The Numina Group, which bills itself as “Warehouse Automation Experts,” likens fulfillment to a triathlon in that it has three events — picking, packing and shipping — all of which potentially could be aided by automation.

However, one problem is that, after automating the picking process, the bottleneck often merely shifts to packing and shipping. This pinch point prevents companies from realizing any building-level throughput improvements achieved by optimizing order picking.