Rise of the Automation Workforce w/ Ale Walker
Ale Walker, Director of Business Development at Gray Solutions, discusses the intersection of automation and workforce development, highlighting her mother Kathy Walker’s E-CAMMY trade school in Eastern Kentucky which retrained laid-off coal miners for advanced manufacturing roles. Walker explains Gray Solutions’ turnkey approach to designing and building automated food and beverage facilities, emphasizing their agnostic selection of hardware like AGVs and AMRs. She argues that reshoring US manufacturing necessitates widespread automation to address labor shortages, while also advocating for greater diversity in the robotics industry by upskilling workers of all demographics.