From computerizing his family’s grocery business in the 1970s to bringing AI-powered robots to warehouses today, Rick Cohen W74 has always been an early adopter. Cohen’s company, Symbotic, was recognized this year by Fast Company as one of the world’s most innovative companies for pioneering warehouse automation, with clients ranging from nationwide giants such as Walmart and Target to local community grocers.
Cohen credits Wharton for helping him process problems in a systematic way. Now, that same mentality is differentiating Symbotic, with its end-to-end approach to supply-chain operations. In conversation with Wharton Magazine, Cohen reflected on the vision behind his innovative technology, the fear of robots replacing workers, and where he sees warehouse automation going next.
Wharton Magazine: Looking back on running your family business, C&S Wholesale Grocers, which you grew to become one of the most valuable private companies in America, how did you use that experience when creating Symbotic?
Rick Cohen: I graduated Wharton, got married three weeks later, and went to work in my family’s small wholesale grocery business in Worcester [Massachusetts]. What I found particularly interesting was the interrelationships between the people and the processes of moving goods.
At Wharton, I majored in accounting, but in my senior year, we took a bunch of computer courses. Back in 1974, we were programming in Fortran, and we computerized a lot at C&S very early. That helped us grow very quickly. We became the lowest-cost operator in the country. Then the business just grew and grew and grew. I was fascinated by the impact technology could have quickly, especially on supply-chain issues.
WM: Flash forward to today, as Symbotic is recognized as a global leader in robotics. What can you share about what the company is doing now?
RC: One of the most innovative things about Symbotic is that we are focused on solving the whole warehouse supply-chain problem from beginning to end. A lot of automation companies want to do one particular thing: There are humanoid robots that do just picking; there are mobile robots that might move pallets around the building. But we wanted to create a ‘whole’ solution. And that is attributable to my understanding of the whole solution from C&S and working through that.
Just one example: we’ve figured out how to store products more densely in the building than conventional warehousing, which for automation is a big deal, because it means that you can automate a facility while it’s still running. Most of the time when you automate a building, if you do a large-scale automation, you have to move out of the building and repurpose it completely.
Rick Cohen discusses the next generation of his company’s “SymBot” autonomous robot. (Photo: Symbotic)
We’re proud to always be innovating. Today, we have over 1,000 patents issued or pending. The fun for me is that we have a great group of people here. And we listen to our customers. The last two customers that I met with, they said, “One of the reasons why we signed a contract with you was not just because of the automation, but we know you’ll actually make our supply chain better.” That was a very nice compliment.
WM: That also speaks to how you built your extensive roster of clients.
RC: What’s been really interesting is that most of our clients — some big, some small — have all been early adopters, which resonates with me because that’s what I was when C&S was smaller and money was tight. There’s good chemistry between me and the early adopters because I start out giving them probably the 50 worst failures that I’ve had and promise that I won’t do that to them. They’re fun to work with, because they’re up for a challenge and they know we don’t have all the answers.
WM: Where do you see robotic automation heading in the near future?
RC: I think over the next five or 10 years, there will be mass adoption of automation. And we don’t look at automation as replacing people. We look at automation as doing things that people can’t do. For instance, we can build nine-foot-tall pallets that are perfectly mapped to the planograms of the stores they’ll be delivered to.
Customers are often drawn to how we can help them run a more efficient warehouse. But it goes beyond that. We can save them lots of money with transportation — which with the price of fuel right now is getting a lot of interest. And we make the lives of the store associates much easier, because we take care of the heavy lifting and efficiently organize the products that go to the store. You would think there might be some resentment, but the people in the warehouse love using the technology. I talked to one woman recently who said, “I was going to retire, but this is so much fun. I think I’ll work another five years.”
WM: Going back to your time at Wharton, are there lessons that you still lean on?
RC: I found that the management professors and the management courses were very interesting. It was very logical to me. I had grown up around the family business; it was talked about all the time.
The computer science and the mathematics courses that I took at Wharton were very helpful in growing my understanding of how to process problems in a systematic way. I remember loving the statistics course, thinking about probability and the way that the world was more predictable if you understood how to measure it and count it. Wharton really helped me organize processes.
