--- title: "The Unit-of-Use Automation Question: What the Data Actually Shows" date: 2026-10-01 author: "iA" url: https://iarx.com/the-unit-of-use-automation-question/ description: "Before investing in unit-of-use automation, examine the data. Learn how volume, labor, and workflow bottlenecks determine where automation truly pays off." categories: - "Blogs" --- # The Unit-of-Use Automation Question: What the Data Actually Shows ![The Unit-of-Use Automation Question: What the Data Actually Shows](https://iarx.com/wp-content/uploads/Assembly-and-Conveyance-with-iA-1.png) If you've been to an industry trade show floor or sat through a few vendor demos this year, you may have heard a consistent claim: full unit-of-use automation is the next must-have for central fill pharmacies, for both ambient and cold chain. It sounds compelling. We need dedicated robotics for every packaging format. More automation is always good, right? Maybe not. When we look at the actual mix, volume and labor data coming out of health systems, it's actually more complicated than that. A lot of the demand for unit of use automation is being generated by vendors trying to make a sale, not by the pharmacy's own operational needs. iA® builds and sells unit-of-use automation, so there's definitely a place for it. But the data must support the need for it. Before any system commits to it, there are a few questions worth asking. ### How much of a central fill pharmacy's volume is actually unit-of-use? It may be less than you think. Across the health systems iA has partnered with — a range that spans regional community networks up through large multi-site enterprise systems — unit of use consistently represents a small part of the total: averaging around 21% of ambient volume and just 6% of cold chain volume. The bulk of product moving through central fill is standard packaging. ### Is that volume high enough to justify dedicated automation? [![Infographic titled Central Fill Pharmacy Automation showing unit-of-use mix, average daily volume, picks per day, and manual](https://iarx.com/wp-content/uploads/358_UoUInfographic-300x232.png)](https://iarx.com/wp-content/uploads/358_UoUInfographic.png) With the mix seen by iA partnered health systems, on a typical day handling 5,000 scripts, the unit of use volume is around 1,000 per day for ambient and 300 per day for cold chain. Automation economics depend on strong throughput. The machine has to run enough volume to pay for itself. At these pick counts, a dedicated unit of use system is often sitting idle more than it's working, which stretches the payback period well past what most systems are willing to accept. ### What do current manual pick rates tell us about cost-effectiveness? They tell us manual operations are often still the most cost-effective option. At typical manual pick rates (about 120 picks per hour for ambient and 65 per hour for cold chain) that unit of use volume translates to roughly 8.3 hours of labor a day for ambient and 4.6 hours for cold chain. That's a real, quantifiable labor cost, but it's also a cost that's most likely already being absorbed efficiently by existing staff. In most cases, the math still favors manual pick over the capital and maintenance cost of a dedicated unit of use machine. ### If pick and fill isn't the bottleneck, then what's the problem? Automating pick and fill speeds up a step that was rarely the issue. The real problem is usually with pack-out, staging, shipping and last-mile delivery. Approximately 30% of cold chain logistics spend goes to packaging, tracking, and monitoring — work that automated picking never touches. Additionally, the HDA Research Foundation's 2024 cold chain report identified last-mile delivery and the last 10 feet of delivery as primary areas requiring improvement in cold chain operations. Health systems can automate every unit of use pick in the building and still lose product temperature control in the last ten feet of the process, where the true bottleneck exists. iA's intelligent software, NEXIA® is designed to help close this gap by running pack-out on a schedule, triggering the right manual or semi-automated workstations, reading totes ahead of time, and queuing paperwork before the bottleneck ever forms. Semi-automated packing that scales with volume can solve more of the actual risk than another picking robot does. ### So where does unit of use fit in? There are definitely times when unit of use automation makes sense. iA teams will thoroughly assess each customer's current volumes, mix and labor data to build a customized solution that meets their needs. In many cases that includes building and deploying unit of use automation. However, it shouldn't always be the standard go-to, if the data doesn't support the need. Automation strategy should follow the data. When examined together, unit of use volume and labor will tell you where automation pays off and just as importantly, where it doesn't. For most health systems, unit of use is a small piece of the puzzle, and automation investment should be directed toward the parts of the process where the real cost and risk are concentrated.