You need a specific column spacing depending on the equipment to be able to operate properly. You don’t want to have a column right in the middle of an aisle. Operators won’t like you very much if That’s the design. It’s important to think about these elements through or different room sizes. How big is my fridge? How big is my freezer? Depending on the industry I’m in. If I have a narcotics vault, if I distribute narcotics. All of these other elements, a dangerous goods room, you might have some specification for dangerous goods item in terms of how they’re stored.

[00:10:54.460] I might need in-rack sprinklers. All of these elements come together in that layout. This serves as a basis for the other professionals involved in these projects because obviously, we have a general contractor, we have architects, we have all of the different professionals, HVAC, plumbing, electricity, civil, structural, all of these guys need to be involved in a project.

[00:11:15.510] You have your system integrators, right? That’s the whole idea, right? Absolutely. You talked about what is the facility going to look like? What is the size of the different rooms? What are the different zones that we’re going to have? Are there are going to be any temperature of controlled elements to it. So that, if we think of how a construction process then reflects on an integration project, as we’re at the blueprinting stage, because that’s really what we would call it from a design in a software, when we’re at blueprinting stage, we’re going to say, Okay, well, how does the physical infrastructure get represented in, for example, WMS? How many locations are we going to have? What are the zones? What are the different ways that we’re going to be receiving? How many receiving doors we’re going to have? We’re starting to set the infrastructure in the system that will then house the different processes. We don’t know yet what are all the different ways or all the different validations that we’re going to do during the receiving, if we’re going to do quality control, whatever that might be. But we know we’re going to have doors, we know we’re going to have base, we know we’re going to have this physical representation inside the software.

[00:12:19.500] As someone thinks about an implementation, that’s the first part that you’re actually building out and you’re starting to see your software come to life is when you’re taking those physical representations and you’re bringing into the software to build your initial canvas similar to what you were doing in a CAD drawing, you’re just doing it in a system.

[00:12:36.460] Now that we have a layout, what is the next step? Obviously, it’s building it out. My building, basically, Based on the blueprints, based on all of the iterations that I had with the rest of the project team, you start building the facility. You lay the foundations, the concrete slab, all of the HVAC, plumbing, electricity goes in. All of this This, ultimately, you build out the structure. You need a slab, you need walls, you need columns to support the building. You really have that structure that’s in place. That’s the first step. Once you have that structure that’s in place, then you can add all of the equipment, all of the elements that the operators will ultimately interact with because the operators don’t necessarily interact with the wall or the columns, but they interact with the systems, they interact with the conveyors, they interact with the racking. All of these pieces of equipment that allow for a smooth smooth and efficient operation will go in ultimately, which really is one of the last processes that we need to have in terms of building the facility. Really, equipment comes last once the skeleton has been put up.

[00:13:44.480] I think that’s another interesting parallel where you’re saying, Okay, well, putting the plumbing, putting the electricity, putting the foundation, how I’m seeing it from a system standpoint, how it translates is, Okay, well, putting in the integrations as the plumbing to communicate to the other system, loading the data as we’re thinking about building the columns. We’re just giving that space some structure to it, and we’re making it resemble what our starting point is going to be. So for a key implementation, before you’re able to start doing any Process is you need to load the data, you need to do the initial set-ups, you need to be able to do the initial configuration, you need to propagate that information out to the other systems, and you need to do that in a way that is sequential to help you build things out. You can’t build out an integration and test it unless you have your data that’s actually loaded in the system. You can start automating a certain process before you start creating your documents and being able to fulfill them. You can. So you need to set those foundation. And that’s really what the build stage in an implementation is to say, Okay, well, let’s just load the data in.

[00:14:51.130] Let’s create the integration. Let’s build the module. Let’s set the logic. And from there, we’re going to be able to then run small tests on each one of these elements to ensure that they work as a stand-alone solution. Similar to if you’re building a building, you’re laying that column foundation, you’re going to have someone come in and you’re going to say, Okay, well, is the column in the right place? While you’re laying the concrete, you’re going to do tests on the concrete to see if it works properly. You can think of a system in the same way. You’re going to build these smaller modules independently. You’re going to load the data, and then you’re going to do some tests on each one of these small modules before you’re saying, Let’s go in and let’s do this from beginning to end, because there’s no use of trying to do from beginning to end if the individual components don’t work themselves similar to when you’re building a warehouse.

[00:15:33.880] Absolutely. I think when we talk about the validation step, it’s true what you mentioned, when you stand up a facility, and that might be more intuitive from a system standpoint, testing different key functionalities and features, but it’s actually true also from a facility standpoint. Once you start building out the building, you want to make sure that does the water run properly? Is my electrical in place? Does it function the way I want it to? If I have, let’s a freezer or a cooler, do they meet the temperature that it needs to stay at? All of these elements are very important and have to be validated prior to an operation, naturally, to be able to adjust it if ever it doesn’t properly work. If my freezer is supposed to be at minus 20, but it’s at minus 16 for some reason, you need to adjust that because that could compromise some of the products. It’s important to really validate all of these pieces of equipment. It’s especially true for all of the equipment as well. For the structure itself, as I said, HVAC, plumbing, electricity, all of that, but for the equipment as well. I need to make sure that my conveyor works properly.

