How 8,000 robots are changing work inside logistics giant DHL Supply Chain

“Does it reduce our dependency on labor? Yes, it does,” says Miller. “If anyone says otherwise, I don’t think they are being truthful.”

Miller is a two-decade veteran at DHL Supply Chain, joining the logistics division of the German-based package delivery and supply chain giant DHL Group in 2005 as vice president of IT for the Americas business. She was then promoted to serve as CIO in North America in 2014 and took on the global role in 2024. Miller was thus part of the C-suite team that decided to make its first bet on robotics in 2017, when investor interest in robotics startups was soaring.

The job picture in the manufacturing and logistics sector is complex, because turnover for the sector is high and the industry’s top executives contend that younger employees aren’t too keen to work in labor-intensive tasks. While President Donald Trump administration’s embrace of tariffs was billed as a way to bring back more domestic manufacturing and factory jobs, the sector hasn’t seen a meaningful turnaround to stem a decades-long downturn in employment.

In 2000, U.S. manufacturing payrolls stood at 17.2 million, a figure that dropped to 12.7 million by September 2025, according to consulting giant McKinsey.

DHL Supply Chain focuses on closely evaluating manual human work tasks including picking, packaging, and putting away goods, and then working closely with vendors to design and develop robotics systems that can do the same work. Return on investment varies by site, depending on how many robots DHL has deployed—those hardware costs add up—and external factors like labor availability in each unique market. The sites where jobs are harder to fill are more desirable for robotics, Miller says.

As more robotics are deployed, work has evolved and focuses more on supervising robots and working closely with vendors on capturing data and insights from software and artificial intelligence that’s built into the hardware systems.

“There’s just a lot more you can do if you have the ability to use computer vision to harness that data,” says Miller. She said new advancements in the sector include Robust AI’s Carter, an AI-enabled robot that uses cameras to map out the floor to avoid objects and workers.

DHL Supply Chain pilots new robotics solutions in a variety of markets across Europe, North America, and Asia, always with the intent of selecting systems that can be scaled across the company’s 2,800 global sites. Frequently, new robotics are tested in areas of the logistics floor that are cordoned off to keep workers safe while the systems are tested in a real-life setting. 

Miller says DHL Supply Chain has honed in on three key robotics vendors: Locus Robotics, Boston Dynamics, and Robust AI. “Having multiple vendors for the same use case is a good thing,” says Miller. “It decreases our risk, because these are startup companies, and funding comes and goes. Not all of them are going to make it.” [Hyundai Motor Group owns a controlling interest in Boston Dynamics]

Warehouse enterprise software provider SVT Robotics connects all of those disparate systems, says Miller, which is useful for faster integration when new robotics are onboarded, but also to ensure that all data—including when orders are picked, confirmation that a delivery has been shipped, and keeping track of current inventory—is contained in one place.

Supply chains and the manufacturing sector have also been battered by numerous disruptions over the past several years, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war, a tariff war, and most recently, the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz due to the Iran war. In April, DHL Group said that “despite geopolitical disruptions and ongoing trade tensions,” the company’s first-quarter revenue increased 2% from the prior-year period.

Geopolitical and trade pressures have mounted as the sector is also facing persistent labor shortages. Surveys consistently show that a majority of American manufacturers struggle to attract and retain workers.

Miller says robotics have helped dramatically cut the amount of time a warehouse picker spends walking the floor and have taken on difficult tasks like unloading boxes from a trailer on a hot day. In sites where robots have been deployed, Miller says that turnover is lower and onboarding is faster. “People prefer to work in sites where there’s technology deployed,” she contends.

Venture capital funding has flowed steadily into robotics startups, rising threefold from 2023 to 2025, according to research firm McKinsey. Humanoid robots from Tesla, Hyundai, and Boston Dynamics have garnered much of the press attention, though Miller says this has taken some funding away from the use cases that are less glamorous, but still highly impactful.

“There’s a lot of hype in the market,” says Miller. And yet, with $40.7 billion invested annually in robotics systems, she strikes a hopeful tone. “With the level of investment, we should see some accidental products come out that can benefit our sites.”

John Kell

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NEWS PACKETS

Layoffs hit Cisco, Walmart, LinkedIn, and Meta, but not always directly linked to AI. As job cuts continue to proliferate across an economy that’s been stung by high inflation, Cisco Systems announced it would cut fewer than 4,000 jobs this quarter to free up money to invest in AI. Meta began its previously announced layoffs of 8,000 global staffers on Wednesday, while Microsoft’s professional social network LinkedIn is reportedly planning to cut about 5% of its headcount. Reuters has reported that the LinkedIn job cuts aren’t due to AI, but instead to reorganize teams and shift focus to the areas of the business that are growing. Retail giant Walmart will reportedly cut or relocate about 1,000 jobs, WSJ reports, as it weighs combining more of its technology and product teams. And for organizations seriously pondering layoffs in favor of AI, a warning from recent research from Gartner: automation-driven layoffs are generating very limited returns, if at all.

Could OpenAI be back in court again, this time against Apple? Coming off a victory after a jury ruled against Elon Musk in his lawsuit against OpenAI, the ChatGPT maker is reportedly preparing for another legal case, this time as the plaintiff against Apple. Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, says a two-year-old relationship between the pair has become strained because OpenAI believes it isn’t getting enough of the expected benefits from the deal, which involved incorporating the AI startup’s chatbot into Apple’s software. It had hoped that in doing so, ChatGPT would lure more subscribers. But OpenAI has lamented that its technology has had limited use within Apple’s systems and that its features are difficult to find, Bloomberg says.

