Warehouses Face a Capacity Test Beyond Picking Speed - Experts Explain
A warehouse can accelerate one task and still finish the day with more unfinished work. Faster picking has limited value when the delivery vehicle has departed. A quicker gate check-in cannot create an available dock, and a successful robotic grasp does not establish whether the equipment can handle a changing product mix throughout a shift. The investment question is therefore broader than how quickly a machine completes its movement: how much additional work can the facility finish, release and recover when something interrupts the plan?
That question connects several pressures often managed separately. Returns teams need time to inspect and route incoming goods, outbound teams work towards vehicle departures, and yard operators must deliver the right trailer to the right door. Procurement decisions influence which products arrive and how much buffer stock the building must accommodate. When each activity is assessed against its own performance target, a local improvement can leave the next team with a larger or less predictable queue.
Responses from warehouse operators, automation suppliers and logistics specialists point towards a common requirement: capacity must be measured across the sequence of work. Their examples cover different operating environments, from healthcare distribution and retail returns to robotic handling and autonomous trailer movement. They do not establish a single model suitable for every facility. They show where managers need to test the connection between an equipment capability and an operational result.
The Departure Schedule Sets the Value of Faster Picking
At The Stevens Company, the limiting factor is the time delivery vehicles leave the facility. John Lowerison, Vice President of Operations, said the company selects products for AutoStore according to their size and picking velocity. The system is used within Stevens’ healthcare distribution operation; the assessment is Lowerison’s account of that deployment, rather than a statement from AutoStore. In comments provided to The Supply Chainer, he explained:
“In an ideal world, we would have every product in AutoStore because of its efficiency, but the two deciding factors are product size and velocity. We want items that are picked frequently and ordered by many customers, rather than slower-moving or one-off items. Traceability requirements don’t differ between conventional storage and AutoStore. The advantage of AutoStore is that it presents bins on a first-in, first-out or first-expiry, first-out basis, so no one can pick from a newer lot by mistake.”
Lowerison added that shorter picking times allow the operation to continue processing orders closer to its cut-offs, enabling more orders to leave on the day they are placed. The operational benefit is a wider window for completing work before an existing departure. His response does not quantify the increase in same-day shipments. It nevertheless gives the investment a specific service measure: orders that previously missed the vehicle but can now make it.
That distinction matters when warehouse managers compare systems or redesign picking zones. An improvement in picks per hour should be assessed alongside the deadlines those picks support. If packing, checking or loading cannot absorb the extra output, the facility may accumulate completed picks without increasing shipments. Measuring the work remaining before each departure helps identify whether the investment is improving the customer outcome or simply advancing one stage of the queue.
Returns Teams May Have Less Time to Clear the Previous Peak
The recovery window is under a different kind of pressure in retail returns. ReBound Returns supplied analysis indicating that the traditional slowdown between Christmas and New Year is becoming less pronounced. According to the company, its early December 2025 returns peak was around 23% higher than the equivalent point in 2024, while the January 2026 spike was approximately 24% higher than January 2025. The supplied material does not disclose the sample size or explain whether changes in customer composition affected those comparisons.
Liselotte Reijrink, Sales Director at ReBound Returns, said the pattern could create a more sustained workload. Her concern is the processing required after goods arrive, rather than receipt volumes alone. Each item needs a decision before it can become saleable stock or move to another destination. She said:
“This puts more pressure on warehouse teams. Returned goods need to be received, assessed, and processed before they can be resold. If volumes stay elevated for longer, backlogs could build up, and stock could take longer to reach its final destination, whether that is back to shelves or re-routed for recycling, repair, or donation.
“With less of an opportunity to catch up after the seasonal peak, having the capacity, processes, and network in place to handle returned items efficiently will become increasingly important to keeping stock moving, especially if the current trend of rising returns volumes continues.”
For warehouse planning, the important consequence is accumulated work. A short arrival spike can sometimes be managed by allowing a temporary inspection queue to grow, provided capacity exists to clear it afterwards. A longer period of elevated arrivals weakens that assumption. Managers need to distinguish between returns awaiting assessment, approved stock awaiting put-away and items awaiting repair, recycling or another destination, because those queues require different resources.
A Robotic Handling Test Needs to Last Beyond the Demonstration
Youngjin Kim, President and CEO of Tesollo, identified product compatibility as the starting point for evaluating multi-finger robotic grippers. The relevant test uses the customer’s actual goods and tasks, including the variation that makes handling difficult. Only after that feasibility check does it make sense to assess the economics. Kim said:
“Multi-finger grippers and robotic hands are particularly valuable when dealing with a wide variety of objects, irregular shapes, or frequently changing handling requirements, where conventional grippers may have limitations.
“Once technical feasibility is confirmed, the next step is to measure cycle time and throughput to assess economic viability, including the expected return on investment and payback period.
“Finally, extended operation tests should verify consistent performance over a full production shift, focusing on grasping success rates, repeatability, and operational reliability.”
For a fulfilment operation, that sequence places reliability alongside speed. A robot that handles selected items successfully may still require intervention when packaging, orientation or the product mix changes. The acceptance process should establish how retries and failed attempts affect completed throughput. Otherwise, a high success rate under demonstration conditions can conceal the amount of human work needed to sustain the process.
