Walmart will soon open a 1.5 million-square-foot fulfillment center in Greencastle, Pa., which will require about 1,000 workers to manage. The company says the new center will be ergonomically advanced for its employees, reports ROI-NJ.
The move to Greencastle will mean shutting down a Walmart facility in Pedricktown, N.J., in June. The company is looking to relocate employees to Greencastle, offering bonus and relocation fees, however so far, the number of committed workers has fallen short of the goal.
Employees will have ergonomically designed workstations at the new center and instead of walking to products, the products will come to them. Walmart estimates a worker has to walk as much as nine miles during every shift to fulfill orders, reports ROI-NJ.
The new state-of-the-art facility will also fill orders with increased speed and efficiency, which Walmart claims will keep prices low. Robotics and machine learning will be other features of the new center.
Walmart says it plans to open three more next-generation fulfillment centers in Joliet, Ill., Lancaster, Texas, and McCordsville, Ind.