MCJ Supply Chain Solutions: Kai Beckhaus

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Kai Beckhaus of MCJ Supply Chain Solutions discusses the intricacies of learning how to interweave IoT, robotics, and the human element in manufacturing.

 

 

Danny:

All right. So let’s jump into today’s executive series. I have Kai Beckhaus who is the president at MCJ Supply Solutions. Thank you so much Kai, for joining me today on the IndustrialSage executive series.

Kai:

Thanks for having me, Danny.

Danny:

Excellent. So, for those who aren’t familiar and we were just kind of chatting a little bit, before we started here. Tell me a little bit about MCJ Supply Chain Solutions. You’ve got a little bit of a joint venture going on there, so yeah. Who are you guys? What do you guys do?

Kai:

We’re bringing Jungheinrich supply chain solutions to the North American market. Jungheinrich is one of the world’s leading intralogistics companies based out of Hamburg in Germany and is cooperating for more than 10 years with Mitsubishi Caterpillar Forklift America, to bring forklift truck solutions and that’s mainly electric trucks to the North American market. And almost two years ago now, Mitsubishi, Caterpillar, and Jungheinrich have decided to build up a joint venture to bring automation and further supply chain solutions, which also include a specialized rental fleet here to the market. And that’s why MCJ is bringing AGVs, our robots here, to our customers in the US, Canada and Mexico.

Danny:

All right. Excellent. So, we’re going to dive into this, a little bit more as we get it, but right now I kind of want to learn a little bit more about you, Kai. I want to learn about your, your background, your career, how you got into this. How, tell me, you know, take me way back. How did you get into this space?

Kai:

Yeah, perfect. I actually have a software background there. So as a teenager that was a hobby and that’s my backbone. And then I attended the university, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and also a year at Imperial college in London with a focus on economics, computer science and law that was a combination course there. And after that, I added a PhD in Munich, as I wanted us to really see, to combine the practical aspects of the world with the theoretical university things that I learned there, and at the Technical University in Munich there, it was a good time, doing the PhD. My start after internships was Nokia Networks and the Boston consulting group really, in the worlds of real work whilst as a freelancer for a marketing agency in London.

Danny:

Oh, really?

Kai:

Right. I think it’s a really interesting sector, still. And I look back, it was exciting at that time, writing white papers for big IT companies there on success stories, customer reference stories. That was a good time I had. And then I started with Jungheinrich almost a dozen years ago now, and started off selling warehouse management systems and that was IT systems where the customers really manage all of their warehouse operations electronically. And my role was to gather the requirements, write specifications, talk through with the customers, what functions there are and what their needs are, where it was good learning, really listening to the customer and listening to exactly what the customer needs. That was a good start off there.

Then the need emerged from the market, that the Jungheinrich engineers were developing really cool features assistance systems, which are, for example, semi-automation. A track with an operator on board, would drive to the destination, with just giving speed and no searching there, but the target needs to be set from the IT system. And there was this gap, the customers’ IT system being any ERP system, product planning system, warehouse management system. We’re not able to send the data in the format that the truck would ask for the data. So there was this gap to bridge and so that fitted perfectly with my work previously in the PhD. So I was tasked to really install and then head a group to do this middle of integration. We call that logistics interface as it’s really an interface to link different logistics solutions together. And that was a great time creating a software and deploying it in these applications and adding more and more applications form these VNA trucks with semi-automation, to AGVs, to dynamic racking solutions. And there’s a lot of different applications that can be connected in that now.

And the next step there in the career, I was looking forward to going back international. But mine boss assigned to work from Singapore for some time there for Jungheinrich to roll out those intralogistics solutions in the Asia of Pacific region, which was a great time traveling through Asia Pacific based out of Singapore and helping our customers to make use of those technologies that were until then predominantly in Europe, with our customers. So that was a good point there in Singapore. Coming back, I quickly moved over to more management roles, portfolio product management, which is designing the future of the products and also the market intelligence department for the logistic systems which I headed before coming back to the automation sector, really, and being promoted to head the AGV implementation worldwide in the three different time zones. And there, we really saw Europe and the Middle East and Africa. In here it’s one region and really the different time zones, other world regions for your Jungheinrich there. So Asia Pacific, where I learned how they are operating, earlier on and then bringing automation to the North American markets with the focus on North America, but also Americas. So the Latin America region as well. And that was when we started really to prepare, “How is the best setup to bring those AGV solutions to our customers in North America?” And we prepared the foundation of a joint venture and that’s how we ended up here. And I was then, after the preparation, asked to head the group and act as president for MCJ Supply Chain Solutions’ joint venture between Mitsubishi, Caterpillar and Jungheinrich there to bring our robots here to our customers. And it’s been a great time here based out of Houston in Texas so far for almost two years now.

