The Role of Human Factor in Sustainable Warehousing with a Logistics 5.0 perspective: a conceptual framework

Companies have been facing increasing pressures to adopt sustainable practices in their supply chains, with logistics nodes playing a crucial role in this regard. Characterised by increasing complexity, they have been experiencing a fast technological transformation to cope with today’s ever-rising challenges. The rapid advancement of technologies related to the Logistics 4.0 paradigm, and quickly evolving towards the Logistics 5.0 concept, are expected to facilitate the sustainable transition. In such transition, the role of manpower is still central in warehousing tasks, with human-technology interaction representing a significant challenge. Studies on human factor, human-technology interaction, and social sustainability at warehouses are emerging but are still under investigated. Besides, the intertwined implications of considering these topics simultaneously with the other sustainability perspectives (i.e., economic and environmental) have captured rising interest from both academia and industry, but research in this regard is still scarce. Few recent reviews aim at providing a more structured understanding of the overall topic. However, previous contributions often consider a single activity, such as picking, or specific technologies, such as automated and robotized systems, or tackle one facet of human centricity and focus essentially on the operative level. Still, an overall picture of how these elements should be considered in the design and management of sustainable warehousing from a holistic perspective is missing. The present paper addresses this gap by providing a state of the art about the role of human factors in sustainable warehousing design, in the light of the Logistics 5.0 paradigm. A conceptual framework is proposed based on a Systematic combining approach coupling a PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses)-based literature review and an empirical analysis. Research limitations are discussed, and future research directions are outlined.