Walmart have announced their plans to launch a consolidation centre in an attempt to strengthen their supply chain. With the combined might of people and logistics technology, Walmart say, this facility “will be the most efficient consolidation centre” in their fulfilment.
Walmart say that the hub is designed to be the first in their fulfilment system to receive, sort and ship freight. Walmart say that a newly-built centre is coming in July to Colton, California.
The 340,000-square-foot centre is structured to hold three times more product volume flow to help Walmart distribute large quantities of goods to their physical stores. To help with this mission, Walmart has already employed 150 full-time associates to work at the centre, with a promise to grow the employee-base to more than 600 by 2021.
Walmart have already consolidation centres, but the processes require more manual labour. The way it works; merchandise suppliers currently create and ship 42 separate orders via the same consolidation centre that then distributes each of the orders to regional warehouses-where they are formally received and centred. This creates dual disadvantage. First, time-delays as separating local and non-local parcels take time. Second, a challenge to spot inaccuracies as warehouse supervisors might not discover them until the orders are planned to be at the store.
The new system will enable suppliers to fill one massive order instead of 42. New software automatically scans and counts the product immediately when it arrives and documents the information in the supermarket’s systems, so Walmart will be able to react faster to order-filling issues. This presents Walmart with advantages with lower delivery mess-ups and customers’ complaints. The technology at Colton also reduces carbon emission as it minimises delivery trips of trucks that are not full of parcels.
