Inbound receiving and replenishment–driven order fulfillment centers are under increasing pressure as throughput continues to rise across modern warehouse operations. While AS/RS and goods-to-person systems have dramatically improved picking and storage efficiency, upstream activities such as case identification, labeling, counting, box opening, decanting, and routing remain heavily manual—creating labor constraints, inventory delays, and systemic bottlenecks.
Decant Automation removes these limitations by automating inbound and replenishment workflows, enabling faster inventory availability, consistent process execution, and scalable performance across the facility. The following sections outline where these bottlenecks occur and how automated decanting transforms each inbound, replenishment, and downstream application.
Automating box opening is the easiest addition to the receiving or replenishment process while providing the industry’s leading ROI – Return on Investment, for inbound operations. Automating box opening saves labor costs and warehouse space while increasing safety and ergonomics. Even greater ROIs are created with improved throughput and capacity for the facility, an often overlooked bottleneck.
Inbound and receiving operations often receive cases manually because they lump multiple tasks into one type of workstation or area, which is highly inefficient. These tasks should be separated and sequenced into discrete workstations. This allows for the automation of simple repetitive tasks to support operators. Operator services can be directed to the correct station with operators.
Replenishment of piece picking is one of the easiest opportunities to eliminate repetitive box opening and the Decant of items from cases. Today this process remains a 100% manual process in most operations. Automating replenishment of piece picking is ideal for fulfillment centers in eCommerce, retail, omnichannel, and automotive supply. Typical items range from electronics, general merchandise, pharmacy, cosmetics, OTC, apparel, and grocery.
Break Pack operations is another common opportunity for Automated Box Opening and Decant because of the high volume of these repeated tasks. Break pack or split case is typically part of an outbound shipping function. It uses batch logic with picking and putting for retail operations to build totes or cases by inventory in retail aisle locations. Automating Decant to feed a fulfillment or sort system to build these containers reduces costs. Common examples are with T-sort or unit sorters when building containers.
These systems have donor totes and cases in automated goods to operator cells or inbound full cases that need to be opened and placed into picking or put to orders.
Decant to automated storage and retrieval systems is a process that is highly repetitive and manual. High volume ASRS systems using totes and AMRs by AutoStore, Knapp Evo, Exotec, GeekPlus, CarryPick, TGW Sting Ray and Dematic create a high demand on decanting and replenishment. These ASRS fulfillment systems are designed for highly efficient automated outbound fulfillment with zero forethought for automated replenishment. This has created a significant bottleneck in operations. The ADDRIS System solves this bottleneck while saving space. ADDRIS is designed specifically to handle this high-volume replenishment demand.
Repack and kitting operations are becoming a 3PL specialty operation to support retail or redistribution centers (RC) of product. These products need to be opened, repacked and consolidated for shipping destination or merchandising display reasons. Automated Box Opening and Decant to repack systems can replace these highly repetitive manual tasks.
This is common process for big box stores like Costco & Sam’s Club. As multi-unit or assorted unit master merchandised cases are required for consumer display. This is common for kitting in automotive 3PL’s servicing Tier 1 and 2 operations. Automated Box Opening and Decanting can increase throughput and reduce labor costs.
Return operations require a great amount of detailed review and is often manual. Automating Box Opening, Decanting and routing items creates great efficiencies. Inbound packages all have detailed return authorization (RA) label content and information. These are scanned and tracked with an LPN label or UID. This information allows for accurate allocation – sortation of product through the returns process. Cases are easily separated from polys and envelopes and many can be automatically opened and decanted.