Logistics and Fulfillment Robotics
Turn Delivery Expectation Accuracy into Your Differentiator
Regardless of the industry, logistics operations are structured around workflows—moving product safely from receiving through order fulfillment, outbound shipping, and ensuring DEA (Delivery Expectation Accuracy). The primary challenge is not any single task, but maintaining flow across picking, sorting, packing, and palletizing as order profiles change, labor challenges arise, and volumes increase.
Teradyne Robotics addresses all of these by combining UR collaborative industrial robots (cobots) for precision tasks and MiR autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for material flow, allowing operations to scale without introducing friction between workflow steps.
Trusted In High Volume Logistics Operations
UR cobots and MiR AMRs maintain flow across intralogistics and fulfillment operations, reducing your dependency on labor, improving worker safety, and optimizing order accuracy at scale. This commercial-grade automation is used daily across real logistics environments—at production volumes and real order complexity.
Proven Logistics Applications
Robotic Picking
Robotic automation for picking will vary based on volume, SKU complexity, and use case:
- Goods-to-Person (G2P) Picking - Robots safely deliver inventory directly to operators, reducing travel time and stabilizing throughput.
- Person-to-Goods (P2G) Picking - Operators retrieve items from storage locations, supported by robotic replenishment and transport.
- Batch Picking - Batch picking improves efficiency by allowing operators to pick multiple orders in a single trip. However, gains are often constrained downstream. As batch size increases, consolidation becomes more complex, congestion rises, and error rates increase.
MiR AMRs coordinate movement between pick zones and downstream processes, reducing congestion and maintaining flow during peak demand.
Robotic Packing
Packing is where order accuracy and customer experience converge. Variability in SKU mix and order composition often makes this a bottleneck.
- Robotic Order Packing - Standardizes packing execution, improving consistency and reducing errors.
- Robotic Kitting + Packing - Combines multiple items into defined kits, then completes order packaging with repeatable accuracy.
- Case Packing - Automates packing at scale for high-volume operations.
UR cobots are typically deployed at this stage where repeatability is at its highest and errors are most costly, stabilizing throughput before shipping.
Robotic Sorting
Sorting connects picking and packing to outbound shipping. It becomes increasingly complex as SKU counts and order fragmentation increase.
- Order-Based Sorting (Pick & Pack Flow) - Separates picked items into individual orders for consolidation.
- Mixed-SKU Sorting - Handles high variability environments where multiple SKUs must be organized simultaneously.
- Cross-Dock / Last-Mile Sorting - Routes orders directly to shipping lanes based on destination or carrier.
When integrated with upstream picking and downstream packing, sorting becomes a critical control point for maintaining overall system flow.
Unilever Customer Success
Historically, a Unilever production plant faced difficulties in keeping and finding employees for monotonous, manual tasks related to packaging and palletizing – tasks that were often also strenuous due to the product sizes handled. Unilever needed a solution automating these processes; however, finding a flexible robot with appropriate payload and reach, as well as intuitive handling and programming was challenging. Utilizing Universal Robots cobots Unilever shortened palletizing time, optimized work ergonomics, and relieved employees from the most strenuous tasks.
Dariusz Ratajczak. Sr. Automation Specialist. UnileverEach year, a decreasing number of people apply for positions related to palletizing but in our plants this is a key process which has to be performed efficiently. For packaging we needed a robot with enough reach of the arm. The task that the robot needed to fulfill consisted in picking various boxes with tea and placing them on a pallet.
From Fragmented Workflows to Predictable Fulfillment
Modern logistics operations break down when individual tasks scale faster than the system connecting them. Picking increases volume, but downstream sorting and packing become bottlenecks. Variability rises. Flow breaks down.
UR cobots automate precision tasks where consistency matters most—packing, kitting, and palletizing—while MiR AMRs manage material movement across the operation, dynamically routing work based on real demand.
The result is a connected system that stabilizes throughput and improves safety across picking, sorting, packing, and shipping, turning variable workflows into predictable output and delivery accuracy.
Logistics Robotics Enabling Safe and Efficient Fulfillment Operations
UR Series
The UR Series is our high-performance collaborative robot arm family, engineered for maximum speed, precision and productivity. These next-generation robots are handled higher payloads and longer reaches while maintaining full collaborative capabilities.
e-Series
The e-Series delivers proven, reliable collaborative automation for a wide range of environments. Each robot arm in this series combines flexibility, ease of use and the trusted quality that defines Universal Robots.
AMRs
MiR robots are versatile solutions designed to streamline internal transportation and material handling. By adding top modules, cobots can be customized to tow carts, lift, and transport shelves or pallets, providing flexible, ready-made options for various tasks.
Talk to a Logistics Automation Expert
A logistics automation specialist will follow up to review your operations, workflows, and fulfillment challenges. The goal is to understand your setup and identify practical automation opportunities to improve efficiency and scalability—no commitment required.
