*Analyst Insight: *For the past two decades, “visibility” has defined operational maturity in supply chain management. Through digitalization, we’ve learned to track products and optimize flows in real time. Yet one essential input has remained largely invisible: energy.

Every automated system, from sensors to autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), depends on efficient, and available power. Despite that, energy is still treated as a background utility rather than an operational variable. In an era of 24/7, sensor-driven logistics, this approach no longer suffices. To build truly resilient operations, energy must be managed as data — measurable and continuously optimized.

Modern logistics facilities are dense networks of motion: AMRs, automated guided vehicles (AGVs), conveyors and shuttles moving goods through complex flows. These systems have solved for autonomy in navigation, not in energy. The result is that charging downtime remains one of the most significant hidden losses in industrial automation.

A typical mobile robot fleet loses between 8% to 12% of daily operational capacity to stationary charging and battery management. In high-throughput operations, that gap translates to thousands of lost labor-equivalent hours and measurable throughput reduction.

Yet, these losses rarely appear in key performance indicators, because energy efficiency and availability are not tracked with the same rigor as movement or labor. When power becomes a blind spot, uptime suffers, and so does return on automation investment.

The next stage of operational visibility will treat energy as a continuous data stream rather than a static utility. Power usage and transfer can be monitored and adjusted dynamically, in the same way that advanced systems now manage inventory or routing. When energy data becomes integrated into warehouse management and execution systems, power stops being an overhead line item and becomes a controllable performance variable.

This transition is already under way in leading facilities worldwide. Continuous telemetry from energy systems allows predictive maintenance and real-time alignment between throughput and power demand. In other words, energy can now be orchestrated.

In the next three years, it will be vital to integrate power telemetry into warehouse analytics, alongside KPIs such as uptime and throughput. Quantifying charging loss will be important as well, by helping identify how much productivity is lost to stationary recharging and overprovisioned fleets.

Systems will also need to adopt adaptive power infrastructure, deliver power dynamically, even to moving assets, minimize idle time and maximize utilization. Return on investment will have to be reframed too, by calculating automation value based on energy efficiency per productive hour, not just unit throughput. Together, these actions will move energy from the background to the foreground of operational design, where it belongs.

Energy visibility also creates a measurable sustainability advantage. Reducing idle charging and unnecessary battery capacity directly decreases total energy consumption and carbon footprint. Fewer batteries mean fewer raw materials and a smaller environmental load. In financial terms, these improvements typically deliver 20% to 30% lower total cost of ownership for automated fleets, based on aggregated industry benchmarks from logistics operators in North America and Europe.

Resource Link: https://capow.energy

Outlook: In the coming years, leading organizations will plan and distribute energy with the same precision they apply to labor or routing. Automation will reach full maturity when energy moves in sync with motion, continuously and intelligently. The supply chain has long sought total visibility. The next revolution — making energy visible — is already underway.