Marcus Chung

Uncertainty Is the New Baseline At Manifest 2026, Scott Luton spoke with Romain Moulin, CEO and co-founder of Exotec, to discuss how warehouse automation is evolving in an era defined by volatility. “The big trend of last year was uncertainty,” Romain said, reflecting on 2025’s tariffs, economic tensions, and shifting trade dynamics. “Anything that would be done needed to deal with uncertainty.” Rather than waiting for stability, companies are designing operations that assume change is constant. “Anything that is going on now must be projects that are able to reorganize themselves,” he explained. Warehouses must be robust, agile and flexible as to whatever the next disruption brings.   From Conveyors to Configurable Robotics Exotec is known for inventing 3D warehouse robots (Skypods) that move across the floor and climb racks up to 14 meters (46 feet) to retrieve totes and deliver them to operators. But beyond the visual wow factor, the real transformation is simplification. “The time of bespoke complex warehouses tailored to a very specific need is over,” Romain said. Customers are moving toward more generic, adaptable warehouses. Exotec replaces hardware complexity with intelligent software. “We don’t program the solution,” he noted. “We let the software find the best…

Stay up to date on all the latest conversations, interviews, and episodes we released this week here at Supply Chain Now! We started this week off with an episode of Digital Transformers with host Kevin L. Jackson. During this episode, Kevin sits down with three digital experts to discuss new approaches to establishing trust and provenance within a supply chain that is increasingly both digital and physical. This episode features Dustin McIntire the CTO of COMSovereign Holding Corporation. Eric Adolphe the CEO of Forward Edge-AI and Joshua Pendrick the CEO and Co-founder of Rypplzz. For Monday’s This Week In Business History episode, Kelly Barner talks about the political act that led to an increase in organized crime and the end of the Great Depression. On Tuesday, we released a new episode of Supply Chain Now with host Scott Luton and guest host Allison Giddens. They welcomed the head of Global Supply Chain for Peloton, Jennifer McKeehan, to the show. They discussed how the hybrid work environment is allowing the best leaders to shine by continuing to build strong, meaningful relationships, and much more. This week we released an episode of Logistics With Purpose with hosts Enrique Alvarez and Kristi Porter.…