Ahead of the busy holiday season, FedEx, a Memphis-based global provider of freight transportation and logistics services, recently announced that it has opened the doors to a new state-of-the-art automated facility located at its Memphis World Hub.
The FedEx World Hub is the largest sorting facility in the FedEx global network, with 13,000 team members, spanning 940 acres with 171 aircraft gates and 84 conveyor belt miles and has the capacity to process 484,000 packages per hour, according to FedEx.
FedEx said this LEED-certified facility includes 1.3 million square feet (MSF) spread over four levels, with 11 miles of conveyor belt, space dedicated to moving large, non-transportable shipments and sorting 56,000 packages per hour. And he added that this facility has the capacity to process more than half of the primary sorting volume and, therefore, reduce sorting times, as well as move customers’ packages to their final delivery destinations more quickly.
“The Memphis World Hub is the heart of the FedEx global network, and this new dynamic sortation facility is equipped with the latest data-driven technology that allows us to strengthen our hub operations,” said Lisa Lisson, president of flight operations. from FedEx. , in a press release. “The modernization of the Memphis World Hub is a key step in transforming our network to help our customers compete and win with the most flexible, efficient and intelligent logistics network in the world. »
A FedEx spokesperson said M.L. that plans for this facility were implemented in 2014, adding that this facility is part of its $1.5 billion investment to modernize the Memphis World hub, construction of which began in 2019 and was completed This year.
“The biggest benefits the facility offers our shipper customers are accurate package sorting, a more reliable system and reduced sorting times that get our planes out the door faster, getting our customers’ shipments to their destinations more quickly,” the spokesperson said. “This building is designed to handle our large containers that fly on our largest aircraft and to move cargo through our hub more quickly.”
In terms of the competitive advantages this facility offers FedEx, the spokesperson cited the use of the company’s technology, six-sided scanning, which allows it to scan all six sides of a package when its movement in the scanning tunnels of the conveyor belts.
“This allows for greater efficiency compared to a traditional double-sided scanner which requires an employee to manually position the package on the conveyor belt,” she said. “This installation will make it possible to sort 56,000 packages per hour. With our day and night sorting, this represents a total of 450,000 packages per day. It can sort more than 72,000 parts during peak periods.
Additionally, FedEx also noted that this new facility also includes a new Hub Operations Command Center, which is three times larger than the original and serves as a centralized control function overseeing all Memphis World Hub operations.
