Przemysł 5.0 w logistyce: jak zmienia się rola magazynów w Polsce i Europie

Industry 5.0 in Logistics: How the Role of Warehouses is Changing in Poland and Europe

Tomasz Mika from JLL presenting a report on the Polish warehouse market and the impact of demographic changes on commercial real estate in Poland through 2035.

E-commerce is Growing, Workers are Declining. The Polish Warehouse Market at a Turning Point

Four JLL representatives standing at a June event in Sopot in front of a backdrop reading "Forum Rynku Nieruchomości - Polish Real Estate Forum".

How is the role of warehouses changing in the Polish economy? Insights from the Real Estate Forum in Sopot

<h1 style="text-align:justify;">Logistics has stopped being a race for a single metric. Today, it's a field of continuous decisions balancing time, cost, technology, and customer expectations. Companies that try to optimize only one element of the supply chain very quickly feel the effects of such decisions in other areas – from profitability to service quality.</h1>Logistics has become a system of connected vessels, where every area of planning – technological, operational, or infrastructural – almost immediately affects the entire supply chain. From the perspective of companies operating in retail and FMCG sectors, it's clear that time is a function of process organization, cost depends on scale, variability, and the number of deviations from standard operations, and implemented solutions only work when they're grounded in day-to-day business realities.<h2 style="text-align:justify;">Solutions Without the "Wow Effect," But With a Long Horizon</h2>Automation increasingly rarely plays the role of an image-building symbol of modernity. Today, it's primarily a pragmatic response to structural market limitations, such as the scale of operations or growing process complexity. These dependencies are clearly visible in the daily functioning of large retail chains, where technology stops being perceived as a rival to humans and becomes their key support.<blockquote>"Technology was never an end in itself for us. We don't implement automation to chase market trends, but to build operational resilience. What's key is that machines stabilize processes and guarantee repeatable quality regardless of scale. Critically important is that automation drastically changes the role of humans in the supply chain. We relieve workers from the heaviest, repetitive physical tasks. This way, their role naturally evolves – from executors of simple tasks, they become experts who manage advanced systems and supervise processes. Through this, we change the nature of their tasks while simultaneously raising their market competencies," comments Tomasz Kuchta, Director of the SCM Division at Kaufland Poland.</blockquote>The significance of this approach stems not only from development ambitions but also from labor market realities. Companies face declining availability of physical workers, an aging population, and rising labor costs. Under such conditions, automation stops being solely a strategic choice and becomes an element of ensuring operational continuity.In practice, the dominant approach is still one where technology is evaluated mainly through the lens of quick return on investment. Meanwhile, market experience shows that this is too narrow a view. At the same time, the market shows a shift in perspective: automation is beginning to be perceived as a capital investment building business resilience, not exclusively as a tool for quick cost reduction.<h2 style="text-align:justify;">Planning in a World That Changes Faster Than Investments</h2>One of the biggest challenges of the modern supply chain is the pace of change. Planning and launching modern logistics infrastructure takes years, while tools, sales models, and customer expectations can change within several months or even weeks. This tension increasingly influences how companies think about investments, including the choice of specific warehouse facilities.<blockquote>"We repeatedly see that companies first focus on implementing technology, and only later collide with the limitations of their chosen warehouse – lack of space for expansion, difficulty in changing process layouts, or the necessity of infrastructure modifications. That's why today it's crucial to think about warehouses as an element of long-term operational strategy, not solely as a cost or a place for fulfilling current needs. A well-planned location and facility can significantly extend the functionality of implemented technologies and allow a company to maintain operational flexibility under changing conditions, whereas wrong decisions at this stage are very difficult to correct later," comments Paulina Dziubińska, Senior Director, Industrial Agency, JLL.