Danny:

That’s awesome. That’s quite the story. So you’ve kind of been around, around the world a little bit and not only that, but just, I think it was interesting how you had the stint in marketing for a little bit. It sounds that you said you were writing, like customer case study, testimonial type content, articles. And then, if I understood correctly, so you were at Boston consulting before that, before the marketing agency, or?

Kai:

That was an internship during my university time in Boston.

Danny:

Ah, okay.

Kai:

And that was a good learning and insight as well. And so that was a good internship there. And then as a freelancer at the end of the university time, and then full time really working for Jungheinrich then starting off after the PhD there.

Danny:

That’s excellent. So obviously, you know, a lot of change has happened, in the industry over the last several years. You said, you’ve been with… for almost a dozen years, lots of change there, for sure. So, if you were to kind of look back over your career, obviously you’ve had several different career moves and lots of different experiences. Is there somebody that jumps out to you that has really made it a defining impact in your career? And it could be, maybe it was even somebody not inside your career path. It could be when you’re in school or during, do you have somebody that kind of jumps out at you?

Kai:

Well, actually it’s one person but first of all, I think it’s very generic. What you read a lot in these books, but I fully believe in: that it’s the sum of all the bosses you have worked, really… is something which is really important. And I would really advise anyone to choose a job, not only from the task that you’re supposed to do the job description, but also who are you working for? What can you, how can you evaluate that? And what’s good and what’s bad about that. And to be able to learn and gather experience for yourself there. So it’s really different bosses that I have worked with. And one single event that has really learned me how the importance of feedback was actually at the Boston consulting group where I was as an intern, early twenties of age. They were tasked to create a big excel file and we were working on a post-merger integration. And so that was a big spreadsheet pulling in data from a database. And one of the senior consultants in the review for this task then came to me and said, “I have worked for Microsoft previously and I even joined the excel-lovers group,” or what they call it there. “I’ve seen many spreadsheets, but that’s really one of the best I have seen, you did a great job there.” And you can imagine how that really felt as a young star there, just starting your career as an internship. And that really taught me how important feedback is, that event and how important it is to really, let people know both constructive, how to improve, but also what went good and what’s good traits there in people. And that is something which I now try to pass on in mentoring younger folks. I think every age is suitable, whether you’re young, in the middle of your career or at the end of the career. It’s important to really give back and promote others. And we really support the heroes from tomorrow there.

Danny:

Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s some great insights, But yeah, you mentioned the power of feedback and liked how you mentioned. It’s not just, obviously, like critical feedback, not critical in a negative sense, but even just in the sense of like constructive, but also another sense of like really shining, and identifying those positive, those moments as well, Just kind of uplifting. So that must’ve felt pretty darn good. Somebody who worked at Microsoft and this worker thought, you know, said, “Hey, that’s actually a pretty darn good sheet you’ve got there.” So that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So, moving forward a little bit, obviously, you’ve got a lot of experience in the industry and we were mentioning, there’s a lot of change, earlier. You know, talking about AGVs and AMRs and all the digital transformation that’s happening, all the robotics. The AI, the AR, the VR. Add anything with an “R” I guess, but the there’s just a lot happening right now. And then you add in the whole, like COVID thing that, which just seems like it’s just accelerating everything exponentially because of just huge need to be… What are some of the challenges that you’re seeing in the industry relative to some of the, maybe the changes?

Kai:

Absolutely. I fully agree. It’s an exciting time. There was a lot of different change, really that’s there. And when you look back at whatever point in time you ask people, “How much change has there been in the past?” People were upset, even when the car was invented, wow. With the car, it’s a lot of things. But I think looking back at the past 10 or 20 years, it has been a tremendous impact for us. And now with the Covid-19 crisis, I fully agree there’s even more change. And I think one big trend in this industry is that you can reach everywhere. And it’s, I think, very strong demand for automation and digitalization. That is very clear that automation will benefit from this crisis where people see that a reliable supply chain is very important and the intralogistics parts. So having robots inside the warehouse is one piece of it.

