Welcome to the 14th newsletter for 2026!
A quick note before we get started: If you are new here, welcome. I use this space to write through what I am seeing and learning across warehouse design and automation as the industry evolves.
Is automation's reputation actually in danger?
Last Thursday, I joined Kevin Lawton on The New Warehouse for a LinkedIn Live around a question Kevin floated a month ago and the comments got loud enough that he wanted to dig in further.
So we did.
We talked about the current state of warehouse automation, what's actually behind the projects that fail, and how you tell the difference between a bad vendor and a bad fit. Two things I think too many post-mortems get wrong.
If you've been following this newsletter, a lot of what we covered will feel familiar - the gap between the slide deck and the floor, what ownership actually looks like once the integrator leaves, why "it scales" is usually the most expensive sentence in the room. But live conversation forces you to sharpen things in a way a solo essay doesn't.
Worth a watch if you have an hour.
Hit reply if anything from the conversation sparks a question. Happy to go deeper.
– Parth
News
Thoughts? Questions? Feedback? Reply to this email.