A conversation with Rob McKeel

Back in late March, I had a call with Rob McKeel, the new CEO at the consultancy firm Fortna, that was a reminder that even in a pandemic, with all its disruptions, change in our industry continues and business moves forward. McKeel joined Fortna after a 25-plus year career at GE where he was most recently the CEO of GE, Automation and Controls, and responsible for various billion-dollar business units. The commonality in the business units he managed was software and controls, and most of the businesses were in a growth mode. Below is an edited version of a conversation that we kept short and sweet, and focused on a few questions.

Q. What brought you to Fortna?

McKeel. I finished my career at GE when the automation business I was running was sold to Emerson and there really wasn’t another business for me to step into. I enjoy running businesses. In January, I received a call about the position at Fortna. The person who reached out knew that I was interested in automation, and that started the conversation. The more research I did into the industry, the more intrigued and excited I got. I saw the pace of change and the pace of investment in material handling automation. I saw what was happening because e-commerce leaders like Amazon were driving the bar higher for speed of delivery. So, you had growth and technology and it was happening in a space that represented a macrotrend. And then, it was a matter of meeting the people from Thomas H. Lee Partners, that acquired Fortna, and the people at Fortna. It all came together.

Q. What were the most notable changes in materials movement and information technology that you witnessed at GE Automation that you think may be applicable to warehousing and distribution? After all, manufacturing has long been ahead of this space when it comes to automation.

McKeel. Manufacturing is all about making things repeatable. It’s sequential because you’re following a recipe. And, the more scale and size you have, the more automation you see. The manufacturing sector was the early adopter. What I’m seeing in distribution, is a pretty fast adoption of automation to improve throughput. And, it’s not just throughput, but complexity because of the speed, volume mix and diversity of products, plus the dynamic of slow and fast movers. In addition, robotics is definitely catching on. And, the other piece is the adoption of software to handle complexity. The algorithms that Fortna is developing and how we apply them is critical in distribution and quite different than in manufacturing.

Q. What’s going to be your focus as the new CEO of Fortna?

McKeel. We want to help people think through the complexity I just talked about. The idea of taking a consultative approach to help clients understand the complexity in their operations and turn that into the realization of a business case is unique and not simple.

Q. I realize it’s early in your tenure, but what is top of mind of Fortna’s customers right now?

McKeel. The first focus of every business right now is taking care of its employees. The second, from our perspective, is how do we help clients work through this? Some clients are saying they still need to make their planned investments, but they’re going to wait; others are saying that this disruption has exposed gaps in their operations that they need to address. And, of course, we’re all seeing shifts in consumer behaviors as more people are working from home.

I think this is going to be an amazing stress test of many companies’ capabilities. Some will see that they need to improve; others are going to see that there’s demand that they can’t fill, and that may drive up their appetite for investment. The number 3 and 4 brands in a category may have an opportunity for growth as their larger competitors are having difficulty meeting demand.

Last, I think companies are asking how they secure their supply chains in times like these. I saw Coca-Cola on CNBC noting that there are areas in its supply chain that are starting to congest. I’m sure they are not alone. Those dimensions will create opportunities for our industry.