How logistics companies are bringing robots into warehouses

DHL Group workers are used to walking nearly half a marathon every day just to sort, select and move items through huge warehouses.

Now, their distance and efforts have been dramatically reduced by autonomous mobile robots that can unload containers for a parcel delivery and supply chain management company at speeds of up to 650 cases per hour.

“This is what we are looking at, as we have successfully deployed the technology at scale over the past five years, starting when we started in 2020 with 240 projects, and now we are at up to 10,000 projects,” Tim Tetzlaff, global head of digital transformation at DHL, told CNBC.

The company’s independent innovations have sped up operations in 95% of DHL’s global warehouses. The company said that robots picking items in a warehouse increased units picked per hour by 30%, while autonomous forklifts in the same warehouse contributed to a 20% increase in efficiency.

Tetzlaff said automation is important to the company because it is a labor-intensive business.

“We still have an ambition to grow our business further, but if you look at where these distribution centers need to be located… it’s usually very difficult to find additional labor or even additional space just to build these warehouses there,” he said.

DHL is one of several fulfillment companies moving toward automation and leveraging artificial intelligence as the industry works to achieve greater efficiency.

On an earnings call with analysts in late January, United Parcel Service The company deployed automation in 57 buildings in the fourth quarter, bringing its total to 127 automated buildings, with plans for 24 more in 2026, CEO Carol Toomey said.

“This year, we plan to further automate our network and as a result, we expect to increase the percentage of U.S. volume we process through automated facilities to 68% by the end of the year, up from 66.5% at the end of 2025,” she said.

Similarly, fedex It said it sees automation as an opportunity to enhance the jobs of its workers, installing robotic arms to help process small packages at its Memphis hub, and working with artificial intelligence company Dexterity to leverage robots to load boxes into containers. Its “Network 2.0” initiative increases the efficiency of its packaging operations.

The company recently announced a partnership with Berkshire Gray to launch a fully autonomous robot to unload containers and improve operations.

It is estimated that the global warehouse automation market is expected to exceed $51 billion by 2030.

“We now have about 24% of our eligible average daily volume flowing through 355 Network 2.0-optimized facilities,” CEO Raj Subramaniam said on a call with analysts in December.

With the advent of automation, companies are working to balance their human workers with technological innovations.

UPS has announced more than 75,000 layoffs over the past year as the company focuses on efficiency and scales back its partnership with… Amazon Amid a multi-year transformation plan.

The company also said it closed 93 buildings in 2025 and plans to close at least 24 buildings in the first half of 2026.

“What happens is you see a cascading effect of closing sites that are legacy, traditional facilities, and it takes a lot of labor to operate those facilities, to a unified facility that is smarter, faster and more automated,” Executive Vice President Nando Cesarone said on the January call.

In a statement to CNBC, a UPS spokesperson said the company is focused on making jobs easier for its employees and that artificial intelligence and robots are taking over repetitive tasks that “make us more efficient in other jobs.”

FedEx did not respond to requests for comment on how the company balances its workforce and technology. Subramaniam said in the most recent earnings call that the Network 2.0 initiative led to “structural cost reductions” but the company has not publicly disclosed the amounts of job cuts.

Teamsters, the union that represents workers from several major packaging companies, said it will continue to focus on ensuring its team members have a voice at the table when it comes to technology.

“We never want to stand in the way of technology and its development, but all of it, should support workers, and can never work against them,” company spokeswoman Lena Melentijevic told CNBC. “Workers are the backbone of every one of these companies and are essential to their success, and we are here to defend them and hold companies accountable.”

DHL’s Tetzlaff said the company wants its automation to complement human labor rather than completely replace it. No matter how much DHL’s technology improves, Tetzlaff said the tricky tasks of packaging and shipping remain in the hands of employees.

“While we have deployed 8,000 collaborative robots in our operations around the world, we still employ 40,000 people,” he said.

The biggest area in which DHL has deployed its robots is item picking, where more than 2,500 robots use trained arms to pick items for parcels. This past holiday season, to keep up with demand for Black Friday and Christmas, the company added 30% capacity to its robotic fleet.

“There’s an advantage for us as a company, where we have a large human fleet of workers who are motivated and love the job, but complementing that with a robotic fleet that we can scale up and down and have that flexible stability to deal with change, which peaks throughout the year, whether it’s bigger changes like Covid, whether it’s [customer] “Profile changes etc,” he said.

However, there is unlikely to be a future in which warehouses are filled with humanoid robots, according to supply chain expert and director of logistics and fulfillment at Accenture Benjamin Reich.

Humanoid robots are gaining popularity as technology companies create human-like machines Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says he believes innovation is moving quickly. At the January CES trade show, Google Boston Dynamics has announced a partnership with Boston Dynamics, the same company that works with DHL, to enhance the tech company’s new robot called Atlas.

But among his clients, Reich said, he sees that “humans are still ahead.”

“We are also not seeing job displacement, but a shift in the search for skill sets in the market to bridge the gap between the degree of automation and operational as well as regulatory tasks,” Reich told CNBC.

He added that automation is geared toward specific jobs, with robots taking over repetitive tasks and companies instead “redirecting” their hiring toward technical roles rather than eliminating job growth altogether.

Reich said the industry is seeing increased investments in automation, with the biggest gains coming not from replacing people, but from increasing the efficiency of the supply chain and warehouse fulfillment processes.

There are also factors in the broader industry that impact the workforce, according to Ronnie Horvath, transportation and logistics leader at Accenture. There is a shortage of skilled workers who have the manual and organizational skills needed for the sector, and there is also competition between companies for warehouse employees based on wages, benefits, lifestyle, and more.

“So automation can also help, not replace that gap, but increase it, that void left by not having the workers you have today,” Horvath said. “And we see a lot of clients, they have an automation or robotic strategy…but they still have plans to hire human workers as well.”

Horvath added that the industry is reaping the benefits of its new technology. He saw companies able to adapt to meet high demand, increase efficiency and work on more automated processes to keep up with warehousing.

According to a March study by Accenture, 51% of factories globally expect to have fully automated warehouses by 2040, and 70% of transportation logistics executives treat autonomous supply chains as a top investment priority.

“There is almost no independent structure right now,” Horvath said. “So most or some of these clients are starting from scratch, and it will take time for these investments to be made and for them to also reap the benefits from it in all these areas.”