Walmart Opens 4th NextGen Automated Fulfillment Center
Walmart is continuing to expand its high-tech supply chain facilities. The retailer has launched its fourth next-generation fulfillment center, a 1.5 million-square-foot facility in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, designed to enhance order fulfillment speed. This center will employ over 1,000 associates, with Walmart currently hiring for various positions, including tech-focused roles.
The advanced facility features an automated, high-density storage and retrieval system that simplifies a previously 12-step manual process to just five steps. It will double Walmart’s storage capacity and increase the number of customer orders it can fulfill daily, supporting next-day or two-day shipping.
Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS), a fee-based program offering services like storing, picking, packing, shipping, returns, and customer service, will use the new space to fulfill third-party Walmart Marketplace items.
Walmart’s Next-Gen Fulfillment Center Model
This Greencastle facility is the fourth of five state-of-the-art fulfillment centers Walmart plans to open by 2026. The first center opened in summer 2022 in Joliet, Illinois, serving customers across Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Subsequent centers have opened in McCordsville, Indiana, and Lancaster, Texas. The fifth center is set to open in Stockton, California, in 2026.
Developed in partnership with intelligent automation technology providers, the high-tech order fulfillment system follows these five steps:
1. Unload: Merchandise arrives in cases, which associates unload and place on a conveyor belt for routing to receiving.
2. Receive: An associate breaks apart the cases and places individual items into totes, which are then transported by a shuttle to designated locations in an automated storage system.
3. Pick: When a customer places an order, the system retrieves the items and shuttles the totes to an associate at a picking station, significantly reducing the distance associates need to walk.
4. Pack: A custom box is created to fit the order’s exact measurements, allowing associates to assemble up to four orders at once and prepare them for shipping within 30 minutes.
5. Ship: The completed order is automatically taped, labeled, and routed for shipping to its final destination.
Walmart is strategically placing these fulfillment centers to optimize the efficiency of its 4,700 stores and 210 distribution centers, ensuring fast delivery to customers. Initially, Walmart projected that these four centers alone could offer next- or two-day shipping to 75% of the U.S. population. Together with its traditional fulfillment centers, Walmart aims to reach 95% of the U.S. population with next- or two-day shipping and provide same-day delivery to 80% of the population using its stores.
“Walmart is paving the way for good jobs and great careers in the south-central Pennsylvania region with the Greencastle fulfillment center,” said Karisa Sprague, SVP of fulfillment network operations for Walmart U.S. “These tech-powered jobs will drive the future of Walmart’s continued promise of speedy shipping and delivery for customers on the East Coast. Our next-generation fulfillment centers exemplify how we are a people-led, tech-powered retailer.”
Each week, about 240 million customers and members visit Walmart’s approximately 10,500 stores and numerous e-commerce websites in 19 countries. The Bentonville, Arkansas-based company employs approximately 2.1 million associates worldwide.
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