And I think also those further automation that you can see in trucking and even planes operating fully automated or drones. I think all of that over the long run, will see a spike in demand and push in the developments. And for us in our industry, it has been an exciting road in the past already with keeping up with the growth. And I think that is one of the really big challenges there are. That’s right, now in the crisis, even though maybe the demand with a lot of clients goes down a little bit, other companies are already starting it. We see the different industries that are not hit as hard by the crisis, still have the time and budget to now invest and look into these automation projects and other industries like automotive or those that are hit harder there might just go out of it after the crisis, that is similar to what happened in the financial crisis, just when there is the light at the end of the tunnel.

Danny:

Yeah.

Kai:

That’s when really you say, “Okay, I plan for budgets and investing into automation and projects of this size.” So we’re looking forward to that. And coping with the growth has a lot of challenges that really all industries and all of the industry players, that is just normal things. When you grow significantly, double-digit numbers every year there, it is important to keep up with the structures, finding and then also retaining the good staff is very important. The talent, it’s one of the most important things there in this setup, where the digitalization automation, it’s a lot about expertise and customizing the solution, the fit to the customer and saying, “What’s really the demand the customer has.” And making that a perfect fit with the product offering. And that’s just something where the best people work together and building those solutions and a great thing to do.

Danny:

Yeah, absolutely. And what I think is very fascinating, it’s interesting, you were mentioning there, you’re like automotive, for example, they’re taking a hit right now. And I’ll go ahead and preface this statement with you know, when we release your video here, which is probably going to be several weeks, I’m sure things will have changed a little bit by then, but maybe not so drastically. You mentioned the things are starting to kind of shift a little bit. It was interesting, March and April was just complete, I mean, frozen. And then you had industries that were just going nuts, right? And then you had other ones that were going down. But what I think is very, very interesting, we’re going to start seeing now, and we have seen is a lot of pivoting. I mean, obviously there was a huge pivoting from, we’re going to go from a manufacturing standpoint and it was all about the masks and the ventilators and all of these different things, and shifting and having the ability to be able to adjust to that, I think is critical. And, I think that that is one of the things that we’re going to start. We’re going to see a little bit more, you know, maybe put it into, lean manufacturing or, just the ability to be able to adapt. And especially that seems to be an interesting theme that I don’t think is going to go away for a little bit. And so I think the companies were starting to adjust to say, “We need to plan on flexibility. Our things are… We don’t know what it’s going to be like in the future, we have ideas and we hope.” But, what have you seen? Relative to that? Have you seen that?

Kai:

I absolutely agree. The flexibility is very important in these setups as well. And that’s why it’s good that the… And you mentioned the different technologies there earlier on. What we have as robots today in the industry is far from what was decades ago and first AGVs that we’re following a inductive line there and just being very static. Nowadays, those AGV solutions that we have out there are all independent and have laser navigation, and it’s easy changes in the layout. So every customer that opts for an automation right now has the flexibility to change it and adapt it to their demand. And what we see is that especially those industries where the quality is important. That’s one of the big benefits you have in automation as well. Less damages with people. And even if the job market has a lot of people that, as the effect of this crisis as well, would be willing to drive in a forklift truck, they are untrained. And instead of training and damages, dealing with damages. Any repetitive tasks, anything where it is really off for… automating something which is standard, repeated where the quality is very important, turns off.

And also from the ROI perspective, it’s very interesting for a lot of people out there to make sure that supply chain operation is elevated to the next level and is crisis resistant and performs just what it’s supposed to do, but maintaining the flexibility once business grows. And you mentioned that Danny, that manufacturers of respirators, for example, they have a very high demand and also for those, it’s very important that they have an AGV installation to plug in another AGV, to increase the fleet size and be able to cope with more demand. So that’s why the flexibility of the systems it’s very important from the product and solution offerings that we have for the clients that are looking at those, but also for us as a company to see how can we help best the different industries and the different customers where there was a shift in the industry. And as you mentioned, some industries are quicker, some are slower. That’s very important to just adapt to that.

