Holman Launches New Robotics Division to Simplify Industrial Automation Deployment
Industrial robotics adoption is accelerating across warehouses, manufacturing floors, logistics hubs, and service environments. Yet even as demand grows, many organizations find the path to adopting automation complicated by high upfront costs, fragmented vendor ecosystems, and the challenge of managing robotic assets over time.
Holman, best known as one of the world’s largest fleet and asset management companies, believes those barriers can be removed. This week, the company launched Holman Robotics, a new division built to offer what it calls the industry’s first fully integrated robotics management solution—a model designed to help businesses deploy and manage automation at scale through a single strategic partner.
The new division bundles system design, financing, data integration, and lifecycle asset management into one offering. Rather than requiring companies to work with separate vendors for hardware, implementation, training, and support, Holman Robotics aims to consolidate the process end-to-end.
A New Business Model for a New Era of Automation
“Robotic automation can transform operations, but the adoption journey is often slow and complex,” said Holman CEO Chris Conroy. “We are applying decades of experience in managing complex assets to make robotics simpler, more scalable, and more strategically aligned to business goals.”
The approach draws on Holman’s long history managing commercial fleets, maintenance programs, and distributed physical assets for large organizations—domains that require careful lifecycle planning and cost transparency. By extending this model into robotics, Holman is positioning automation as a managed service rather than a capital-heavy technology purchase.
At its core, the Holman Robotics solution includes three integrated components:
Design Advocacy: Holman works with customers to define the right automation strategy and identify technology partners through a curated network of robot manufacturers, system integrators, and software providers.
Streamlined Financing: Instead of large upfront capital expenditures, the company offers flexible financing and service models that shift costs into predictable operating expenses—an approach similar to how fleets and IT infrastructure have increasingly moved to subscription and leasing models.
Centralized Management Platform: A unified software environment provides real-time visibility into robot health, utilization, safety status, maintenance needs, and ROI metrics across multiple sites and use cases.
Together, Holman says, these pieces are meant to reduce both the friction of starting automation projects and the ongoing complexity of running them.
Meeting a Growing Market Need
The timing aligns with a broader shift in the industrial robotics market. Companies are no longer experimenting with one or two pilot robots—they are moving toward multi-facility deployments across logistics, manufacturing, cleaning, material handling, and security.
“As organizations scale robotics, management becomes the challenge,” said Joe Foster, Vice President of Robotics at Holman. “Businesses are asking: ‘How do we deploy faster? Who maintains these systems? How do we track performance across sites?’ Our goal is to become the strategic partner who answers those questions.”
This shift is already visible across sectors from retail warehousing to hospital logistics, where robots are moving beyond proof-of-concept adoption. Analysts have noted that as companies go from 5 robots to 500, the difficulty is no longer choosing the robot—it’s managing the fleet.
Holman’s move places it directly in the emerging market space, sometimes referred to as Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) and robot fleet orchestration, where companies pay for automation capabilities the way they might pay for cloud computing or transportation logistics.
Expanding Through Partnerships
Holman is not entering the robotics market alone. The company has already begun partnering with technology developers and service providers across autonomous mobile robots, industrial arms, warehouse automation platforms, and service robots.
By aligning with multiple OEMs rather than locking customers into a single brand ecosystem, Holman is positioning itself as robot-agnostic—a strategic middle layer capable of integration, management, and lifecycle planning across diverse technologies.
This mirrors the company’s long-standing approach to fleet management, in which Holman serves as a third-party strategic advisor rather than a vehicle manufacturer.
A Century-Old Company Shaping a New Industry Phase
The launch of Holman Robotics comes during the company’s 100th year in business. Founded in 1924 as a single Ford dealership in New Jersey, Holman has expanded into one of North America’s largest family-owned automotive and asset management organizations, employing more than 10,000 people across the U.S., UK, and Germany.
With its robotics division, Holman is signaling that managing robotic fleets may soon be as commonplace as managing vehicle fleets—particularly as companies blend physical labor, automation, and AI-driven workflows.
Why This Move Matters
As organizations face labor shortages, rising operational costs, and increasing demand for flexible production and distribution, automation is becoming a strategic necessity rather than a novelty. But the learning curve remains steep.
Holman’s new offering reflects a belief shared by many in the robotics industry: the future of automation depends less on robot hardware and more on the systems that let people deploy and manage robots easily.
For businesses evaluating robotics, the question is shifting from Which robot should we buy? to How do we build automation into our operations sustainably and at scale?
Holman is betting that it can be the company to answer that question.
