The Bottleneck Is Rarely the Algorithm

Published 2026-03-04 by Faraz Rahimi

When a warehouse is slow, people ask for AI. I start with walking. The constraint is usually a table, a label, or a handoff, not a model.

The Bottleneck Is Rarely the Algorithm

Tags: Operations, Computer Vision, Process, Leadership, unlisted

I map the minutes. Waiting for a computer. Walking to a lead. Re-typing. Searching a sheet. The largest bar gets the first script.

A better matcher will not help if people cannot print a label or if inbound sits on a pallet because no one owns putaway.

Algorithms still matter, later

Once the handoff is clean, vision and OCR can eat the remaining ugly minutes. Doing them first is how you get a smart app on a stupid process.

Say no with a diagram

A one-page flow with times on it is how I decline a neural net request without sounding allergic to neural nets. The diagram usually survives the meeting. The hype does not.

Original post: https://farazrahimi.com/posts/the-bottleneck-is-rarely-the-algorithm