Je mehr sich die Logistik verändert, desto mehr bleiben die Grundlagen gleich

Michael Timimi has spent nearly four decades inside logistics operations — across food, electronics, tools and glass — and what he has learned challenges the assumption that experience alone is enough. This is a conversation about operational discipline, the limits of technology, and why the fundamentals of logistics have changed far less than the products moving through them.

Key Takeaways

The product changes. The fundamental logistics challenge often doesn't. Whether you're moving food, electronics, tools or glass, operations still depend on getting many interconnected parts to work together.

Flexibility has to be designed into the operation. Seasonal peaks, changing volumes and shifting customer demand cannot be managed effectively if people and capacity are rigid.

Don't become operationally isolated. Michael deliberately exchanges ideas with other logistics leaders and takes future leaders from his team to industry events.

Technology needs a business case. Automation is valuable when it solves a real operational problem and the investment makes sense — not simply because the technology exists.

Customer expectations are accelerating. Next-day delivery has become normal, same-day delivery is emerging, and the cost and complexity of meeting those expectations continue to rise.

Three Weeks That Became 40 Years

Michael Timimi didn't plan a career in logistics. He was working in sales when a logistics leader became unavailable and Michael was asked to step in. What was supposed to be temporary became something very different.

"From three weeks, it became 40 years."

Over the decades that followed, Michael worked across food, manufacturing, electronics, tools and eventually glass. Today, he is Head of Logistics in the business behind Leonardo glassware. Different industries. Different products. Different customers.

But after nearly four decades, Michael has reached an interesting conclusion: "Regardless of the product, logistics is almost always the same."

Of course, the details matter. Food comes with different requirements from glass. Jewellery creates different fulfilment challenges from pallets. Imported products create different flows from domestically sourced goods. But underneath those differences sits the same operational problem.

Goods have to move. Information has to move. People have to coordinate. Capacity has to meet demand. And hundreds of small operational decisions have to fit together for the customer to receive what they ordered. Michael described it simply: all the wheels have to mesh.

Today's Order Is Expected to Leave Today

At Leonardo, that challenge has become increasingly immediate. Michael explained that roughly 80% of the orders leaving the operation today arrived either that same day or the evening before. The expectation is effectively: order now, execute now.

That puts enormous importance on coordination across the operation. Incoming goods have to be understood. Quality checks have to happen. Priorities have to be clear. People need to know what is coming and what needs to leave.

Michael's team starts every week by looking across the operation together — what's coming in, what's unusual, which delivery dates matter, where capacity will be needed. The objective isn't to react when something breaks. It is to make sure everyone understands what is likely to happen before it does.

And that becomes particularly important in a seasonal business.

Flexibility Is an Operating Model

Leonardo sells products that are heavily influenced by occasions and seasons. Christmas matters. Mother's Day matters. Promotional campaigns matter. That means workload isn't evenly distributed across the year — and Michael's response isn't to pretend that it is.

Instead, flexibility has been built into how the operation works. During peak periods, more capacity may be needed. During quieter periods, employees can recover some of that time.

Interestingly, Michael learned that money isn't always the incentive people value most. At a previous company, employees working Saturdays were once offered a choice: receive additional pay or take the hours back as time off. According to Michael, around 80% chose the time.

"Compensation matters. But so does control over time."

As expectations around work change between generations, logistics leaders may increasingly need to understand both.

One of the Biggest Risks in Logistics Is Becoming Blind to Your Own Operation

After decades inside operations, Michael could easily argue that experience provides the answers. Instead, he argues almost the opposite. Experience can create its own risk: Betriebsblindheit.

Spend enough time inside one organisation and its way of working can begin to feel like the only way of working. Michael deliberately tries to prevent that. He attends logistics events several times a year. He speaks with logistics leaders from other companies. He has built relationships across businesses facing similar operational challenges.

