Walmart continues to expand its plans for a high-tech supply chain facility model.
Discount shop opens fifth store Next generation fulfillment center It will be built in Stockton, California in 2026. The new 900,000 square foot facility is about 50 The store, located a few miles south of the state capital Sacramento, will be designed to help retailers process online orders faster and more efficiently across the West Coast.
walmart fulfillment services (WFS), afEE-based programs that provide services such as storage, picking, packing, shipping, returns processing and customer service.will also utilize the space to ship third-party Walmart Marketplace products.
This high-tech facility features an automated high-density storage and retrieval system that streamlines a manual 12-step process down to five steps. It will also double the storage capacity and number of customer orders that Walmart can accommodate in a single day, and expand next-day and next-day shipping.
The Stockton fulfillment center will employ more than 1,000 Walmart employees, including technology-related jobs.
Walmart’s Next Generation Fulfillment Center Model – Learn More
Over the next three years, Walmart plans to open at least five state-of-the-art fulfillment centers dedicated to e-commerce. The first location he will open in Joliet, Illinois in the summer of 2022 will serve customers in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. In addition to the recently opened facility in McCordsville, Indiana, additional facilities are scheduled to open in Lancaster, Texas, and Greencastle, Pennsylvania.
Developed in partnership with intelligent automation technology provider Knapp, the high-tech order fulfillment system works in five steps:
- Unload: Sellers and suppliers place products in cases and send them to fulfillment centers. When the cases arrive, the personnel unloads the cases from the trailer and places the cases on a conveyor belt, which sends them to the receiving location.
- receive: Upon pick-up, a representative will disassemble the case and place the individual items into totes. The totes are sent to a large automated storage system where shuttles transport them to one of millions of designated locations. Storage systems are custom-built structures designed to store inventory, and are designed with every square inch from floor to ceiling in mind.
- choose: When a customer orders online, the system picks up the order and sends the required tote to an employee at the picking station. Walmart said its employees previously walked up to nine miles a day to pick items from shelves spread across hundreds of thousands of square feet on multiple levels.
- pack: At the same time, a custom box will be created to fit the exact dimensions of your order. In the pack area, Walmart estimates that an employee can put together up to four orders at a time, and after a customer clicks to order, he can ship the package within 30 minutes.
- ship: Completed orders are automatically taped, labeled, routed to designated zones, and shipped to their final destination.
The retailer strategically places these fulfillment centers to most effectively combine with its 4,700 stores and 210 distribution centers to deliver orders to customers quickly and efficiently.
Walmart previously said it initially planned to use just four centers to deliver millions of items to 75% of the U.S. population in next or two days. The company said that when combined with traditional fulfillment centers, it can offer next-day or next-day shipping to 95% of the U.S. population, and same-day delivery to 80% of the U.S. population that uses its stores.
“The announcement of our high-tech fulfillment center in Stockton marks another significant step forward in our omnichannel retail efforts,” said Karisa Sprague, senior vice president of Walmart US Fulfillment Network Operations. Ta. Deploy technology to improve the speed and accuracy of customer deliveries, while creating new and exciting technology-enabled career paths for your employees. ”
“The new Stockton facility is another great example of how Walmart is leveraging the power of technology to be human-driven. It’s an investment,” said Maren Wagoner, senior vice president of end-to-end human resources at Walmart US. Contribute to the Central Valley community, create new opportunities to work with cutting-edge technology, and achieve lasting career growth at Walmart. ”