USA | In the last several years, Walmart customers have loved the strength of its delivery business and the innovative aisles in-store and online. Shoppers have been using every opportunity to save money and live better.
As customers change how they shop, Walmart has taken steps to build even more trust with them, ensuring the things they want and need are on shelves faster than ever before. The retailer has been investing in data, increasingly intelligent software and automation to transform its business and create a more connected supply chain.
Walmart’s grocery transformation can be broken down into three distinct approaches: new builds, expansions and retrofits.
It has been building five brand-new high-tech perishable distribution centres. The first high-tech DC in Shafter, California has been operational since 2021. The second, located in Lancaster, Texas, is ramping operations and will be followed by Wellford, South Carolina; Belvidere, Illinois; and Pilesgrove, New Jersey. Collectively, these facilities bring around 2,000 new jobs into these communities and the supply chain network.
To increase capacity for fresh products, Walmart has been expanding four traditional perishable DCs by adding over 500,000 square feet of automation per site with facilities in Mankato, Minnesota; Mebane, North Carolina; Garrett, Indiana; and Shelbyville, Tennessee.
Its perishable distribution centre in Winter Haven, Florida, is upgrading as it integrates the newest technology into the space. The goal has been to learn more about the feasibility and requirements of retrofitting an existing grocery building with automation technology, similar to how it approached an ambient distribution centre in Brooksville, Florida.
Walmart is the largest grocery retailer in the U.S., supporting over 4,600 stores. Its massive pickup and delivery business continues to grow as customers seek convenience and value. That’s why it has been adding state-of-the-art tech to its facilities to enable incredible speed and capacity that allows it to serve customers even more reliably.
For example, high-tech DCs can store double the number of cases and process more than twice the volume of a traditional perishable DC, doubling the number of cases processed per hour.
As cases come in from farmers and suppliers, they’re inspected for quality and de-palletized.
The cases are then stored in an automated storage system that stretches nearly 80 feet tall and operates in a temperature-controlled environment.
When it’s time to build a store order, the system retrieves the cases from storage to begin building store-ready pallets. These pallets are built by department, making them easier to unload at the store.
These intelligently layered pallets with more fragile items, like eggs or fruit, toward the top are then wrapped and loaded onto a truck for shipping.
Technology has been evolving physically demanding jobs into roles where associates operate and maintain high-tech systems, leading to an improved quality of life.
Associates who used to manually stack cases may work in a high-tech facility as automation equipment operators and continue growing their careers as automation control centre operators, automation technicians, or automation area managers.
With its investments in associates and facilities, Walmart is well-positioned to continue providing customers the items they want, whenever and wherever they want them, for years to come.
