I’ve always had a passion for continuous improvement. As a Certified Scrum Trainer focused on business agility, my life revolves around asking tough questions every day: What can we do better today? Where can we make meaningful shifts in our processes so tomorrow is more efficient, more innovative, and more human-centered?
This relentless drive comes from a deeply personal place—my Unrelenting Standards Schema. While it might sound daunting to some, it’s precisely what keeps me energized: never quite settling, always looking for that next level of excellence. I’ve learned to live with it and have it serve me well, but I do feel the unrelenting pressure sometimes.
My Roots in Logistics
Before diving into the world of software and technology, I spent nearly a decade at FedEx Express (even doing operational efficiency audits). From 1994 to 1997, I worked at DFW Airport, and from 1997 to 2003, I was at the AFW Hub in Fort Worth, TX, managing the nightly sort/aircraft operations. My job centered around bringing inbound freight off aircraft, getting it sorted for its next destination, and then loading everything back onto planes—all within a tight 3–4 hour window.
When you think about a 24-hour workday compressed into a handful of overnight hours, you quickly realize how crucial coordination and efficiency become. I oversaw hundreds of employees in a massive warehouse environment, with the singular goal of launching aircraft on time, every time. We had conveyor systems, of course, but that was the extent of our “automation.” Everything else came down to humans, hustle, and meticulous processes. Despite the heavy manual effort, that experience laid the foundation for how I view complex systems: many moving parts and one core mission.
Transitioning to Technology
In 2003, I traded in the tarmac for developing software and enabling organizations to harness the power of technology. In many ways, it was just another flavor of the same challenge—coordinating thousands of people, tasks, and processes to deliver a product or service on schedule and at high quality. We’ve come a long way since the days of shipping physical CDs full of software. Software as a Service (SaaS) fundamentally changed the distribution model, freeing up teams to release updates continuously.
Yet that same principle—continuous improvement—still beats at the heart of it all. In agile coaching, we emphasize daily stand-ups, retrospectives, and incremental sprints precisely because we want to refine and adapt our process faster than ever before. Having lived through the intense, high-stakes environment at FedEx, I’ve found that agile’s “inspect and adapt” cycle resonates deeply with the mentalities forged on the night sort ramp.
The Spark: MIT AI and Business Transformation
Recently, I’ve been taking a course at MIT on AI and Business Transformation. Right now, we are learning how artificial intelligence and robotics are reshaping entire industries, including warehousing. The more I study this field, the more I see parallels to my early days at FedEx—only now, we have powerful automation tools that can handle much of the heavy lifting we used to do by hand. The conversations around Warehouse as a Service feel like a direct extension of the SaaS revolution: an on-demand model that provides flexibility, scalability, and real-time operational capabilities without the typical overhead or upfront capital costs.
One of the most compelling examples of this shift comes from Symbotic, a company that’s pioneering advanced robotics to deliver high-density automated storage and retrieval systems in existing warehouse facilities. Their robots operate in layered, three-foot “floors,” zipping around at speeds of up to 25 miles per hour, shuttling goods to precisely where they need to be. The end result? Greater speed, near-perfect accuracy, and 24/7 operations. In fact, Symbotic’s robotic systems achieve an accuracy of Six Sigma—one error per million actions—thanks to the machines’ meticulous precision.
In an interview with Daniela Rus at MIT, Symbotic CEO Rick Cohen explained how these robotic arms and mobile robots coordinate with each other to store and retrieve items randomly, thereby preventing congestion and ensuring optimal throughput. It’s akin to a “giant digital twin” of the warehouse, a massive logistical puzzle that used to require huge labor hours—now managed by an automated system that rarely makes mistakes.
Take a look at this video to visually appreciate what they are accomplishing.
Warehouse as a Service
Symbotic’s approach has sparked conversations about “Warehousing as a Service,” much like how we think of “Infrastructure as a Service” or “Cloud as a Service.” Cohen likened it to AWS in the cloud-computing world, where outsourcing these core functions simply becomes a no-brainer once the efficiency gains are proven.
