Front row, L-R at the “Board Cutting” ceremony: Bill Mann, CAO Town of Milton; Colin Best, Halton Regional Councillor, Wards 2,3,4,5; Gregor Stuart, Lowe’s VP of Supply Chain; Gordon Krantz, Mayor of the Town of Milton; Mario Paradis, Lowe’s Senior Director of Supply Chain and Logistics; Luke Anderson, Founder of The StopGap Foundation. (Photo: Emily Atkins)
Milton, Ontario—Lowe’s opened its latest DC in Milton, Ontario this week. The new Regional Distribution Centre is practically adjacent to the home improvement retailer’s previous Milton site that the company outgrew.
The new location is the former Target DC, vacated when the US retailer withdrew from Canada. It’s got 1.3 million square feet of space, room for 70,000 products locations, 197 dock doors including 97 loading bays, of which 66 are conveyor fed.
Lowe’s inherited Target’s state-of-the art automation system, complete with truck de-stuffers, 10 de-palletizing stations and six automated receiving doors. The conveyors move at a blistering 630 feet per minute. In fact, this is the only Lowe’s DC that has both inbound and outbound automation.
Unfortunately it wasn’t in operation yet at the grand opening “board-cutting” ceremony (a home improvement take on the old ribbon-cutting) on December 1, but had they been we probably wouldn’t have been able to hear Mario Paradis, Lowe’s senior director supply chain and logistics when he told the assembled staff, local officials and media that the company plans to keep building the business, “but we’re not moving ever again.”
The DC will serve Lowe’s 40 stores across Canada and will support its expansion with another 13 stores set to open in the next 18 months. Although Paradis said that the company is looking at possible locations for a Western DC, the current facility has plenty of room for expansion, with a 250,000 sqf annex available when it’s needed, likely by 2019 when the DC is projected to reach capacity.
For the moment, the DC is still cutting over from the old facility, a process that was six days in on December 1, and was nearly complete. Paradis noted that the old site would remain open with a few items in inventory there.
Community involvement
At the opening Lowe’s presented a cheque for $5,000 to local charity, the StopGap Foundation. The foundation helps businesses build temporary wheelchair ramps to improve access for people with disabilities.
One benefit of staying close to the old building was it meant the staff all moved over. At the moment there are 330-plus hourly employees, and with the expansion another 100 will have been added to the roster.
Little was needed to prepare the building for Lowe’s except the adjustment of some racking, and the addition of Lowe’s own special brand of position IDs. If you look closely at the pairs of single letters on the tags, hanging way up near the roof, you can read messages in various places. Near the entrance the tags read: LO VE WH ER EY OU LI VE. Another one spelled out Mayor Gordon Krantz, in honour of Milton’s long-serving, and well-liked boss.
Lowe’s did replace the lighting with LEDs that are automatically controlled to turn off when there’s no movement nearby. There’s a new waste management system to reclaim 90 percent of all garbage produced at the site, as well as low-flush toilets throughout the building. Lowe’s also uses an automated building energy management system that looks after heating and cooling.
Although the DC is getting up and running just in time to keep stores stocked for the Christmas season, Gregor Stuart, Lowe’s VP of Supply Chain, in thanking all involved in the project, noted, “Now we’re at the starting line; there’s lots of work left to do…Spring is coming in 10 days.”
Seasonal peaks aside, the DC operates 24-hours a day, and inventory turns about every two weeks. That’s throughput of 100 inbound trailers a day, and 3.5 trailers per week per store or about 30 per day.
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