Automation Isn’t the Bottleneck — Integration Ownership Is

A recent North American survey of more than 120 warehouse leaders, conducted by one of the largest AutoStore integrators, highlights a reality that many operators already experience firsthand: automation alone does not deliver sustainable performance or return on investment.

The data confirms a growing disconnect between the promise of warehouse automation and day-to-day operational outcomes — not because automation systems fail mechanically, but because integration and orchestration remain incomplete, fragmented, or owned by the wrong layer of the stack.

What the survey data actually shows

The survey results are straightforward and revealing:

• 63% of warehouses remain fully manual, with no automation deployed

• Of those that have invested in automation:

  • 23% report fully integrated systems

  • 62% describe their environments as partially integrated

  • 15% report no integration at all

At first glance, “partial integration” may sound like progress. In practice, it often represents the most fragile and expensive state an operation can be in.

Why “partial integration” is where ROI goes to stall

Partially integrated environments tend to share common symptoms:

• Automation islands connected by point-to-point interfaces

• Manual exception handling filling gaps between systems

• Planners and supervisors acting as real-time schedulers

• Spreadsheet logic compensating for missing orchestration

• Changes requiring custom development, vendor involvement, or both

In other words, labor and complexity are not eliminated — they are shifted.

This explains why many automated warehouses struggle to scale throughput, absorb peak variability, or adapt workflows after go-live, despite significant capital investment.

Integration is necessary — but insufficient on its own

The survey correctly identifies integration as the missing link between automation and ROI. However, it stops short of addressing a more fundamental issue:

Who owns the integration and orchestration layer?

In many automated facilities, that layer is:

• Embedded within a single automation vendor’s control stack

• Managed by a system integrator as a project artifact

• Customized specifically for the initial design assumptions

This approach can work — until requirements change.

And requirements always change.

The AutoStore integrator reality

AutoStore-based systems illustrate this dynamic clearly.

AutoStore excels at dense storage and goods-to-person retrieval. But overall warehouse performance depends on far more than the grid itself:

• Inbound and replenishment sequencing

• Order release logic and prioritization

• Work balancing across ports, zones, and labor

• Exception handling and recovery

• Integration with adjacent automation (AMRs, conveyors, pallet flows)

• ERP and WMS coordination under peak load

When orchestration logic is tightly coupled to a single vendor or integrator, operators often discover — too late — that flexibility, transparency, and control are limited.

The missing layer: independent orchestration

What the survey data implicitly points to is not just a need for “more integration,” but for independent automation orchestration.

An independent orchestration layer:

• Sits above individual automation subsystems

• Coordinates work across vendors, technologies, and humans

• Separates business logic from machine control

• Allows workflows to evolve without rewriting integrations

• Reduces long-term dependency on any single OEM or integrator

This is not about replacing automation vendors. It is about decoupling operational intelligence from hardware ownership.

Why this matters now

As warehouses plan for 2026 and beyond, pressures are converging:

• Higher throughput expectations

• Labor volatility

• SKU proliferation

• Shorter planning horizons

• Multi-vendor automation environments

In this context, integration treated as a one-time project deliverable is no longer sufficient. It must be treated as infrastructure — designed for change, not just for go-live.

A different way to think about automation ROI

The survey’s conclusions are directionally correct: automation delivers value when systems work together.

The next step is recognizing that lasting ROI comes from owning how work is orchestrated, not just from owning machines.

Warehouses that invest in independent orchestration gain:

• Control over change

• Faster adaptation to new workflows

• Reduced integration risk

• Better use of existing automation assets

Those that don’t often find themselves automating twice — once in hardware, and again in software.