Walmart consolidation center to open in Colton, bringing more than 600 jobs - San Bernardino County Sun

A Walmart supply chain first is coming to Colton.

The mega-retailer plans to open a 340,000-square-foot consolidation center at 1600 Aqua Mansa Road in July. Using automated technology, it will be the company’s first consolidation facility to receive, sort and ship freight. The technology will allow three to four times more volume in the flow of merchandise, resulting in more nimble and flexible product fulfillment, the company said.

The center will open with 150 full-time workers, but that’s expected to exceed 600 by 2021, company officials said.

So what exactly is a consolidation center?

Its basic role is to speed large quantities of goods such as toys, kitchen appliances and other general merchandise to Walmart’s 42 regional distribution centers, which then send the items to the company’s stores.

How it works

Walmart provides this analogy: If there were 10 place settings on a dinner table with plates, silverware and glasses, the cleanup would require 10 trips to the sink if you just grabbed one plate at a time. But if you stacked the plates, cups and silverware it would only take a couple trips.

Walmart’s consolidation center will function in much the same way. It will take multiple orders and consolidate them to make the process more efficient for distribution centers across the U.S.

“Essentially everything going on in the supply chain with companies today is aimed at reducing costs,” Inland Empire economist John Husing said. “More importantly, it’s aimed at reducing time. This is obviously a piece of Walmart’s distribution process that deals precisely with that.”

Cutting down on order inaccuracies

Walmart already has consolidation centers, but they operate on a manual basis. Under the current system, merchandise suppliers create and ship separate orders from each of the company’s 42 regional centers which are then shipped to the same consolidation center.

They arrive at the center up to 10 days later where they are counted, so order inaccuracies might not be noted for nearly two weeks. If Walmart ordered toothpaste, for example, and the request was accidentally fulfilled with mouthwash, employees won’t know for 10 days. That means specific toothpaste brands or flavors could be in short supply in stores until the next order comes in two weeks later.

The new system will allow suppliers to fill one massive order instead of 42. And new software will automatically scan and count the products when they arrive and document the information in the company’s systems, so Walmart will be able to address order-filling issues almost two weeks earlier.

Increased efficiency

“We’re going to make the regional distribution centers more efficient,” Geno Bell, senior director of Walmart’s consolidation center network, said in a statement. “With this new technology, we can be surgical and responsive in getting merchandise into stores.”

Consumers have come to expect faster and faster deliveries and Amazon has set the bar, according to Husing.

“I have a friend who ordered a part on Amazon at 7 a.m. and he got it at 4 p.m. the same day,” he said. “When do we want it? We want it now.”

Husing also offered his thoughts on the heavy staffing that’s expected at Walmart’s new consolidation center.

“We’re seeing increased automation everywhere, but something I’ve noticed lately is that it also sometimes amounts to more jobs. That’s a surprise, but it may have to do with the increased volume of products being moved. That keeps going up. Still, I also wonder if they might be reducing employment in other areas in their system but not in Colton.”

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