Nvidia’s CEO strikes an optimistic tone after his China visit. After President Donald Trump and more than a dozen U.S. executives, including Musk and Apple’s Tim Cook, visited China last week, the early reporting determined that there weren't a lot of tangible wins as it pertained to investment opportunities or regulatory approvals. And yet, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was bullish, saying he expected Chinese authorities will eventually allow the import of AI chips from U.S. companies. Huang told Bloomberg that he didn’t directly discuss the opportunity to sell Nvidia’s H200 AI chips to Chinese customers, though the topic did come up in discussions between officials from the U.S. and China. All eyes will be on Nvidia again on Wednesday afternoon, when the company will report its first quarter results.

Anthropic has raised more than $30 billion. Multiple outlets have reported that the Claude maker is raising billions in fresh funding at a $900 billion valuation, as the AI startup has projected soaring revenue growth and has become one of the clear frontrunners of the AI revolution. The Wall Street Journal reports that Anthropic and rival OpenAI have raised more than $220 billion in funding since 2025, a figure that doesn’t include Anthropic’s latest $30 billion raise. Anthropic’s recent product-focused announcements over the past week have focused on sector-specific solutions, including a $200 million pledge with the Gates Foundation to support AI projects in health, education, and other public goods areas, as well as a more assertive push into the legal industry.

ADOPTION CURVE

Finance teams are finally embracing AI. After sitting a bit on the sidelines in the early days of the generative AI boom, risk-adverse finance departments are more assertively using these tools, with 75% reporting using AI compared to just 30% two years ago. Seven out of ten organizations say that their use of AI is “meeting or exceeding ROI expectations,” with the biggest gains linked to decision-making speed (71%), decision-making quality (70%), and forecasting accuracy (64%), according to a global survey of 1,013 senior finance leaders across 20 countries conducted by accounting giant KPMG.

But, there are still quite a few hurdles that finance teams are sorting through, namely related to workforce training. Those main obstacles include a lack of clear, role-specific use cases (64%) and hands-on practice environments (61%). Thomas Mackenzie, KPMG’s U.S. and global audit chief digital officer, says productivity will improve over time, but that leaders should be patient, because workers are still learning a lot of new skills.

“You can’t expect immediate returns,” Thomas Mackenzie, KPMG’s U.S. and global audit chief digital officer, tells Fortune. “You've got to create a space where people can use it, and they can fail, and they can be less productive, and not have a great experience; but you reward them for going back the second day, trying again, and learning.”

The KPMG study also found that the finance departments that are at the orchestrating and multi-agent stages are outperforming their early planning peers by 40 points on key metrics: forecast accuracy and ROI. When companies get to the point where they’ve deployed agents to oversee other agents, “that’s when you start to see the transformation around the way of working,” says Mackenzie.

Courtesy of KPMG

JOBS RADAR

Hiring:

- Institute on Aging is seeking a chief technology officer, based in San Francisco. Posted salary range: $295K-$325K/year.

- Jefferies is seeking a global head of loans technology, based in New York. Posted salary range: $225K-$250K/year.

- Baxter is seeking a VP of IT, AI and data platforms, based in Deerfield, Illinois. Posted salary range: $304K-$380K/year.

- The Mutual Group is seeking a VP of AI, based in Boston. Posted salary range: $230K-$270K/year.

Hired:

- Diebold Nixdorf appointed Raj Singh as CIO, succeeding Teresa Ostapower, who is retiring after serving in the role since 2021. Singh will report to Octavio Marquez, president and CEO of the ATM and self-checkout systems manufacturer. Most recently, Singh served as VP and CIO at automotive electronics supplier Visteon. He also previously held leadership roles at Ford Motor, DTE Energy, and Ally Financial.

- Ellkay announced the appointment of Lucky Singh as CTO, where he will lead the healthcare technology company’s tech organization and product architecture. Most recently, Singh served as SVP of software engineering at healthcare software provider Inovalon. He also previously served as VP of software development at business software giant Workday.

- Pavilion Payments appointed Kaiu Pettigrew as EVP and CIO, where she will lead the gaming industry payment provider’s IT, risk, technology, and product teams. Pettigrew most recently served as SVP, enterprise technology risk manager, at financial services company First Hawaiian Bank. Previously, she held senior leadership and consulting roles at Wynn Macau, Maverick Gaming, and Las Vegas Sands.

Fortune AIQ Special Digital Issue: The AI Economy

From global corporations to local entrepreneurs, artificial intelligence is changing the way businesses operate, compete, and succeed. Explore all of Fortune AIQ, and read the latest collection of stories below:

–After AI stole his clients, one Big Tech ghostwriter is using AI to get them back

–Outnumbered: At $4 billion ClickUp, a 3:1 agent-to-human ratio is rewiring work itself

–How a mom-and-pop car wash chain went from sticky notes to AI-powered operations that are upleveling every part of the company

–Solo founders are using AI to do the work of entire teams—but going it alone has limits

–How EarthRanger uses AI to help protect endangered species—and boost the wildlife tourism industry

–The smartphone’s days are numbered. Meet the device that could come next