by Gianni Rusconi

15 February 2026

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Not just a technology showroom, but a real 'laboratory' where automation takes shape before the customer's eyes, is simulated, tested and adapted to the real constraints of a factory or warehouse. With the inauguration of the Dymation Experience Centre at its Segrate site, CLS (a Tesya group company specialising in materials handling) is putting on the ground a strategy that aims to integrate consultancy, robotics and software into a single project path. "The logistics market is going through a phase of profound transformation in order to respond to unavoidable requirements such as efficiency, quality and continuity of processes," explained Flavio Castelli, the company's managing director, emphasising how in such a scenario the automation/digital coupling represents a concrete answer, but only if it is part of a structured model. "Our approach," added the CEO, "starts with consulting and process analysis, continues with layout design and solution engineering, and ends with the development and implementation of integrated and sustainable systems over time. To do all this, CLS relies on Dymation, the specialised business unit (about fifty specialists with high IT and automation skills are active between the offices in Italia, France, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands) that concretely accompanies client companies throughout the entire process, from the understanding of requirements to the realisation of measurable solutions for the digitisation of operations. The christening of the new centre, company spokespersons emphasise, comes against a backdrop of strong expansion for industrial automation. Globally, the sector is now worth more than USD 220 billion and is estimated to grow to around USD 325 billion by 2030, with an average annual rate close to 8%; the Italia market is also travelling at a good pace, with forecasts of a leap forward from USD 3.65 billion in 2025 to more than USD 5 billion forecast at the end of this decade in 2030.

How the centre works, from data analysis to digital twins

The space, divided into different thematic areas, accompanies companies through all the phases of an automated intralogistics project and strongly reflects a 'human-centric' approach: automation not as a replacement for work, but as a tool for eliminating repetitive and low-value activities, improving ergonomics and task quality. It starts, as mentioned, with the analysis of flows based on the data collected by the customer, and after the control and monitoring phase using proprietary platforms, we arrive at the immersive simulation and construction phase of the plant's digital twin. The objective is (on paper) very simple: to reduce decision-making uncertainty, anticipate criticalities and correctly size investments, empowering companies (think of medium-sized manufacturing companies) to digitally model machines and processes to anticipate new operational scenarios. The area dedicated to simulation, layout design and the creation of digital twins is therefore the fulcrum of the Experience Centre, the place where, in essence, the experimentation and testing process is concluded through an immersive experience supported by virtual reality and the ability to make data-driven decisions before intervening on the existing plant is maximised. In practice, Dymation develops dynamic simulations that allow all possible scenarios to be evaluated, determining how many and which mobile robots are needed to achieve the customer's target productivity and consequently avoiding oversizing or unnecessary investment. Once the system has been installed, Dymation also guarantees an after-sales service that provides continuous monitoring of the process data collected from the implemented solutions in order to identify any margins for improvement and further optimisation. The order of magnitude in terms of productivity gains promised by CLS, leveraging intelligent flow and resource management, is in the order of 20-30% for the same number of machines used.

The watchword: integration

A key prerogative of the Experience Centre is related to the integration factor between AMR systems (Autonomous Mobile Robots, agents capable of moving autonomously in defined environments), orchestration software such as Traffic Manager that allow real-time monitoring of fleets and modulating workloads in close correlation with existing information systems, from Erp to production Mes. The value that CLS looks to, in other words, does not derive from the level of sophistication of the machine but rather in the ability to make robots, data and people communicate within a coherent architecture; artificial intelligence, including GenAI, comes into play in turn to support engineers in defining solutions and optimising operational parameters. The innovation lever, as Marco Locatelli, Business Unit Director of Dymation, also confirms, is therefore not only technological but also organisational, and has in the human factor an indispensable element. "This project," added the manager, "represents our vision of industrial automation, concrete, measurable, scalable and built together with customers, starting by listening to their needs, their operational constraints and their field data. We do not only offer technological devices, but we also integrate customised software that digitises and connects the production process with even different brands of machinery and the people in charge. Finally, completing the ecosystem is AlfaProject.net, a company specialising in the digitalisation of plant processes that adds to the consulting and advanced robotics components to cover the entire lifecycle of a project and of what CLS not coincidentally calls 'an integrated industrial system', from the pre-sales phase to post-installation monitoring.

The real case: Granterre, from pilot project to real plant

The concrete application of the CLS model can be seen in the project realised for Granterre, an agri-food group with a turnover of around EUR 1.7 billion, in its plant in Noceto (in the province of Parma) for the packaging of PDO and PGI hams, cold cuts and cheeses. Here Dymation introduced a combination of intelligent mobile robots and supervision software integrated in a single digital architecture, starting with the creation of a digital twin of the plant, used to simulate the production process and test configurations before installation. Once up and running, the system coordinates the flow of finished product from the end of the line to dispatch, and when the palletiser receives the parameters from the Mes system, it transmits them to the AMRs that move the pallets to the filming machine and then to the dispatch buffer, while the Traffic Manager monitors and optimises fleet performance in real time. The result? Twofold: on the one hand, heavy manual tasks have been eliminated (previously, operators could handle up to 2.5 tonnes of material per day), and on the other hand, flexibility has been achieved to adapt to production peaks. The opening of the Experience Centre in Segrate reflects this practical case and the vision of automation designed as an integrated ecosystem to act as an efficiency multiplier.