Much of modern e-commerce fulfilment runs on goods-to-person systems: automated storage and retrieval that brings the right bin to a stationary worker instead of sending the worker walking to the shelf. By cutting the walking that dominates traditional picking, these systems sharply raise how many orders a person can handle per hour.
They are unglamorous compared with humanoids but represent the automation actually saving money in warehouses today.
What it means: the biggest efficiency gains often come from redesigning the workflow, not from a robot that mimics a human. Before automating a process, ask whether the real waste is wasted motion, waiting, or rework, because fixing the workflow sometimes delivers more than any single machine.