Towards the full automation of distribution centers

In this paper it is first identified the trade-off among costs, flexibility and performances of autonomous robotic solutions for material handling processes, where adding value with automation is not as trivial as in production processes: hence the requirement for automated solutions to be simple, lean and efficient becomes even stricter. Then a method for modelling and comparing differential performances and costs of manual and autonomous solutions is developed. As a result of the method, a smart man-machine collaborative interface is designed and its impact evaluated on a specific case of study. Results are then generalized and prove the strong conclusions that in unconstrained environments, where full standardization cannot be achieved, the risk of investing in autonomous solutions can only be mitigated by creating a fast and smart man-machine collaborative interface.