Inside the first workplace to earn a Robot Age Practitioner designation

A mid-sized logistics facility in Columbus, Ohio has become the first workplace to earn a collective Robot Age Practitioner designation — meaning that a critical threshold of its operational staff have completed the REP certification and demonstrated applied readiness through the Robot Readiness Audit.

The facility operates a mixed human-robot environment across two warehouse floors. Collaborative mobile robots handle inventory movement; humans manage exceptions, quality checks, and anything requiring contextual judgment. It is exactly the kind of environment the REP was designed for.

The designation process took six months. It began with a cohort of eight staff members — including two shift supervisors, a facilities manager, and five floor operatives — enrolling in the REP certification. All eight completed it. Six passed the audit on their first attempt.

What changed as a result? According to the facility director, the clearest shift was in how problems get reported and escalated. Before the programme, incidents involving the robots were often underreported because staff weren't sure whether what they'd observed was significant. After completing the certification, they had a shared vocabulary and a clearer sense of what constituted a reportable event.

The facility is now piloting a peer-mentorship model in which certified practitioners onboard new staff into the mixed environment. It is an early example of what institutional robotic literacy looks like in practice — and it did not require a single engineer.