</blockquote>Planning in logistics today increasingly rarely means searching for one perfect solution that will remain relevant for the next ten years. In reality, it's a process of continuous decision-making under conditions of uncertainty and accepting that some assumptions very quickly lose their relevance. A particular challenge remains the gap between the long life cycle of infrastructure decisions and the pace at which technologies and operational models change.The scale of this uncertainty is well illustrated by concrete numbers. Implementing a sorter in an existing facility today takes about 6-8 months, while planning and executing a greenfield investment takes several years. Moreover, solutions implemented just a year earlier are now sometimes assessed as outdated. Additionally, cost differences between individual technological solutions are significant – the cost of a sorter can be around PLN 5 million, but can also reach PLN 20 million, depending on the scale of operations, manufacturer, and the process itself.<h2 style="text-align:justify;">Time, Cost, and Customer – Where Does Accelerating Stop Making Sense?</h2>In Poland, next-day delivery has become standard. Customers treat it as obvious, and any delay as an error on the seller's or supplier's part. Simultaneously, cost pressure in retail is growing, and margins are increasingly difficult to maintain. This disconnect between customer expectations and cost realities is today one of the key operational problems.<blockquote>"Today, customers expect order fulfillment almost immediately, and simultaneously don't want to pay more for delivery service. This puts companies in a difficult situation—they must balance operational costs with meeting market expectations. In practice, this means constantly seeking compromises: where can we accelerate, and where must we accept longer fulfillment times to maintain the profitability of the entire process. An additional challenge is sales peaks, which several times a year test the limits of even the best-designed logistics systems," says Łukasz Boguszewski, Supply Chain Director at Leroy Merlin.</blockquote>It's worth noting that customer expectations differ regionally. While in Poland next-day delivery has become the market norm, in many Western European countries, an acceptable delivery time still amounts to several days.<h2 style="text-align:justify;">Last Mile and Fresh Product Logistics – The Limits of Flexibility</h2>New last mile models, where quick product availability and order fulfillment from many network points become key, open additional channels for companies to reach customers, but simultaneously significantly increase operational complexity. The challenge shifts from transportation itself to picking, managing personnel, and inventory dispersed across many locations. The more distribution points, the greater the pressure on process synchronization and operational stability of the entire network.Fresh product logistics requires a completely different approach than handling durable goods. Short shelf life, the necessity of maintaining continuous temperature control, and lack of a time buffer for error correction mean that even minor disruptions can lead to losses of entire product batches.<blockquote>"In fresh product logistics, there's no room for error. We work in very short time windows because products have limited shelf life, and customers expect the highest quality. Seasonality intensifies these challenges – at peak demand, we handle even three times larger volumes than normally, which requires operational and resource flexibility that's difficult to achieve with standard methods. The cross-dock model, though efficient, practically makes full automation impossible – especially when we must service several temperature zones simultaneously. This is logistics where people, processes, and technology must operate in truly precise synchronization," says Radosław Nowak, Managing Director, Greenyard Logistics Poland.</blockquote><h2 style="text-align:justify;">Infrastructure Doesn't Solve Problems, But It Can Block Them</h2>Logistics infrastructure – including warehouses – is one of the key elements of operational strategy. Well-selected, it supports technology and flexibility. Poorly planned, it transfers costs to other areas and limits development opportunities, which in the longer term affects the customer.<blockquote>"We increasingly work with companies that aren't simply looking for warehouse space, but want to understand which infrastructure decisions will realistically support their business model in the long term. A warehouse can be a competitive advantage today, but it can just as easily become a development barrier – not only when it's poorly designed or located, but also when lease terms don't give the tenant sufficient operational flexibility," comments Monika Woźniak, Senior Business Development Director, Industrial Agency, JLL.</blockquote><h2 style="text-align:justify;">Logistics as the Art of Conscious Trade-offs</h2>Today's logistics isn't about maximizing one metric. It's the ability to make conscious trade-offs between time, cost, technology, and customer service quality – in a world of growing variability, cost pressure, and resource constraints. Companies that can manage this tension in a coherent way build not only operational advantage, but strategic advantage as well.

Three business professionals analyzing supply chain performance data and logistics metrics on a large digital display screen in a modern office environment.