How logistics and packaging companies are integrating robots into warehouses

DHL Group employees walked nearly a half-marathon every day just to classify, select and move items through huge warehouses.

Now their distance and effort are significantly reduced with autonomous mobile robots capable of unloading containers for the package delivery and supply chain management company at a speed of up to 650 boxes per hour.

“That’s what we’re looking forward to, and that’s where we’ve been able to deploy the technology at scale over the last five years, since we started in 2020 with 240 projects, and now we’re at 10,000 projects,” Tim Tetzlaff, global head of digital transformation at DHL, told CNBC.

The company’s autonomous innovations have accelerated processes in 95% of DHL’s global warehouses. Item picking robots in one warehouse increased the number of units picked per hour by 30%, while autonomous forklifts in that same warehouse contributed to a 20% increase in efficiency, the company said.

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

“We always have ambitions to grow our business even further, but if you look at where these distribution centers should be located… it’s generally 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 strives for greater efficiency.

During an earnings call with analysts in late January, United Parcel Service CEO Carol Tomé said 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.

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

In the same way, FedEx said it sees automation as an opportunity to improve the work of its workers, installing robotic arms to help process small packages at its Memphis hub and working with AI company Dexterity to leverage robots to load boxes into containers. Its “Network 2.0” initiative aims to increase the efficiency of its parcel processes.

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

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

“We now have approximately 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 rise of automation, companies are weighing the balance between their human workers and their technological innovations.

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

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

“What’s happening is you’re seeing a cascading effect from closing sites that are older conventional facilities, that are labor-intensive to operate those facilities, to a much more agile, faster, automated, consolidated facility,” Executive Vice President Nando Cesarone said on the January call.

In a statement to CNBC, a UPS spokesperson said the company is working to make its employees’ jobs easier and that AI and robotics take on repetitive tasks that “make us more efficient in other functions.”

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

The Teamsters, the union representing workers at many large packaging companies, said it will remain focused on ensuring its team members have a voice at the table when it comes to technology.

“We never want to hinder technology and its development, but all of this must support workers, and it can never work against them,” spokesperson Lena Melentijevic told CNBC. “It’s the workers who make up the backbone of each of these companies and are critical to their success, and we are here to advocate for their interests and hold the companies accountable.”

DHL’s Tetzlaff said the company wants its automation to complement human work instead of completely replacing it. Regardless of how DHL’s technology improves, Tetzlaff said the delicate tasks of packing and shipping remain in the hands of employees.

“At the time we were deploying 8,000 collaborative robots in our operations around the world, we were still hiring 40,000 people,” he said.

The most significant area where DHL has deployed its robotics is in item picking, with more than 2,500 robots using trained arms to select parcel items. Last holiday season, to meet Black Friday and Christmas demand, the company added 30% capacity to its robotic fleet.

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

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

Humanoid robots are growing in popularity as tech companies innovate human-like machines, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he believes innovation is moving quickly. At the CES show in January, Google announced a partnership with Boston Dynamics, the same company working with DHL, to augment the tech company’s new robot named Atlas.

But Reich said that among his clients, he finds that “humans are always leading.”

“We’re also not seeing a replacement of jobs, but a shift where you’re looking more for skills in the market to fill the gap between the degree of automation, operational and organizational tasks,” Reich told CNBC.

Automation is geared toward specific jobs, he added, with robots taking over repetitive tasks and companies “repurposing” their hiring toward technical positions instead of eliminating job growth altogether.

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

There are also factors across the industry that impact the workforce, according to Ronny Horvath, head of transportation and logistics at Accenture. There is a shortage of skilled workers with both the manual skills and organizational skills necessary for the sector, and there is also competition between companies for warehouse staff based on salaries, benefits, lifestyle, etc.

“So automation can also help, not by replacing but by increasing that gap, that gap left by not recruiting the workers that we have today,” Horvath said. “And we see a lot of clients, they have an automation or robotics strategy…but they’re still looking at hiring human workers as well.”

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

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

“There are almost no stand-alone structures at the moment,” Horvath said. “So most or some of these clients are starting from scratch, and it’s going to take time until those investments are made and until they reap the benefits in all of those areas as well.”