Kim also described Tesollo’s modular joint architecture, which allows customers to stock replacement joint modules rather than replace an entire robotic hand after a component failure. The warehouse implication extends beyond the spare part itself. Operators need clear procedures for identifying the fault, carrying out the replacement and returning the equipment to service. Recovery time belongs in the capacity assessment because a stopped cell can affect the work scheduled around it.
Autonomous Yard Movement Still Requires a Ready Facility
The same distinction between equipment capability and operating performance applies outside the building. Joe Foster, Vice President of Robotics at Holman, said its partnership with ISEE will assess both existing yard vehicles and the customer’s operating environment when considering retrofits. That creates a potential route to autonomy using current assets. It does not mean every truck or yard will be suitable.
“As Holman and ISEE work closely with each customer to deploy autonomous solutions, we’ll focus on the metrics that matter most to that specific customer, including safety, productivity, utilization, reliability, and overall economics. The initial focus is repetitive trailer movement across environments such as distribution centers and manufacturing facilities, where autonomy can have an immediate operational impact,” Foster said.
Those measures require a site-specific baseline. A warehouse needs to understand whether delayed trailer movements, unavailable doors or receiving readiness are constraining its current output. Improving vehicle availability will have a different value in each case. Foster’s response identifies evaluation categories, but does not supply deployment results, numerical acceptance thresholds or a named initial customer.
For the receiving team, the useful outcome is a trailer delivered to a door when the building can work it. That makes yard automation dependent on the information and decisions surrounding the move. An autonomous vehicle may execute its instruction correctly while the instruction itself sends it towards a dock that is unavailable. Assessing completed receiving and dispatch activity alongside vehicle movements helps reveal that difference.
Gate Automation Removes One Stop in a Longer Process
Amir Hoss, CEO of EAIGLE, focuses on the administrative delay before a truck enters the yard. The company uses computer vision to capture vehicle and shipment-related information through its BlueGate system. Hoss said manual check-in processes create avoidable time and fuel costs:
“Carriers can’t control the price of diesel, but they shouldn’t have to burn fuel waiting on paperwork. When a driver spends 10 minutes checking in at a gate, that’s time and money lost before the truck even gets into the yard. And much of that delay comes from manual processes that no longer need to be manual.
“At EAIGLE, we use AI-native computer vision to capture more than 25 data points in under 30 seconds, compared with roughly 10 minutes using traditional processes.”
That comparison concerns information capture and check-in, rather than total facility turnaround. A warehouse assessing the benefit needs to establish what happens after the truck is admitted. If the driver then waits for a door, an instruction or a receiving team, part of the delay remains. Gate processing time and total dwell should therefore be tracked separately, with the remaining wait assigned to the activity causing it.
The Delivery Interface Retains Physical Work
Brian Hatt, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Freight Sidekick, described another boundary to automation: the delivery stop itself. His comments concern transport services, but they are relevant to warehouse dispatch teams planning deliveries to customers with limited receiving equipment. An automated road journey does not remove the need to handle the load at its destination. Hatt said:
“It's starting where the driving is most predictable: long highway runs in states where snow and ice are rare, and short fixed routes between a warehouse and a store or distribution center. The delivery stop comes last, because the hard part there isn't the driving. Someone has to run the liftgate, roll the pallet to the door and work with a receiver who isn't always ready. For a small business taking a few pallets, that's years away.”
His timetable is a forecast, but the physical tasks are an immediate planning consideration. Dispatch needs accurate information about unloading requirements, receiver availability and the service purchased. A faster departure or journey cannot compensate for an unsuitable delivery arrangement. The same principle applies to inbound receiving: the vehicle’s ability to arrive and the facility’s ability to unload it are separate requirements.
Inventory Buffers Need a Warehouse Decision
Procurement can also change the building’s workload before a shipment is booked. Nari Viswanathan, Head of Product Marketing and Solutions for Supply Chain and Direct Spend at Coupa, said sourcing resilience depends on the entire path to production. His response identifies local stock as one possible alternative when transport reliability is uncertain. He said:
“For production-critical components, procurement should compare the full path from each supplier to the plant. If the primary and backup suppliers both depend on the canal, a second contract offers little protection from a transit delay. Another qualified supplier may cost more per part but deliver through Los Angeles with a workable inland connection. If that connection is uncertain, keeping a small amount of stock near the plant may be the more reliable choice.”
That buffer becomes a warehouse commitment. It needs receiving capacity, an appropriate storage location, accurate stock records and a replenishment rule that preserves its purpose. If procurement adds protective inventory without involving the facility, the resilience decision can compete with space and handling capacity already allocated to other work. Warehouse participation helps establish whether the proposed buffer is usable when production needs it.
Across these examples, the common measure is work completed within the required window. Faster picking matters when orders reach the vehicle; faster returns processing matters when goods receive a disposition and move onwards. Robotic handling and autonomous trailer movements need recovery arrangements as well as successful cycles. The capacity assessment becomes more useful when it follows goods through those connections and identifies who owns the work that remains.