Danny:

Yeah. And I think one of the cornerstones, one of the pieces to being able to help, to be able to adapt and have that flexibility very quickly, is this the sense of interoperability you mentioned, having to be able to quickly like, be able to deploy another robot, whether that’s a robot inside your ecosystem, or maybe it’s another AMR, or there’s some type of AGV. I know there’s a lot of talk right now about standardization and trying to develop some sort of standards. What’s your take on all that?

Kai:

I agree. And that is driven by the automotive industries. And it’s a very important thing. The very first installation that we have installed here in North America is for the company TRUMPF and the smart factory near Chicago they have. And there we are actually operating alongside with a different AGV and interacting there with that other AGV. So that is becoming more and more, an important step there. And I agree that those standardizations and the systems need to tie together. Where, I still see a question mark, from the perspective where the industry trend is going is about this software layer that manages all of the AGV.

Danny:

Right.

Kai:

And that’s assuming, and I know, of course it sounds compelling at first to clients to say, “I have one system, and then I plugged 10 different kinds of AGVs in there.” But the importance really is the AGV is an intelligent piece of it, but the real intelligence is in the layer above it that controls everything, that avoids that these AMRs and robots one into a deadlock. That makes sure that all of the safety zones are observed and so on. And there, it gets really difficult if you break out the system to make sure you get the best out of it. And you break the boundaries really, when you say all of the different plug-in together, but who has the control over the complete fleets then? Would that be one of the vendors plugging in other machines, but that software wouldn’t know the functionality of that machine that well. So I think that is one crucial aspect that the industry will be working on. And that is just very transparent and to be solved in a similar way to just give you an analogy there. Also, we have seen a lot of drone delivery stories and companies developing in that space, and that is very good. And there has been really good use cases in rural areas, or even bringing medicine to islands or to people living in the mountain off-site. That is definitely a lot of good use cases. But imagine you being Atlanta, me here in Houston, that 20 different companies send drones around for delivery, there needs to be a completely new layer of air travel control for that as well. And that’s similar here. Yes, every startup that does a drone can do self autonomous flight and so on, but they can also stop and identify an obstacle and stop them.

Danny:

Right.

Kai:

But what if the airspace is occupied and we have that in the warehouses? So if the AGVs block each other, there needs to be one complete layer, which the vendors have and where everything works together, but there to open that up and tie other AGVs. And that’s one of the challenges for the future and this standardization topic.

Danny:

Absolutely a big challenge for sure. And as a pilot, the drone story scares me a little bit, but no. Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, that’s a very complex , very complex challenge. I think it’s… One that we’re going to see, just as the way the industry is going, it’s going to be addressed and it’s going to be tackled. Be interesting to see what the final solutions kind of roll out to be. So but listen. So Kai, I’ve really enjoyed our conversation here. So for those who would love to learn more about MCJ and about your solutions, what’s the best way of them getting to know more about you?

Kai:

Yeah. Actually you can follow us on LinkedIn, look up the page, or on the web: mcj.team. That also links to both the Jungheinrich and MCFA portfolio. So that’s really how people can find us and we’re happy to talk about customized solutions there helping the customers elevate their supply chains to automation and supply chain effectiveness.

Danny:

Excellent. Well Kai, thank you so much. Thanks so much for your time. Be safe, be well. I hope everything, opens up more for you, as time kind of goes on, hopefully quickly.

Kai:

Thanks Danny. Thanks for having me.

Danny:

Anytime, thanks. All right. Well, there we go. We’re wrapping up today’s executive series with Kai Beckhaus who is the president, MCJ Supply Chain Solutions. So if you’d like to learn more about them, you go check them out. I believe the website was mcj.team. You can learn about all the innovations and the products that they’re kind of rolling out with.

That’s all I’ve got for you today. Thank you so much for listening or watching. I would encourage you, if you are… If you found us, if you’re listening to us on a podcast or you’re seeing us on social media or on our website, if you’re not our email list, I highly, highly, highly recommend you go to IndustrialSage.com. Get on our email list. There’s a lot of great content that’s coming out all the time. We’ve got webinars, we have news, we have executive series, we have other series that are rolling out as well and you don’t want to miss it. So that’s all I’ve got for you today. Thanks so much. And I’ll be back next week with another episode of IndustrialSage.

 

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