First Supply’s new West Salem warehouse to feature robotics
As construction begins in earnest at First Supply’s new West Salem warehouse, CEO Katie Poehling Seymour announced the distribution center will feature the company’s first automated robotics.
The robots will help workers complete orders when the new warehouse is operational in March 2025.
In late March, First Supply announced it would construct a new 308,000-square-foot distribution center in the village of West Salem. The La Crosse-based company hopes to improve efficiency and supply chain management with the new hub.
As part of the new center, First Supply will partner with robotics company Exotec to bring automation to the work site. Poehling Seymour said the automation will not put jobs at risk and the technology will be implemented with job creation in mind.
“It will only create jobs, no jobs will go away,” Poehling Seymour said. “The employee experience and the added safety and ergonomics that this will allow us to bring to our employees is really exciting.”
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First Supply will hire more than 30 people to open the new distribution center in West Salem. Over the next five years as the facility ramps up, close to 100 workers will be employed at the center to fulfill the region’s hardware supply chain.
An illustration depicts plans for the new First Supply distribution center in West Salem.
The Exotec Skypod system will complete repetitive and rudimentary movements needed to fulfill distribution orders. With 43,000 storage bins, 36 robots and 12 different work stations, the automation system will replace many tasks that would otherwise be taxing on workers.
“It’s allowing people to do work that is more stimulating in many cases where they’re able to make more decisions and they’re able to impact the process in a different way,” Poehling Seymour said. “It’s better for employees’ health because they’re not doing these repetitive tasks that now robots can do. (Robots) don’t care how many times they do it.”
The new distribution center project will cost First Supply $50 million. Operations at other distribution centers in La Crosse, Tomah and Winona, Minnesota, are expected to remain unchanged when the West Salem center is complete.
Groundwork is still underway to prepare construction amid rainy weather and storms. Walls for the center are estimated to go up in mid-June with the project wrapping up in March 2025.
