The auto parts distribution world is brutal: high SKU counts, constant supersessions, volatile demand from repair shops, and customer expectations shaped by Amazon-level service. In this environment, your warehouse software is either your competitive advantage, or the hidden anchor slowing you down.
The numbers tell the story: The U.S. automotive aftermarket is projected to reach $617.3 billion by 2027, with light duty sales growing 8.6% in 2023 to $392 billion. Meanwhile, the average age of U.S. vehicles has reached 12.6 years, driving unprecedented demand for aftermarket parts. In this high-growth, high-complexity environment, your operational technology stack determines whether you'll capture market share or lose it.
Below are the five most telling signs your warehouse software is holding you back, and what the most forward-thinking distributors are doing about it.
When real-time inventory isn't truly real-time, the entire distribution flow suffers:
If you're operating a system designed for yesterday's volume—50,000 SKUs instead of over 150,000—accuracy can become unreliable during peak seasons or promotional pushes.
Industry benchmarks show the gap is widening. Research from the Warehousing Education and Research Council (WERC) found that best-in-class warehouse operations achieve 99% inventory accuracy, with top performers reaching 99.888%. Meanwhile, most facilities using legacy technology and paper-based practices run anywhere from 95-98% accuracy. That 1-4% gap translates to thousands of stockouts, mis-picks, and lost sales annually.
Modern WES Solutions Fix This By:
This shift alone can boost inventory accuracy from the industry average to 98-99.5% or higher. Lane Automotive, a premier global distributor of aftermarket performance automotive parts stocking over 100,000 SKUs, partnered with Conveyco to implement New Dawn WES integrated with Exotec's Skypod robotics system. The result: order processing time dropped from 109 minutes to just 15 minutes, with enhanced accuracy through sophisticated quality controls at every step.
Auto parts customers expect flexibility:
The data backs this up: 88% of consumers expect a seamless shopping experience across multiple channels, and 85% of retailers plan to invest in omnichannel fulfillment strategies in 2024. In auto parts specifically, 77.2% of top U.S. retailers offered BOPIS in 2024, with BOPIS spending expected to exceed $154 billion by 2025.
But omnichannel fails fast if your software can't:
Many auto parts DCs still rely on legacy ERP logic patched together with Excel sheets, tribal knowledge, and manual workarounds. If you're routing orders by "old habits" instead of system intelligence, you're losing margin and speed.
Research shows that omnichannel retailers retain 90% more customers than single-channel stores, and companies with strong omnichannel engagement see 179% faster revenue growth.
Firefighting mode typically shows up as:
The root cause?
Legacy WMS systems don't orchestrate work, they only track it.
Modern distribution centers rely on Warehouse Execution Software to:
When execution becomes orchestrated rather than reactive, operations gain back hours per day and eliminate floods of manual overrides.
Studies show that retailers implementing efficient omnichannel logistics report a 25% increase in customer satisfaction related to delivery times and accuracy, while warehouse efficiency can increase by 30% with proper system integration.
Auto parts distribution is uniquely difficult:
If your WMS doesn't manage:
Your team ends up doing 20% of the warehouse's thinking manually.
The complexity is only increasing. The global automotive aftermarket is projected to grow from $443.12 billion in 2025 to $565.73 billion by 2033, driven by the growing average age of vehicles and increasing demand for cost-effective replacement parts. Modern WES solutions are designed specifically for this high-complexity environment, ensuring systems, not people, handle the intricate decision-making.
Automation is everywhere in modern warehouses:
But here's the catch: Legacy software can't talk to modern automation without massive custom integration.
If every new automation project triggers:
Your software is officially holding you back.
A modern WES sits between WMS and automation, providing:
This approach significantly reduces automation project cost and deployment time. At Lane Automotive, Conveyco integrated the Exotec Skypod system with New Dawn WES to manage replenishment, put-away, order picking, and put-to-light functions. The facility deployed 62 robots, five picking stations, and 59,600 storage bins, expecting to realize a sixfold increase in throughput—all while maintaining the flexibility to scale operations during peak seasons.
If the five signs in this guide feel uncomfortably familiar, you're not alone. Many auto parts distributors feel trapped between aging WMS platforms and the growing complexity of omnichannel fulfillment, SKU proliferation, tighter delivery windows, and increased automation.
This is exactly why Conveyco developed New Dawn WES, a warehouse execution platform built from the ground up by veteran engineers with 200+ man-years of experience in high-volume distribution software. The system was intentionally designed over multiple years before release, using real-world operational lessons from industries like automotive parts, beverage, grocery, ecommerce, and 3PLs.
Below is how New Dawn directly addresses the pain points outlined in this blog.
Most warehouse software reacts to problems. New Dawn predicts and prevents them.
Using its Integrated Control System (ICS), New Dawn provides:
The result: operations stay smooth, orders stay on schedule, and supervisors stop chasing bottlenecks.
For auto parts DCs that struggle with surges, cut-off times, and hot orders, this alone is transformative.
New Dawn was designed for verticals with massive SKU counts, complex item attributes, and fast-moving order profiles: automotive, retail, beverage, electronics, apparel, and more.
This matters for auto parts because you're dealing with:
New Dawn's Order Controller and Inventory Control modules automate these decisions so you don't rely on tribal knowledge or manual reasoning to get orders out accurately.
Unlike legacy systems that require custom code for every change, New Dawn WES is:
Modules include:
This means distributors can start simple (RF picking, light automation) and scale into AMRs, AS/RS, put walls, conveyors, and automated sortation without rewriting their entire software stack.
The #1 complaint from distributors trying to automate is the cost and complexity of integrating new equipment.
New Dawn solves this by providing:
This eliminates the need for:
Auto parts operations using AMRs, vertical lift modules, or conveyor sortation gain a future-proof connection layer that grows with the facility.
One of New Dawn's most powerful advantages is its software-driven emulation environment, which allows full testing of workflows, routing logic, MHE integration, and exceptions before going live.
For auto parts DCs this means:
This is particularly valuable for distributors upgrading from manual processes or bolt-on automation.
While the technology behind New Dawn is deep, the UI and workflows are surprisingly simple:
This reduces the training curve for:
It's exactly what auto parts DCs need when labor is tight and workflows shift daily.
Auto parts distribution is only getting more complex: more SKUs, faster delivery promises, more automation, and more pressure from customers and competitors.
New Dawn WES gives you:
If you're seeing the signs that your warehouse software is becoming a bottleneck, New Dawn isn't just a better tool; it's the transformation layer between the operation you have and the operation you want to be running.
Don't just take our word for it. Lane Automotive, a leading distributor of aftermarket performance automotive parts with over 60 years of experience, transformed their fulfillment operations with Conveyco's integrated solution:
The Challenge:
The Solution:
The Results:
"Our customers shape every decision we make as a company, so we had to identify the right end-to-end solution that could easily integrate with our existing automation and distribution ecosystem to transform our fulfillment operations for years to come. Exotec and Conveyco were key partners in our distribution automation journey." - David Meadow, Chief Information Officer, Lane Automotive