Background: With the exponential expansion of E-commerce, rising labor cost and higher customer expectations have pushed the implementation of advanced automation technology in warehouses. The order-picking-process is considered to be the most labor intensive and most expensive labor cost in warehouses. It has a crucial part to determine the lead time and customer satisfaction and because it is the last procedure before the order is shipped it can have negative effects on delivery quality, future customer relations and the overall satisfaction. 

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how automation can help in the order picking process by studying the companies Shelfless and Exsitec to understand its effect on efficiency, cost and to understand the barriers and motivations to implementing it. 

Method: This paper is based on a qualitative interview study with a deductive approach. The analysis method is based on within case analysis and cross-case analysis. Within case analysis is used to develop an understanding of each company to then later use a cross-case analysis to examine the difference between the two companies.

Conclusion: The conclusion is that automation in the order picking process can increase the productivity whilst lowering the cost at the expense of a high installation fee with some disadvantages during the installation process like lower productivity, less flexibility. Although in the long run automation will be necessary to keep up with the growth of the companies.