How Case Picking is Breaking Your Warehouse

The modern warehouse runs on one critical workflow: case picking. It’s the most labor-intensive and least automated process in the building, consuming nearly half of all labor hours. For decades, it’s been a necessary inefficiency—essential for fulfillment, yet stubbornly manual. Despite waves of innovation elsewhere in the supply chain, case picking has barely evolved. As demand accelerates and labor pools shrink, its inefficiencies have become impossible to ignore.

More than half of the labor time in case picking—up to 55%—is spent simply traveling between picks rather than handling product. That wasted motion drives congestion, slows throughput, and inflates labor costs. In an environment where demand is rising and labor pools are shrinking, those inefficiencies can no longer be absorbed as part of doing business.

The workflow itself has hardly changed since the 1980s. Even as same-day and next-day delivery have become the norm for e-commerce logistics, case picking still relies on workers traveling long distances to locate and retrieve goods. Warehouse management systems, voice picking and pick-to-light tools have added incremental gains, but none have solved the root issue: when workers spend more time in transit than performing value-added work, productivity, safety and morale inevitably suffer.

Orchestrating a Better Path

Warehouse operations need to move beyond the static assignments and outdated practices that go hand in hand with case picking. So, what does that look like in practice? Coordinating workflows more intelligently, a new approach to warehouse work called orchestration assigns and allocates tasks and resources in real time depending on the needs of the warehouse.

Rather than forcing workers to make constant micro-decisions about where to go next, orchestration streamlines those choices and keeps activity balanced across the facility. The result is less wasted travel, smoother workflows, and better use of both human effort and automated systems.

There’s a reason we call it orchestration. The best analogy is to think of a conductor leading a symphony orchestra. Each instrument is capable on its own, but without coordination the result is noise. The same is true in warehouses. Technology like autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) increase efficiency within warehouses, but orchestration is how warehouse operations can make sure they work in harmony.

A common scenario plays out on the warehouse floor when demand spikes for a popular product. Without orchestration, pickers converge on the same aisles, carts jam the walkways, and robots end up idling because they don’t know where they fit in. With orchestration in place, that same surge looks very different. Tasks are staggered so that workers and robots are routed to different areas, cases are staged for pickup rather than carried long distances, and traffic is smoothed out across the floor. The picker still handles the product, but the robot handles the travel, and together they keep goods moving without the bottlenecks that typically slow operations.

With the pace of order fulfillment and consumer demands both increasing, warehouses often face new bottlenecks such as damaged packaging or limited inventory. These issues can lead to slowdowns in picking or even create “warehouse traffic jams.” Effective orchestration can help alleviate these challenges. True orchestration is not a one-way command system—it enables dynamic interaction between systems and workers, allowing them to manage exceptions or reassign tasks, such as picking to a closer robot if available, to minimize idle time and maintain efficiency.

Why It Matters Now

For operators concerned about ROI, the benefits of orchestration manifest quickly. One of the biggest is significantly reduced walking hours. When robots handle the long hauls and pickers are dynamically routed to the most productive zones, hours of unnecessary travel time are cut. Orchestration also keeps the pace of work steady. Instead of one corner of the warehouse getting swamped while another sits idle, tasks are spread out so the whole operation moves in rhythm.

Safety improves as well. By directing when and where people and machines move, orchestration reduces crowded aisles and lowers the risk of collisions. Smarter task assignments also ease the strain of heavy lifting and repetitive motions, giving employees a safer, more ergonomic workday. And because decisions are clearer, workers face less mental fatigue, which builds confidence and helps them stay focused.

Warehouses that have adopted this approach are already seeing the difference. Worker productivity has more than doubled in some cases, with labor needs reduced by more than half and training times shortened thanks to simpler, equipment-free workflows. By rethinking how goods move across the floor, operations gain the resilience and flexibility to adapt as products and demand shift.

The Time for Change

Modern warehouses look nothing like they did decades ago. The way we order, shop and consume goods has changed radically since then. Supply chains are now global and consumer expectations for speed and accuracy would make a pre-turn-of-the-century warehouse manager’s head spin. So why has the basic process of case picking remained largely the same? Warehouses that continue to depend on the same old routines are finding it harder to keep up.

Orchestration gives warehouses a way to modernize without starting from scratch. You’ve got systems in place already? Great: orchestration can help you build on that, coordinating people and machines so that they work together more efficiently to implement practical changes that solve today’s problems. That’s cutting down on wasted travel time and minimizing congestion, which matters in an environment where no two days ever look the same.

The pressures on warehouses are only going to increase, ranging from tariffs to volatile demand. It’s not just customer expectations that have shifted; the very economics of warehouse labor have. Progress is a wonderful thing, but it comes with some harsh realities. Customer demand is never going to slow down. Operators can no longer absorb volatility by throwing people at the problem. Labor is likely to stay tight, and the volatility that has become the norm isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, especially in light of surging tariffs.

By tackling today’s problems with decades-old workflows, you’re going to fall further behind. But by leveraging orchestration to increase efficiency, strengthen safety, and create operations that bend without breaking when conditions shift, you’re positioning your organization to achieve long-term success.