Has automation enabled e-commerce growth, or has e-commerce growth enabled further automation in the warehouse? It’s an unanswerable question, as one factor indelibly impacts the performance of the other. Michelle Mooney investigates. What has changed is the retail landscape that automation is feeding. E-commerce has accelerated by five years in the past five months, according to John Lewis – which is pushing £1 billion of investment into its operations in order to generate 70% of its revenues online. Eddy de Jong, supply chain consultant at Logistics UK, says: “Covid-19 is now part of the operational landscape, and the emphasis is changing to managing the Christmas peak, Brexit, and longer-term capacity planning.”