In recent years, AI seems to be dominating conversations in every aspect of our lives. But, before it became an everyday tool for many people, it was making a difference in warehousing.
The global warehouse automation software market was valued at $2.4 billion in 2021, and it predicted to be worth nearly $6 billion by 2027. Meanwhile, the warehouse automation market is also growing. In 2025, despite disruptions from tariffs, orders for warehouse automation grew by 7% year over year.
Despite this, humans still play a key role in the warehouse. Their roles are changing, and the average day in a warehouse involves less walking from spot to spot to find items.
“Don’t underestimate human capabilities and what humans are bringing to this,” Lior Elazary, the CEO of inVia Robotics, told Automated Warehouse. “We’ve developed really good tools, and the questions that we always have to ask ourselves is, ‘How do we best utilize people to use those tools to enhance our lives and society?’”
Software is making some of the biggest impact, Elazary said
Elazary said he still thinks software has the biggest potential to make an impact in warehousing. In fact, inVia, which initially started with warehouse robots, is now seeing more traction with its software products.
“About half of our customers now use our software by themselves; they don’t even use our robots,” Elazary said.
He compared a warehouse to a busy highway flooded with cars. Adding robots to the operation can sometimes be like bringing a Ferrari onto the highway. A faster car is nice, but it’s not going to make traffic move faster.
“What happens a lot is people get a new robot, they integrate, and then it actually doesn’t help them because they are missing the global stuff,” Elazary said. “You definitely need that software first. In fact, the software helps you already boost all of your existing people and your existing automation tremendously. Then you can bring in other technologies to help you produce even more.”
Warehouse jobs will change, but not go away
Elazary said he draws a fine line between jobs and tasks. Technology can take over certain tasks, whether it be software that gathers data and optimizes how a warehouse is run, or a robot moving boxes around. The overarching job of a person in a logistics operation — to ensure items are moving through a facility — doesn’t go away.
“The jobs are always there,” said Elazary. “Nobody’s taking any jobs away because we need to deliver those items to people. That’s the job. The tasks are different.”
As warehouses have become more efficient, people’s demands from them have changed. Years ago, it could take weeks or up to a month to get an order. Now, consumers can get items delivered to their doors in just hours. It’s the same job, but the tasks have changed drastically to keep up with new demands, and robotics are needed to keep up.
“Robots are great the doing the same task, moving something from one point to another, over and over again without complaining. People are not like that. They’re not good at that, and they shouldn’t be doing that,” Elazary said. “People are really good at problem solving, understanding the task, understanding what’s happening, and then solving the problem. AI, right now, has not been able to do that very well.”
Upskilling the workforce is key
As people are moving into roles that require more critical thinking and creativity, it’s important to prepare your workforce for that change, Elazary said. For example, inVia trains certain employees as “robot wranglers.”
“They don’t have a Ph.D. in robotics. They don’t even have to be mechanics,” Elazary said. “We train them how to work with the robots and how to work with our AI system to troubleshoot what’s going on with the robots.”
Moving forward, communication will be one the most important skills for warehouse workers, said Elazary. This means communicating with other people and with AI.
“How do you communicate with AI to get what you need?” he said. “We even found with our work, the engineers who were able to communicate really well, who were able to describe the problem really well, are not just brute-forcing the problem.”
What are common missteps in adopting AI?
So, what can go wrong when implementing new AI systems in warehousing? One can look at this from a few different angles, noted Elazary. First, automation providers should understand that warehouse operators might be facing burnout from past integrations.
“There are those who recently spent years implementing a WMS, who needed to bring an engineer to hard-code every single workflow for everything in the warehouse,” Elazary said. “Once they do it, they don’t want to touch it because now it’s been so complex that they’re worried.”
However, AI has made the integration process much smoother. “Embrace the fact that, with the advances of AI, we’re able to be a lot more efficient in capturing the workflow that you need to do this over the course of a month versus two years,” Elazary said.
Additionally, for warehouse operators, it’s important to remain flexible. Those who are the most open to change often see the biggest results the fastest, said Elazary.
“The biggest misstep is being married to the old process and the way they used to do it, because this is a new way of thinking about things,” he said. “Be open-minded and understand that the problems that you’re solving are real.”