Depalletizing.

Taking cases off an incoming pallet and putting them onto a conveyor, a cart or a rack. In a POD plant it is the first touch on every blank that enters the building, and in most shops it is still two people, a knife and a roll cage. Robotic versions use a vacuum or clamp head with 3D vision to find the top layer, then either lift a whole layer or pick case by case; Boston Dynamics' Stretch works through neat or messy stacks at up to 50 lb a case, which is the class of problem that defeats a fixed layer picker. The argument for automating it is not speed, it is that goods-in owns both the lifting injuries and the shift-start bottleneck: nothing prints until blanks are on the racks, so a slow morning at the pallet sets the pace for everything after it. The common mistake is automating the lift and leaving the count manual, so the pallet comes down fast and the stock record is still wrong by Tuesday.