Every automation vendor has a slide that shows you breaking even in 18 months. Clean bar chart, conservative assumptions, maybe a small-print footnote about "optimal conditions." What that slide doesn't show is the 4-month implementation drag, the retraining curve, or the two weeks your team spent running parallel processes because nobody trusted the new system yet. I've seen facilities drop $600K on conveyor and sortation upgrades and hit their ROI target. I've also seen a s