# Kevin Lawton

Kevin Lawton creates and hosts warehouse-industry content through The New Warehouse, including podcast interviews, facility visits, and events for people in logistics and warehousing.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/kevin-lawton/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinclawton
- LinkedIn followers: 14,794
- Topics: supply-chain
- Based on 16 dated posts, latest 2026-10-05

## Summary

Most useful for reaching warehouse and 3PL operators through podcast interviews, facility visits, and events.

- Best for: A WMS or automation vendor campaign tied to a real customer implementation and operator problem.
- Not for: Consumer packaged goods or general B2B software without warehouse operations angle or customer access.
- Check first: Confirm commercial terms, paid relationships, and recent comparable results before contacting them.

### Takeaways

- A Toyota factory visit connects production methods, continuous improvement, and automation.
- A return visit to HJI follows a WMS change to automation a year later.
- Warehousing After Dark has been a recurring space for warehouse-industry connections for two years.

## Main ideas

- **Seeing the operation firsthand is more persuasive than describing it**: Across facility and event posts, Kevin Lawton argues that warehouse technology stories are strongest when reported from inside a working site. Tours, ribbon-cuttings, system walkthroughs, and conversations with people on the floor take precedence over product announcements alone. The operation, equipment, and people give a vendor story credibility that a demo cannot.
- **Follow a warehouse technology project over time, not just at launch**: Kevin Lawton treats a follow-up visit as a distinct source of value. A launch or system selection tells part of the story; returning a year later shows whether the technology was implemented, how it was integrated, and what changed in the operation. The focus is on continuity over one-time case studies.
- **Vendor event coverage should surface what operators say they will actually use**: In event recaps, Kevin Lawton focuses on specific features and operators' reactions. Vendor events are most useful when they identify the capabilities logistics decision-makers themselves single out, not just those the vendor wants to promote.
- **Community building is a core part of the work, not a side activity**: Kevin Lawton argues that warehouse industry connections need recurring, informal spaces as well as formal content. Warehousing After Dark is presented as a community asset, with monthly virtual sessions and in-person events. The posts treat the social format as part of how the industry learns and does business.
- **Logistics experience and talent development belong in the technology conversation**: Alongside automation and WMS coverage, Kevin Lawton returns to the people who run warehouse technology. The posts give space to the need for logistics experience on technology teams and to teaching as a way to build future supply chain talent.

## Work to read

- [Did you know Warehousing After Dark has been happening for two years now?](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kevinclawton_did-you-know-that-warehousing-after-dark-activity-7510770945695944704-kiqc)
- [What does the Toyota Production System actually look like in practice?](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kevinclawton_what-does-the-toyota-production-system-actually-activity-7511832336099930112-YL8Z)
- [Are you a fan of sequels?](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kevinclawton_are-you-a-fan-of-sequels-were-about-to-activity-7511033100252901376-RWzc)
- [What's on the horizon for 3PLs?](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kevinclawton_whats-on-the-horizon-for-3pls-shiphero-activity-7512872296563294208-h-SW)
- [Big week at TNW](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kevinclawton_big-week-at-tnw-activity-7497463508624674816-KX-r)

## Brand relationships

- **ShipHero** (mention)
- **Toyota Material Handling North America** (mention)
- **Truck Parking Club** (disclosed_partnership)

## Partnerships

Kevin Lawton works with vendors mainly as an editorial and event collaborator rather than through a published sponsorship program. Toyota Material Handling, ShipHero, GreyOrange, SnapFulfil, Cartesian Kinetics, EPG Ehrhardt Partner Group, Traba, Breez Hub and Truck Parking Club are named in posts as interviewees, hosts, tour sites or event supporters for The New Warehouse podcast, facility visits and Warehousing After Dark. No sponsor page, rate card, media kit or partnership inquiry route is published in the posts here. Ask directly about terms and whether a proposed collaboration is paid.

## Alternatives

- Samer Elshafei: Choose Samer Elshafei when the product is powered industrial equipment, batteries or motive power, and the vendor wants someone with operator-side credibility on electrification. The MODEX post recounts the early objections lithium faced — "why lithium?" and "is it even safe?" — the vibration, temperature swings, drop cycles and multi-shift charging equipment has to survive, the runtime, uptime and total-cost-of-ownership arguments customers actually cared about, and the OEM approvals from Toyota, Crown, Hyster-Yale and Raymond that opened the market. That echoes the long adoption story Kevin Lawton tells about WMS migrations: skepticism turning into a standard, described by someone who was in the room. Elshafei is also a better choice when the vendor wants a voice tied to forklift fleets and energy rather than warehouse software.
- Joshua Joseph: Choose Joshua Joseph when the campaign is about autonomous systems working together — AMRs, cobots, AI agents and humanoids on the same floor — or when the audience is founders, researchers and students rather than 3PL owners. The summer speaking recap names Automate Show, Robotics Summit & Expo, MODEX and IISE Annual and reports what those rooms were asking: how to manage fleets with different models and failure modes, whether software or hardware owns the factory of the future, and which decisions a person should never hand to a machine. The Ohno post shows the same teaching instinct, using one concrete story — a 1950 supermarket visit — to explain just-in-time production and where waste hides. Vendors arguing that autonomy has moved from a technology debate to an integration problem will find a closer fit here than in Lawton's operator-interview format.
- Miguel Pinilla: Choose Miguel Pinilla when the buyer is an executive or board that needs the investment case rather than the floor-level story. One post works through roughly $300 billion in capital expenditure from Amazon, Walmart and UPS over five years and asks how to judge the return and justify a multi-year automation commitment to a board; it draws on the book The Warehouse Revolution, which the post says was published with Pete Devenyi and Jim Stollberg. The other post is written from inside a build: launching Arda's manufacturing and material handling system, winning best new product at launch, and hiring an engineer to own feature development with the founders. Vendors selling to founders or to a company weighing its first automation spend get both an analyst's and a builder's view of that decision.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/