Seeing the Work Your WMS Misses: How AI Is Redefining Warehouse Labor Performance

The Hidden Cost of Labor Blind Spots in Modern Warehouses

Warehouse leaders today are under relentless pressure to maximize efficiency, especially as labor costs continue to rise, service-level expectations become tighter, and the global supply chain and economic environment are so uncertainty. Yet many organizations are still trying to optimize warehouse labor, costs, and processes using incomplete data.

Most warehouse management systems do a solid job tracking transactions such as picks, packing, shipping and replenishment. But they often miss the work that actually consumes the most time and cost: indirect labor, value-added services, time clock activity, congestion delays, exception handling, and even the human–robot interactions that increasingly define modern facilities.

The result is a familiar frustration. Supervisors have to rely on manual observation or spreadsheets to track value-added, indirect, and other service labor—often inaccurately. Efficiency and productivity targets feel arbitrary, and incentive programs fail to drive sustained improvement. Ultimately, meaningful labor optimization remains reactive instead of continuous, and often you’re still facing blind spots.

In an environment where labor is often your largest controllable cost, not seeing the full picture is no longer an option, and this is why AI tools are now being built into the labor management, warehouse management, and other systems we use.

A great example is TaktAI, which is now built into our Takt labor management, warehouse analytics, and financial software platform.

Why Transaction Data Isn’t Enough on Its Own

Traditional labor reporting focuses on what was completed and not how the work actually happened. But that distinction matters.

Two associates might complete the same number of picks, yet one encounters congestion, system delays, or excessive travel that the WMS never records. A value-added service station might appear efficient on paper, but it might quietly absorb hours of untracked labor. Robotics might increase throughput in one zone, but they could be creating downstream bottlenecks elsewhere.

Without understanding time, motion, utilization, and context across all of these activities, labor management can be guesswork. Yet this is where AI is rapidly changing what’s possible.

Turning Missed Data into Actionable Intelligence with TaktAI

TaktAI was built to uncover the operational truth that warehouse systems miss.

By applying AI analysis to labor, time, and activity data across systems, TaktAI creates a complete and objective view of how work is performed across the warehouse. It connects WMS data with time clock activity, indirect tasks, value-added services, and automation signals to reveal how labor is actually being used.

Instead of relying on averages and assumptions, operations teams gain precise insight into:

• True labor utilization across roles and shifts
• Productivity drivers and constraints at the individual and team level
• The real cost of indirect work and non-value-added activities
• How automation and robotics impact human labor performance

The outcome is not more reports: it’s clarity. With AI-driven analytics, your leaders can identify where productivity is lost, where standards need adjustment, and where coaching or process changes will deliver the biggest return.

Why Edge Data is the Key to Unlocking Your Labor Management Potential

AI is only as powerful as the data feeding it. And, in warehouse environments, the most valuable data is created at the edge, where people, assets, and work intersect.

This is where Zebra technologies play a critical role.

Zebra’s mobile computers, scanners, sensors, and kiosk technologies capture real-time activity as work happens, so your systems and AI tools have the right data to analyze and understand what’s truly happening. Every scan, movement, confirmation, and interaction becomes a signal that reflects actual execution on the floor.

When that edge data is combined with TaktAI, warehouses move beyond static reporting and into continuous performance intelligence. Labor insights are no longer delayed, partial, sampled, or inferred. They’re current, contextual, and actionable.

Together, TaktAI and Zebra allow you to see what’s happening across labor, automation, and workflows in near real time, creating the foundation for smarter decisions and faster improvement cycles.

From Visibility to Measurable Performance Gains

Of course, visibility alone doesn’t reduce costs. What matters is how quickly insight turns into action. And that’s where AI is fast becoming the most powerful and transformative tool, since it can quickly help you:

• Adjust labor standards using real performance data, not estimates
• Balance workloads across shifts, zones, and associates
• Identify productivity losses caused by congestion, layout, or process design
• Measure the true impact of automation investments
• Support fair, data-driven coaching and incentive programs

Organizations using AI-driven labor analytics have seen labor effectiveness improve by 15–20%, not by pushing workers harder, but by eliminating friction, wasted time, and misalignment between systems and reality.

In a labor-constrained market, those gains translate directly into lower costs, improved morale, and more predictable service levels.

As warehouses grow more complex, labor management must evolve with them. The future isn’t about replacing supervisors with algorithms. It’s about giving leaders better tools to understand, support, and optimize their teams.

AI-powered labor intelligence allows your operations to move from reactive problem-solving to proactive optimization. Issues are identified earlier. Decisions are grounded in data everyone can trust. And improvement becomes continuous instead of episodic.

This shift is quickly becoming a competitive differentiator for logistics and distribution organizations that need to do more with less, so now is the time to take a closer look at the potential of AI for your labor management and improvement needs.

See TaktAI and Zebra at MODEX 2026

To see how AI-driven labor visibility works in practice, visit Takt at MODEX 2026, the global logistic expo and conference, April 13–16, in Atlanta, GA.

At the Takt booth, you can meet with our team and experience live demonstrations of TaktAI and see how it works in partnership with Zebra technologies to capture and analyze the data that traditional systems miss. We can show you how companies are already using these tools to tackle real-world labor challenges and unlock measurable productivity gains.

You can stop by the booth during the show or schedule a meeting in advance to explore how TaktAI can support your labor performance, cost reduction, and operational efficiency goals.

MODEX 2026 is where the future of logistics takes shape. Make sure you’re not managing labor with yesterday’s visibility.

Visit Takt at MODEX 2026

April 13–16 | Atlanta, GA

Georgia World Congress Center

Zebra booth # B11902