[00:16:41.640] Before thinking about the link between my conveyor When, let’s say, palletizer, I need to see if that does my conveyor work properly on its own. Does my palletizer work properly? Then, the integration, you’ll want to understand, Okay, well, is the conveyor passing those totals properly to the robotic arm Or it jams and it’s not doing what it’s supposed to do. Even though two pieces of equipment independently work, do they work together properly? That’s another element that’s very important to validate at that step.

[00:17:11.430] That’s an element that ties in really, really well when you’re thinking about an implementation and what leads up to someone being able to say, Well, show me how it’s going to work in my day to day, is you need to test these components individually, as you said, because there’s a lot of different people that work on these and you want to make sure that they work all visually before trying to see if they work all together. In a system, we could call that unit testing. So you’re testing every unit independently, same thing that you’re talking about. And then we go from unit testing once all the unit testing is completed over a certain module, we’re going to go into what we call integrated testing to say, how do all these modules work together? And it’s done in a very similar fashion than you would be doing in a physical infrastructure. You’re going to say, Well, from my WMS, when I’m receiving and I’m putting it on my conveyor, is it going to then be able to have the information required to sort it properly to the right whatever that might be. So independently, they could work.

[00:18:02.740] When you start integrated testing, there might be some tweaking that you need to do. And that’s just that extra validation step that you’re doing during integrated testing. And it’s nice when we did that project together, we had the ability to actually do what we call a Maa goly, which is replicating the goal line. So we were able to say, let’s do integrated testing in the new facility. So as we were testing the new facility, we weren’t We weren’t only testing the system, we weren’t only testing the N10 process, but we were also testing all the physical infrastructure that went with it. So was the WiFi able to pick up everywhere we needed to go with the doors open when we went into the freezer, right?

[00:18:41.650] Are the racks are going to make, right? Are the cases too high?

[00:18:44.230] Exactly. That’s really where you see that they play very well together. And when you think about doing an end-to-end test or a mock go live, well, you’re not only doing it from a system point of view, you’re also doing it from a physical point of view. And even if you weren’t implementing a system, you should be doing that exercise in a new facility. So both go very well together, but both should be done independently. So both steps are required in standing up a warehouse and standing up a system where you need to replicate how you’re going How are you going to use the system, how you’re going to use the building before you actually do so in its real capacity. And I think that’s a step that might sometimes be overlooked. Yeah, a bit overlooked. And then when people start using it, they say, Oh, the barcode, don’t read properly. I I can’t actually scan all the way up. These small things that no matter how much you test in a room and no matter how you speak on the AutoCAD drawing, you’re never going to get to until you actually use the facility. That step is extremely important.

[00:19:42.370] Yeah, absolutely. That is a little It’s a little bit into the next element, the onboarding process. Again, might be a bit more intuitive on the system side, but as you just described, no. Operators will be operating in a brand new environment, sometimes much higher than where they used to be. A lot of people move into facilities to gain storage capacity, so you usually go in height because you pay per square feet. The environment is really different. Even the equipment, just pushback racking is a different beast than single deep racking. It operates differently. People are not used to it. Might seem like a simple piece of equipment, but you have to get used to it and make sure you use it properly for a user safety. As you just said, when you have the luxury of doing that mock go live, walking through the facility and understanding the new equipment, how am I going to interact with that new equipment? How does it function? That’s something that’s critical for a successful implementation in goal life.

[00:20:39.820] When you think of security, we always think about security from a system standpoint, Like, do the users have the right permissions? Is everything set up properly? But it’s very similar from a physical infrastructure where you’re thinking, Well, who’s actually… Do people have their cars to drive the new equipment? Do they have the proper training to utilize it? Who’s who’s actually allowed to do it, who’s not allowed to do it, because as you start your operation, if that’s not well defined, similar to in a system, if the security is not well defined, then people are going to do a bit of anything to get it done. And sometimes it could be dangerous from a physical perspective, or it could be dangerous from a data perspective. So it’s very similar when you think of an onboarding process, is you need to go through the different steps saying, Okay, well, what are all the different employees or people are going to be interacting with this new facility, with this new system? What security should they have? What access should they have to the new building, to the new software? Where’s their responsibilities? What is their day-to-day going to look like?

[00:21:36.180] You need to show them that in a very precise manner. So whenever they start, they feel that they have knowledge of, Well, how are they using the building and how is this technology supporting them with the required permissions?

[00:21:51.080] Yeah. So now that everyone’s onboarded, people know how this is going to work. Ready to go.

[00:21:55.940] My goal life is done. Security is checked. So the next step, really, is to You launch the operation, right?

[00:22:00.910] Or the goal life. So now that we made sure everything works, operators should know how everything works by now, technically. Then you turn the switch on and you start operating in your new spaces. So you start potentially new processes, interacting with new equipment. You lose all of your reference because usually you were turning left at that rack, and now you have to turn right. All of these elements are new. The idea is you start operating the new facility, and we want to make sure that everything functions properly. It’s impossible that everything… We know that it’s not possible for everything to be perfectly 100% smooth.

