Ageing workforce and labour shortages: who will do the work in your warehouse?

The Netherlands is ageing. That is not news, but for logistics it is becoming more concrete every year. The work is not getting any less, the group of people who can do it is not growing, and the experienced colleagues who keep the operation running today will retire in the coming years. Who will do the work?

This is not a scare story. It is a good reason to think now about how you keep your operation running in ten years’ time. Because the answers to that question, from a smarter layout to automation, take time to put in place.

What Statistics Netherlands expects

In its 2025-2070 core forecast, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) sets out how the Dutch population will develop. Two lines stand out when you put them side by side.

The number of people aged 65 and over grows from about 3.8 million now to 4.8 million around 2040. After that the growth briefly levels off, before rising further in the long term to 5.4 million in 2070. The number of people aged 80 and over grows even faster: from just over 0.9 million now to about 2.1 million in 2070.

The other line is at least as important. The group aged 20 to 65 hovers around 10.6 million in the coming years and only starts growing again after 2038. So in the period in which more than a million older people are added, no extra people of working age are added.

What that means for logistics

An ageing population does not automatically mean a shortage in every sector. Migration, the retirement age, how many people work and the economy all play a part. But logistics work has a few characteristics that make it feel the effects sooner than other sectors.

It is physical work, often in shifts and outside office hours. It runs on experience that is written down nowhere: the driver who knows which pallet has to go first, the team leader who sees a route jamming before it happens. And it competes for the same people as construction, healthcare and manufacturing.

Anyone who already struggles to fill their shifts today knows what that feels like. Vacancies stay open longer, more temps are hired, and every temp has to be trained again. When the experienced people then retire as well, you lose not just a pair of hands, but also knowledge that nobody else has.

Three questions you can ask today

You do not have to wait until 2040 to act on this. Three questions make it concrete:

1. How do you keep the operation running when experienced people retire? What knowledge is in their heads now, and which part of the work only runs because they are there?
2. How do you absorb peaks when finding extra people gets harder? Temps may still work now, but for how long, and at what cost?
3. How do you get more work done with the same team, without workload and errors going up?

Automation: from cost saving to continuity

For a long time, automation was approached as a financial sum: how many hours do you save, and when have you earned back the investment? That question remains important. But the ageing workforce adds a second one: what happens to your operation if you can no longer find the people you need?

A company that runs on a lot of manual work has little room to absorb a shortage. A company that organises its processes smartly and automates where it makes sense can get more work done with the same people. Automation is then no longer only about cost, but about whether you can still deliver in ten years’ time.

Three routes that complement each other

Not every challenge calls for a robot. In practice there are three routes, and the best approach usually combines them.

For one organisation the answer is an automated transport system, for another a different warehouse layout, a fleet of the right size or a different division of work. The best solution is the one that fits your operation, your growth and the people you have.

Optimise first, then invest

There is an important caveat here. Automation is not a goal in itself. Automate a poorly organised process and you simply do the inefficiency faster, and pay for a system on top. A sensible approach therefore starts with three questions:

1. Where is capacity being lost now?
2. What can you improve with the people, resources and processes you already have?
3. Where does automation demonstrably deliver enough to justify the investment?

Keep to that order and you avoid investing in a solution to the wrong problem. And often, part of the pressure already disappears while answering the first two questions.

Why an independent view helps

There are dozens of suppliers of AGVs, AMRs, conveyors and automated warehouses. Each of them has strengths, and each of them shows you their own solution. None of them will say: “we cannot do this, but that party can”.

OctaFlow does not sell systems and receives no commission. For me, every solution is a possible solution. I know which party can do what, and build the project that fits your operation around it. Sometimes as interim project lead, sometimes supporting your own people, sometimes in a leading role towards the suppliers. Whatever works best for your company.

Not a scare story, but an agenda

Not every company needs to roboticise tomorrow. But every company that relies on human labour would do well to think about how to make its capacity future-proof.

The question is not only how many people you need today to keep your operation running. It is also how you keep that operation running in ten or twenty years, when people are scarcer and the demands on productivity keep rising. Ask that question now, and you have the time to find a good answer.