Episode
282: Inside a Warehouse Automation Project: How Sumitomo Drive Technologies Is Transforming Logistics and Reshoring Operations
- Podcast
- Manufacturing Happy Hour
- Published
- Apr 7, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2553
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- http://manufacturinghappyhour.com
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Summary
Running out of warehouse space doesn’t always mean you need more of it. For Sumitomo Drive Technologies, it meant rethinking the whole operation from the ground up. In this episode of Manufacturing Happy Hour, Chris sits down remotely with Tony Barlett and Shawn Lambert from Sumitomo Drive Technologies for an inside look at a live warehouse automation project underway at their Chesapeake, Virginia headquarters. The project combines AutoStore, an automated storage and retrieval system, with automated guided vehicles to compress 30,000 square feet of high-bay racking into a 7,500 square foot footprint, with robots handling the picking and every transaction flowing through a single digital interface. The conversation runs from the 2021 decision all the way through to where the project stands today. The business case, the technology choices, and what it takes to bring automation into a facility that has run on pen and paper for years. They get into the workforce question too. What this means for the people on the floor, how Sumitomo plans to grow 50 percent over the next five years without scaling headcount at the same rate, and why the digital foundation they're building now is what makes AI integration possible later. In this episode, find out: How a customer demo in 2021 sparked the decision to stop expanding Sumitomo Drive Technologies' warehouse footprint and automate instead, and what it took to get from that first look to a live project What the AutoStore system does at a practical level, and how a simple analogy made the technology immediately understandable for anyone who hasn’t seen it How condensing 30,000 square feet of high-bay racking into a 7,500 square foot cube changes what growth looks like for the business How moving from pen-and-paper operations to a si…