Are Drones Viable to Optimize Warehouse Processes

 

On this episode of Drones in America by MarketScale, host Grant Guillot was joined by commercial drone industry leader and Ware CEO Ian Smith.

Ware works to help companies automate their warehouse inventory via drone, leveraging the technology to bring increased performance, efficiency and accuracy to operations through effective data capture, processing and consolidation in a single system.

Smith, a licensed helicopter pilot, initially envisioned a lengthy career as a flight instructor. However, the financial crisis of 2008 pushed him down a new avenue that eventually led to drones, making him uniquely qualified to assess how the current situation surrounding COVID-19 has shifted the landscape of his current industry.

“My focus, today, is really zeroed in on warehousing supply chains,” Smith said. “The way we look at it in terms of how the drones are really helping in terms of COVID-19 is, especially in warehouses, humans have become a liability. There are a variety of reasons why we use drones in our product. … But, now, just having humans in a warehouse can spread a virus.”

There were trends toward robotics and automation in manufacturing and other industries, Smith said, but those trends have accelerated greatly in the wake of the pandemic as operations search for solutions that help eliminate the human element for critical jobs that can be automated.

Catch up on previous episodes of Drones In America!

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Image

Latest

leadership resilience
Rewriting the Odds: Leadership Resilience at the Heart of Norberto Orellana’s Rise
June 23, 2025

Economic mobility is often portrayed as a straight climb. In reality, it’s shaped by adversity, identity, and access to opportunity. As research from the University of Michigan notes, mobility requires not only income, education, and employment, but also more intangible resources such as social inclusion and power—the ability to make choices and exert influence….

Read More
revenue growth strategy
Aligning People, Process, and Innovation Creates a Revenue Growth Strategy Built for Long-Term Impact—Not Just Quick Wins in High Trust Industries
June 20, 2025

Law enforcement agencies are under growing pressure to investigate faster, operate smarter, and serve increasingly complex communities. Yet many still rely on legacy systems that slow progress. Private sector partners are stepping in, offering tools that bridge this divide using a focused revenue growth strategy that balances speed, trust, and long-term impact. A recent…

Read More
human-centered
How Human-Centered Design Led to a Startup Accelerator for Education: A Conversation with Transcend Network’s Co-founder Michael Narea
June 20, 2025

The convergence of human-centered design and education innovation is reshaping how edtech ventures emerge and scale. As AI enables hyper-efficiency and bootstrapped entrepreneurship becomes more viable, the real differentiator is empathy—founders who listen deeply to users before building solutions. A McKinsey study of 300 public companies found that design-led organizations significantly outperformed their peers, with…

Read More
care navigation
AI-Powered Care Navigation Reduces Healthcare Spend and Improves Patient Access
June 20, 2025

The U.S. healthcare system is strained by rising costs, uneven quality, and fragmented care navigation. Employers are bearing the brunt, spending more without always securing better care for their teams. According to the RAND Corporation, one effective strategy is to “change their network and benefit designs to encourage patients to use lower‑priced, higher‑value providers…

Read More