Industries
Warehouses, DCs, and the path from inbound to the customer.
Distribution networks run high volume across buildings that rarely share one standard. Slotting, labor plans, and the definition of “ready to ship” still vary by site. Carrier appointment windows have tightened. E-commerce added an outbound stream many layouts were not designed to support. Returns are no longer an exception; they are a standing workload.
Warehouse management systems are already in place. Labor is constrained. Throughput is still set by how work moves from the yard through putaway, pick, and the dock.
Time in the DC is layout, slotting, standard work, labor balance, and daily management with supervisors and the shift on site — the method is on What we do.
The objective is more reliable outbound performance using existing labor and systems. We do not replace the warehouse management system.
50%+
Share of pick time spent walking, not picking, in a typical manual DC.
Standard pick-path research: travel commonly 50–57% of pick time in a manual DC.
16%
Of U.S. retail sales returned in a year — a standing inbound stream, not an exception.
NRF / Happy Returns Retail Returns Landscape: 15.8% of sales returned in 2025.
3.5 hr
Best-in-class dock-to-stock. The metric moved the wrong way last year.
WERC DC Measures 2025: best-in-class dock-to-stock under 3.5 hours (worse than 2024).
50–70%
Share of DC operating cost that is labor.
Common DC cost structure; labor is the majority of operating spend in a manual warehouse.
Unscheduled arrivals and full staging lanes create yard dwell and dock congestion. The constraint is often putaway, not door count.
Picker travel commonly accounts for more than half of pick time when slotting has not kept up with the current order mix.
Long dock-to-stock time leaves inventory in staging and unavailable for fulfillment. Available stock in the system no longer matches what is physically in the building.
Returns volume has become a standing department. Disposition is often informal, so product sits unprocessed.