Many warehouse leaders assume productivity gaps come down to labor availability or performance. In reality, much of the workday is lost elsewhere. 

In a typical manual-picking operation: 

• Order picking accounts for ~55% of warehouse operating cost. 
• More than half of picking time is spent traveling between tasks. 
• Travel alone can consume up to 55% of picking activity. 

That means a significant portion of the shift is spent walking — not completing work. 

When work doesn’t flow deliberately through an operation, employees spend a lot of time searching, waiting, and crossing the floor instead of picking orders. These inefficiencies are often hidden inside daily activity, but they compound quickly — reducing throughput, increasing fatigue, and putting pressure on safety and retention.

Workforce efficiency is not about having people work harder. It’s about how work is orchestrated with people, systems, and automation so less time is spent moving and more time is spent doing.

Historically, industrial engineers and labor management systems improved performance by measuring task times and setting standards. Today, the next step is real-time orchestration where work is dynamically sequenced based on current conditions.

And yet, many operations still lose time to unnecessary travel. For example, even with automation employees can walk 10 km (6.2 miles) or more per shift, contributing to fatigue, errors, and reduced throughput. These inefficiencies impact productivity, safety, and employee retention.  

Every extra employee step reveals a potential flaw in workflow design. Despite automation investments, travel can remain a persistent productivity drain.

• Travel accounts for nearly one-third of labor time in picking activities. 

• Fatigue increases toward the end of shifts, contributing to errors and rework. 

• Inefficiency drives higher energy use, item rehandling, and operational costs. 

Even modest reductions in travel distance can produce significant gains in throughput and labor availability.

At Radial Europe, a leading B2C e-commerce fulfillment solution provider, eliminating long walking routes transformed performance.

• Picking processes that previously took up to two hours were reduced to minutes.
• Picking productivity increased 4x, with a 1.5x improvement in packing performance.
• Error rates dropped while ergonomics and safety improved. 

These are not incremental gains — they are the result of redesigning how work flows through the operation.

Better performance comes from better flow, not increased effort.

When unnecessary travel is reduced:

• Employees spend more time on productive work.
• Supervisors focus on optimizing flow rather than reacting to delays.
• Operations become safer, more consistent, and easier to scale.

The role of an automation partner is to apply operational insight to design systems where work flows naturally — and performance follows.

At Dematic, we start by understanding your business today and your strategies for the future. Then we design solutions that combine automation, software, and real-time decision making to reduce strain, improve output, and support long-term workforce stability.

The result: reliable, high-performing operations built for both current and future workflows.