During COVID, those relationships became particularly valuable — how are you handling incoming goods, how are you organising people, what are you doing differently? Sometimes the most useful operational knowledge isn't sitting inside your own company. It is sitting with someone facing a similar problem somewhere else.

"You only develop further by asking questions and listening."

And Michael doesn't only do this for himself. He deliberately takes people from his second line to industry events so they can learn how to build those relationships and exchange information themselves.

Developing the next generation of operational leaders isn't only about teaching them how your operation works. Sometimes it means deliberately taking them outside of it.

Technology Matters. But It Still Has to Make Sense.

Michael isn't against automation. Quite the opposite. COVID forced Leonardo's logistics operation to change significantly. Before the pandemic, approximately 95% of shipments went out via freight forwarding, largely on pallets. Then e-commerce accelerated. Suddenly parcel fulfilment became much more important, and the operation had to change with it.

Leonardo built a new parcel operation and invested in technology around that process. The result, according to Michael, is striking: today, one employee can process approximately five times as many parcels as before.

There was an operational change. There was a clear constraint. Technology helped redesign the operation around the new reality.

But Michael applies the same pragmatism when the business case doesn't work. He described looking at automated packaging equipment costing around €1 million. His reaction was essentially: will this actually pay back before I retire? If not, the answer might simply be no.

The question isn't: Can this be automated? It is: Should this be automated here? That distinction matters more than it is often given credit for.

AI Is Coming — But That Doesn't Mean You Need to Pretend You're Already There

Michael was equally pragmatic about AI. He has attended seminars. He has visited providers. People in his organisation are exploring what AI could mean for different areas. But he was also very open about where they currently stand: they aren't particularly advanced in AI adoption yet. And he doesn't pretend otherwise.

At the same time, he is convinced that ignoring it isn't an option. His attitude is neither "AI will solve everything" nor "AI is dangerous and we should stay away." It's closer to: understand it, keep looking, find where it actually helps.

That sounds simple. But perhaps it is exactly the discipline operations needs while every technology conversation seems to have AI attached to it.

Logistics Has Trained Customers to Expect Speed

Order a pair of shoes online today and you probably expect them tomorrow. If they haven't arrived two days later, something already feels wrong. Michael pointed to businesses beginning to promise same-day delivery within regional delivery areas. Technically, that's impressive. Operationally, it raises another question: where does the expectation stop?

Once one company establishes a new service level, customers begin to experience it as normal. Others may eventually have to follow. Faster. More flexible. More convenient. And underneath all of that sits an operation that has to make the promise possible.

And Someone Has to Pay for the Complexity

Michael sees another consequence of this convenience particularly clearly: returns. Online commerce makes ordering incredibly easy. Sometimes too easy. Several items arrive. One stays. The rest travel backwards through the logistics network.

Someone has to receive them. Inspect them. Process them. Restock them. Move them. And ultimately someone has to pay for that activity. Michael believes the industry will eventually have to address this more directly — potentially with customers increasingly paying for returns.

Because logistics can make extraordinary levels of convenience possible. But convenience isn't free.

40 Years Later, the Fundamentals Are Still There

What stays with you from a conversation with Michael isn't one technology or one prediction. It is the continuity. He entered logistics almost by accident nearly 40 years ago. Since then, warehouses have changed. Technology has changed. E-commerce has changed fulfilment. Delivery expectations have accelerated. Automation has become more capable. AI has arrived.

And yet Michael's operating principles sound remarkably grounded. Know what's coming. Keep your operation flexible. Talk to your people. Go outside your own company. Learn from others. Understand the problem before buying the technology. And make sure the economics actually work.

Perhaps that's why his observation from the beginning of the conversation is more interesting than it first appears: the product changes — logistics remains logistics. The tools will keep changing. The expectations will keep increasing. But operations will still come down to whether all those individual wheels actually turn together.

After almost 40 years of watching them turn, Michael has probably earned the right to say that.

The More Logistics Changes, the More the Fundamentals Stay the Same