Our very own Norm Saenz was interviewed by Modern Materials Handling to discuss the results of their 2026 Industry Outlook Survey, which highlights a cautious but steadily strengthening trajectory for materials handling and warehouse automation. Norm emphasizes that while some organizations are pausing near-term investments, overall budgets are rising and confidence is building, particularly in automation technologies like AMRs, robotics, and warehouse control systems. He discussed a growing shift toward software, controls, and data-driven performance metrics as companies aim to reduce labor dependency, improve throughput, and extract more value from operations through automation and AI. Use the link below to read the article!
“Some spending indicators are down, but those spending are planning higher budgets. The study also shows increased plans around software and controls to help lower labor requirements and a bump up in several automation categories, including AMRs for picking operations. There also are hints of e-commerce volumes increasing in these findings, and a trend toward capturing data for key performance indicators and metrics with automation, with artificial intelligence likely to play a role in gaining value from the data.”
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