Earlier this month, Walmart opened a new, massive 2.2 million square foot fulfillment center in McCordsville, Indiana. Along with being the largest fulfillment facility yet, the company is striving to roll out faster shipping speeds to stores and customers alike.
“The McCordsville grand opening marks a major milestone in our supply chain modernization journey. With more customers shopping online, we’re leveraging state-of-the-art technology to increase speed of delivery all while creating tech empowered career opportunities for our associates,” said Karisa Sprague, Senior Vice President of Fulfillment Network Operations for Walmart U.S. in a statement released by the company.
The new center is one of four next-generation fulfillment facilities Walmart is opening this year. Partnering with the tech company Knapp, the new Walmart centers will add robotic technology and machine learning to aid employees in slashing order fulfillment and delivery times. The facilities are designed to double storage as well as the number of orders processed and shipped every day. Helping it stand out from Amazon by offering faster shipping.
In regular fulfillment centers, it’s a twelve-step process to fill orders. The new centers cut out most of the steps to a total of five and cut the number of physical steps each employee takes to retrieve order items, allowing them to focus their time and energy on other tasks such as quality control.
The four next-generation Walmart fulfillment centers will have a total of 4,000 employees, most of who will transition to more tech-focused jobs and manager roles.
Walmart has offered next-day and two-day shipping for quite some time now. The new high-tech fulfillment centers will bring these fast delivery turnarounds to around 75 percent of the U.S. alone and combined with the already established centers Walmart expects to boost that number up to 95 percent of the country.
Not only will more customers get access to one to two-day shipping, but soon around 80 percent of the U.S. will be within the same-day shipping range.
Walmart+ members can get free same-day delivery for both merchandise and groceries with no minimum purchase requirements. Plus members can rack up points for future purchases for even more savings.