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DUBLIN, Ohio — Cardinal Health announced Thursday its plans to build a new distribution center in the Greenville, S.C., area, to support its at-Home Solutions business, a market-leading home healthcare medical supplies provider serving people with chronic and serious health conditions in the United States.
At approximately 350,000 square feet, the new building will provide at-Home Solutions with the space and automation it needs to serve its existing customers and patients while allowing for business expansion.
“I am thrilled about this new space, which is the second building we’ve built from the ground up inside of two years – and the largest building at-Home Solutions has ever opened to date,” said Rob Schlissberg, president, at-Home Solutions. “This announcement is a testament to the growth that we’re seeing as a business and across the industry. Over a little more than a decade, we’ve grown from serving about 1 million customers annually to more than 4 million – and with that growth, we need more space to meet customer demands efficiently and quickly.”
The new facility is at-Home Solutions 11th distribution center nationwide, estimated to bring up to 200 job opportunities to the Greenvilleregion over the next two years.
While the distribution center has the capability to support all 50 states, its primary focus will be customers located in the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri and Louisiana. Once operational, it will ship approximately 8,000 packages per day directly to patient homes. The business currently ships approximately 55,000 packages per day from its 10 sites.
Advanced automation and robotics enhance new facility
Advanced automation technology and robotics within the facility, including outbound conveyor automation and state-of-the-art warehouse management systems, will further increase inventory capacity and improve service levels for the business so the right products can be at the right place at the right time.
This will be the second Cardinal Health distribution center to feature AutoStore empowered by Swisslog, the fastest order fulfillment system per square foot in the market. The AutoStore solution, optimized by Swisslog’s SynQ software, employs autonomous robots that move on top of an aluminum cubic grid to continuously pick up, rearrange and deliver storage bins from the grid directly to connected workstations for order picking and replenishment. The solution combines robotics with artificial intelligence to optimize inventory storage space and accuracy, increase employee productivity and drive efficiencies within daily movement of product. Specific to the new Greenville distribution center, it will provide more than 290,000 cubic feet of storage for over 13,000 SKUs with 76 robots, eight picking stations and three replenishment stations supporting nearly 70,000 bin storage locations.
Additionally, the facility will feature two of the world’s first fully automated erected box systems, called the Packsize X5. Each system produces 600 ready-to-pack, right-sized erected boxes per hour, bringing more speed to order fulfillment.
“These technologies provide us with better inventory accuracy, improve the quality in which we pick, pack and ship orders, and enhance employee safety and experience within the warehouse. They also attract a uniquely skilled workforce that will augment our operations, which is absolutely critical to our success as a business,” said Mike DeSimpelaere, vice president of network operations, at-Home Solutions.
Construction on the new facility will begin this summer; it’s estimated to be fully operational within 18 to 24 months.
