General Motors plans to invest $23m in its Charlotte Parts Distribution Center (PDC) in North Carolina, US. The announcement builds on the $120.5m announced in 2023 in technology at three Customer Care and Aftersales (CCA) facilities in Tennessee and Michigan.
GM said the investments would be used to increase workplace safety and modernise operations to efficiently cope with the growth in demand. In Charlotte the technology investment will include the installation of an automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) to pull specific parts from shelving, reducing the need for manual lifting as well as saving 11% storage capacity, according to GM. According to GM the Charlotte PDC is smaller than its other PDCs but is among the highest in volume, stocking more than 40,000 parts and shipping around 420,000 customer orders per month.
The carmaker is also installing robotics and conveyance systems to bring sorted materials to employees, enabling them to save on walking and repetitive movements.
GM will also be bringing in autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) to the PDC, which will be used to bring to final parts orders to employees so they can complete dealer order shipments, improving order fulfilment times.
“We are investing in our warehouse operations to proactively address the growing number of vehicles on the road and better support our customers and dealers,” said David Marsh, GM’s global vice-president for CCA. “Our goal is to create an environment which minimises ergonomic stressors on our employees while they continue to deliver the right part, to the right place, at the right time to our customers.”
GM will begin installing the technology in June 2024 and it is timed to be operational by August 2025.
David Marsh took over from Josh Tavel as global vice-president for CCA in February this year. Tavel has gone on to a new role as senior vice-president of energy storage and propulsion, R&D and manufacturing engineering. Marsh moves from his role as executive director of North America sales, service and marketing in the aftersales division.
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