“Sure – Supply Chain is boring – except for the fact that 5 of the top 10 richest people in the world made their money in it.”

-Bruce Welty

Bruce Welty has been a pioneer and visionary in automating warehouses since before the Internet. He has built, bought and sold some of the industry’s most innovative companies. He’s automated warehouses for Fortune 500s, e-Commerce startups, and even built a fulfillment company that ships more than $1 billion worth of e-Commerce orders each year. It was his direct experience with warehouses, fulfillment, and robotics that inspired him to build an entirely new solution.

Bruce Welty never wanted to build robots; Amazon.com made him do it. Starting in the 1970s, Welty, specialized in software for managing warehouses. In 2009, he shifted gears and founded Quiet Logistics, a company that used robots from Kiva Systems of North Reading to dramatically reduce warehouse operating costs. But three years later, retailing titan Amazon.com acquired Kiva, cutting off Welty’s robot supply. He saw only one hope — build his own robots.

In part 2 of this 2 part series, we sat down with warehouse technology industry veteran Bruce Welty to learn about his vision of warehouse automation, autonomous mobile robots, and Moravec’s paradox.