In the past, internal logistics was not a major topic in the industry. However, today, it becomes a lever for flexibility and resilience, especially when cobotics comes into play.
Internal logistics has long remained in the background of discussions about the industry. We focused more on productivity, quality, line automation, cycle times… but much less on what happens between one step and the next: transfer of materials, replenishment of workstations, handling of pallets, among others. Yet this is precisely where wait times, micro-stoppages, waste and hidden costs can accumulate.
Today, the situation is completely different. For many factories, logistics and intralogistics are among the key areas where a company’s ability to be fast, flexible and resilient is tested. As such, the robotics collaboration finds some of its most compelling applications, both through collaborative industrial robotic arms (cobots) and autonomous mobile robots (AMR) for the autonomous transport of materials.
These two technologies intervene at different stages of the same process. While cobots handle the task itself, AMRs manage the flow. This distinction is important because it helps define the value of automation more precisely. The real turning point, however, comes when these two approaches are combined to help streamline the entire production ecosystem. At that point, logistics becomes a real competitive lever.
It is then worth asking where collaborative automation can generate the most value. Therefore, a solid logistics automation project should always start with a few preliminary questions:
- Where do the waiting times accumulate?
- Which internal missions are repetitive but do not provide real added value?
- Where do we waste time between one step and the next?
- What activities mobilize staff without generating proportional value?
- Where does product or layout variability make rigid automation ineffective?
These are the questions that help distinguish a wise investment from a purchase motivated solely by enthusiasm for technology. Because in the field of logistics and intralogistics, collaborative robotics only gives the best results when it is implemented to provide concrete responses anchored in the challenges specific to the industry: producing with greater continuity, managing more variations, reducing repetitive tasks, improving ergonomics and safety, and better exploiting the available space.
The real benefits of automation
We are seeing strong progress in mobile and collaborative robotics in three areas that are particularly important for logistics and intralogistics.
The first area concerns end-of-line operations, because this is where many repetitive and physically demanding tasks converge: pick and place, packaging, loading boxes and even palletizing. In this respect, cobotics is particularly useful. Not only because it increases productivity, but also because it guarantees precision and stability even when batch sizes vary, product formats change and production mixes are far from standardized.
Flexibility, rapid reconfiguration, small footprint and the ability to operate in existing spaces without disrupting the shop floor layout are the development drivers that are increasingly pushing companies to explore collaborative automation. These factors may be less dramatic than pure speed or high payload capacity, but in the real world of manufacturing they are often much more critical.
The second area concerns the supply of production lines and the replenishment of assembly stations. The challenge here lies in maintaining continuity. If the material does not arrive at the right place at the right time, the line slows down and operators wait or end up playing the role of handlers.
This is a very common dynamic, especially in businesses with open layouts, multiple interconnected departments and intense internal movement of pallets, containers or semi-finished products. In these cases, AMRs prove valuable as tools to stabilize flows, reduce repetitive missions and ease the burden of routine material handling tasks.
The third area concerns businesses facing increasing pressure from volumes, variability and limited space. Collaborative robotics, which is characterized by its flexibility and versatility, emerged precisely in this type of environment, where small and medium-sized businesses often struggled to embark on automation. This is partly explained by the increasing cost of traditional solutions, but also and above all by the rigidity that generally defines these forms of robotics, and finally by the lack of internal expertise in advanced robotics.
Unlike many traditional automation systems, collaborative robotics can also be introduced into environments that have not been designed from scratch, where layouts have evolved over time and the goal is to bring efficiency without making the environment more rigid. This is one of the reasons why collaborative robotics is so well suited to the European manufacturing industry, which often consists of cutting-edge but not always homogeneous factories, with highly mixed production, a constant need for adaptation and small to medium-sized operating scales.
The industry literature, based on the know-how of the many system integrators present on the market, emphasizes this parameter: before choosing a solution, companies must analyze the processes where automation can be successfully integrated and evaluate not only the task itself, but also the market, the product and the broader production context of the company.
Automation of intralogistics in practice: the Vibo case study
The case of Vibo illustrates a particularly successful and process-oriented approach to intralogistics automation. This Italian manufacturer, present in the furniture sector with production and sales activities in more than 70 countries, has based its competitiveness on closely integrated internal flows. In this context, efficient intralogistics was an essential element in maintaining service levels and operational continuity.
The main challenge was transporting pallets to the assembly area, where manual transport had become a bottleneck. Vibo needed mobile robots that could operate safely in an open, shared environment, without fences or layout changes, and that could adapt to varying internal flows. The company therefore introduced a MiR1200 Pallet Jack in 2025 to automate the transport of pallets previously carried out by electric forklifts, whose charging cycles left parts of the team without cover.
Beyond improving continuity and flexibility, the solution provided ergonomic benefits and freed operators from repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on higher value-added activities. The result? A reduction in cycle times accompanied by an increase in productivity. This project demonstrates that the true value of collaborative automation lies in practical, targeted integration, not automation for automation’s sake.
Collaborative applications in logistics: 5 use cases to follow
More generally, there are now five areas of application.
- Palletizing and depalletizing at the end of the line, especially when flows are continuous but the product range changes frequently.
- Packaging and order picking is an area that is becoming increasingly important, especially for businesses with e-commerce channels or highly fragmented shipping profiles.
- The supply of lines and the replenishment of assembly stations, where the value lies above all in punctuality and continuity of flow.
- The transport of pallets (full and empty), a subject often underestimated but essential to avoid congestion and downtime, as Vibo demonstrated.
- The integration between machine automation and internal logistics, that is to say all cases where the cobot becomes the connection point between a machine, a workstation and the handling system.
Collaborative robotics is particularly effective in handling, end-of-line, packaging, palletizing and machine loading/unloading operations, precisely where flow continuity meets task precision. The compact size of cobots also allows them to be moved from one area to another, helping businesses adapt to seasonal or unanticipated changes in production flow and reinforce areas under pressure or heavy workloads.
