Shown on stage for the ribbon cutting (from left to right) are: Anthony Fioritto II, Stellantis director of supply chain engineering; Troy Nibbe, Stellantis regional PDC operations director; Melody Pedersen, Unifor Local 1285 shop chair; Mike Koval Jr., Stellantis senior vice president and head of Mopar North America; Partick Brown, Mayor of Brampton and Eduardo Escobedo, Brampton PDC Plant Manager.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony marked the commemoration from Stellantis North America of the recent opening of a new Mopar Parts Distribution Centre (PDC) in Brampton, Ont., that uses robots to get things done quickly and efficiently.
The facility houses nearly 55,000 parts and can ship up to around 2 million orders every year thanks to the many robots being used. The 513,000-square-foot facility was built to support the OEM’s dealerships and customers in Ontario, Québec, and Eastern Canada.
“This new, state-of-the-art workplace will improve efficiency for our dealers and customers while ensuring that we can quickly deliver the right part at the right time every time,” said Mike Koval Jr., Senior Vice President, Head of Mopar North America, in a statement.
The new PDC is the first of the OEM’s facilities in North America to use the AutoStore automated storage and retrieval system. Stellantis said the technology uses 27 robots that feature picking functions so they can navigate tracks built above a 16-foot-tall grid stocked with parts.
The robots can get parts from one of 43,000 bins stacked within 11,700 square feet of storage space, and they can do this quickly. They then transport the parts to various production stations where PDC employees will pack and process the final shipments.
“The AutoStore system significantly increases the speed, precision and reliability of parts procurement within the PDC, leading to on-time shipping while also reducing the floorspace needed to house the immense supply of parts,” said Stellantis in its update.
The OEM’s commemoration for its new facility took place on July 9, which represents an investment of $25.1 million CAD and will employ more than 170 Canadians.