[00:22:37.680] Mitigating the risk.

[00:22:38.600] The idea is mitigating the risk. Exactly. That’s why we’re on site during these operations to make sure that we can cap these little hiccups, if I can say, and we can then adjust them.

[00:22:47.700] We’re going to be on site if we’re setting up a new system or if we’re launching a new facility. It’s going to be the same thing. If you think about it from either physical or digital infrastructure, it’s the same idea. You know that when If you’re going to launch something, if it’s a new distribution center, there’s going to be required support because, like you said, people were used to turning left, now they’re turning right. They weren’t used to actually using double deep rack, now they have to. So there’s going to be that additional element of support that is required for both a physical and a digital implementation. And the way they support is a very similar way that you support where you need to be on site, you need to be available to answer questions, you need to set up different levels of support. So the first level of support should always be the business themselves ourselves in a physical or digital implementation, then if they’re not able to answer the question for change management, then they come to us and we’re able to support through that. So it’s very interesting how when we’re saying an implementation and we’re saying, Hey, we could help with implementation projects on the physical or digital And then the structure side, as we’ve seen, the steps are very similar.

[00:23:48.640] The rigor is very similar. It’s just applied in a different fashion. The goal today was also to walk through these, so hopefully people could see a distribution center being built in the different parts of it and how it comes to life and how the DC is going to work for them. But similar how the system comes to life. And a system comes to life in a very similar way than a building comes to life. And that’s why there’s no… Yes, you could fast track and implementation, you can make sure that you have the right resources and right availability from those resources on it. But things take time because there’s certain steps that need to be followed in a very similar fashion. Then a distribution center gets built up, a system gets built up step by step. And if you try to skip a step, or you’re just going to end up working additional effort and backtracking onto it.

[00:24:39.160] Yeah, absolutely. And as you mentioned, the last steps after go live very quickly will be to adjust these hiccups. A slotting is a good example. The customer told you that this mug was three feet by three feet by three feet, but you realized that it’s just a mug, right?

[00:24:57.870] Finally, it was the case that was three feet by three feet. You have the three feet, not the mug. Yes, exactly.

[00:25:01.910] You have an item, it doesn’t fit where you wanted it to fit because you have wrong master data. Well, you’re there on the fly to adjust it, find a location that can take on that skew. Really, it’s the fine-tuning and making sure that everything becomes smooth. Those are the next step after the go live is make sure that they reach their cruising speed and you implement some small improvements here and there.

[00:25:24.550] Yeah, physical as well as a digital. Physical could be certain racks need to be repositioned because certain layouts have changed or the products have evolved, whatever that might be. And it brings me to the last point, which is maintaining. You need to maintain your system like you need to maintain a slotting or even like a physical facility You need to have your racks inspected every now and then. Same thing that you need to have your software inspected to a certain extent every now and then to make sure that you’re leveraging, that people are leveraging the functionality as it was instructed or that if there’s new functionality available, you’re able to leverage that, so on and so forth. So it’s very similar when you think of maintaining it and the ongoing support of a distribution center and a software, you need to think, Well, my business evolves, my needs evolve every 3, 6, 9 months. I need to take a step back and look at where I am and see if I need to make any adjustments or alignments.

[00:26:18.210] Yeah. I guess to conclude, the last element that I wanted to talk about is the collaborative aspect of this project, because there are a lot of-Incerned dependency.

[00:26:28.460] Yeah.

[00:26:28.700] If you think about standing up a warehouse, consultants like us that come up with the layout, we need to work closely with architects because architects will say, Hey, I need to put a man door here to respect the building code. Okay, well, does that work with our layout? Does it affect our processes in any way. We have to work with the structural engineers. If they say, Your column spacing doesn’t work, well, we have to revise our layout, but we have to maintain the integrity of the operations throughout that process. The aspect of collaborating with all all of these different parties is very, very important in these projects. I assume it’s similar to you guys. If ever we talk about integrating other systems and so on and so forth.

[00:27:08.550] It is the same idea. You’re going to work with other vendors and you need to collaborate well with them. But I would say, as importantly, we need to collaborate with whoever is standing up the building because, for example, if you’re saying, Hey, we want to design this process, and the technology doesn’t support that process, you’re going to build this very fancy building, but the technology is not going to be able to support it or vice versa. So as you’re talking through your design and you’re thinking about how you want the inventory to flow through the facility, it needs to be a close collaboration between the system integrator for the warehouse management system and the design team to make sure that everything works properly and that we’re able to match the features in the system to the physical implementation that’s happening. Yeah. Well, thanks for taking the time. I thought it was really fun. It’s always nice to see how these things are so close together and hopefully it helped everyone understand how a software comes to life through all this and how a distribution center just mimics a lot of the steps to this implementation.

[00:28:13.630] Cool. Have a good Friday, everyone. Enjoy.