Major retailers like Walmart and Target have already integrated these systems, drastically reducing inventory errors and speeding up turnaround times. Beyond Symbotic, Amazon has famously experimented with advanced automation in its fulfillment centers, deploying entire fleets of robots to move items from shelf to shipping.
As many have emphasized, robots aren’t about taking away jobs; they’re about removing heavy, repetitive, and error-prone tasks from human hands, freeing us for more purposeful, creative, and impactful roles. When warehouse robots handle the grunt work, human employees can focus on quality control, customer service, and process optimization. This is a natural extension of the collective intelligence concept we see in agile teams, where collaboration is key, and each participant—human or machine—does the part they excel at.
Toward a Human–Machine Collective with Agile
If we apply agile values here, the relationship becomes clear:
- Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools: In an AI-driven warehouse, “individuals” can include both people and robots. The crucial point is meaningful, real-time interaction. People can oversee operations, handle complex exceptions, and continually improve the system, while machines handle repetitive tasks reliably.
- Responding to Change over Following a Plan: Modern warehouses must adapt quickly to shifts in demand, shipping disruptions, and supply fluctuations. AI and robotics allow for real-time data analysis and rapid reconfiguration of processes, much like agile sprints adapt to emerging customer needs.
- Customer Collaboration: In logistics, meeting customer expectations for rapid, accurate delivery is everything. Warehouse as a Service models allow businesses to scale up or down quickly, which is especially handy during holiday peaks or unexpected surges.
Freed Up for Higher Purpose
From my vantage point, one of the greatest benefits of advanced warehouse automation is that it liberates humans to think bigger. Rather than performing monotonous tasks hour after hour, teams can plan next-level improvements, solve urgent customer challenges, and push the boundaries of what’s possible with data and AI. Symbotic’s success stories illustrate how these systems significantly reduce cost while increasing reliability. In these scenarios, employees are still absolutely crucial—they just get to work on higher-value tasks.
It’s the same message I’ve preached in agile workshops for years: We’re not automating people out of the picture; we’re giving them space to innovate, strategize, and grow (the things we don't think computers are necessarily good at...yet).
A Look Ahead
I have never really considered the impact of AI on my past career in logistics. It's normally just my own AI and Data Science lens. This one from MIT has hit me hard. In the future, I see Warehousing as a Service evolving even further. Smaller, localized micro-warehouses could pop up in dense urban areas to speed up last-mile delivery. AI-driven optimization might integrate live traffic data, real-time weather forecasts, and dynamic inventory analytics to keep supply chains humming at the highest efficiency.
Of course, further leaps in robotics and AI will only expand the realm of tasks that machines can handle, making processes more cost-effective, safer, and more consistent.
But what really matters is how all this technology dovetails with human creativity and drive. Reflecting on my past at FedEx, we hustled across the ramp at night to load planes on time—a triumph of teamwork and shared focus. In an AI-enabled future, we’ll still rely on that spark of ingenuity, that capacity to reflect, adapt, and improve. The difference is that advanced robotics will help carry the repetitive load, leaving us humans free to ask, “How can we do better tomorrow?”—the very essence of continuous improvement.
Focus on Improving
These stories shine a spotlight on just how rapidly these innovations are evolving—and how they’re poised to change the face of logistics for decades to come. From my perspective, this is simply the next chapter in the same story I witnessed on the FedEx ramp: countless moving parts, bound by time and space, orchestrated to achieve a near-impossible result. Only now do we have the insight to have the machines working right alongside us, making the impossible much more attainable.
As someone who thrives on continuous improvement—and yes, that Unrelenting Standards Schema—I couldn’t be more excited for what lies ahead. After all, if we can keep asking ourselves how to improve day after day, then bringing AI, robotics, and human intelligence together is just another sprint toward a future where we’re all a little better today than we were yesterday (hopefully).