specialreport
BY DAVID MALONEY, SENIOR EDITOR
Grocer Supervalu moves to
highly automated distribution
at its Lancaster, Pa., facility.
Supervalu wins big with
super-automation
IF ANY INDUSTRY LIVES BY THE PROVERB “A PENNY SAVED IS A PENNY EARNED,” IT’S THE
grocery business. Grocers operate on notoriously thin margins. Focusing on keeping costs low and operations swift and efficient is deeply embedded in their business makeup.
Supervalu is a case in point. One of the nation’s largest grocery retailers and wholesalers, it operates such
well-known stores as Albertsons, Jewell-Osco, Acme, and Save-a-Lot. The company traces its roots to a grocery wholesale business founded in Minneapolis some 130 years ago. It has been growing steadily ever since.
With its acquisition of the Albertsons chain in 2006, Supervalu gained a number of distribution centers,
including a dry goods facility in Lancaster, Pa., that served Acme supermarkets in the Mid-Atlantic states.
As part of its effort to integrate Albertsons into its overall supply chain, the company folded operations
from an existing Supervalu facility in nearby Harrisburg into the Lancaster building.
While that consolidation reduced costs and overhead, it did not allow room for growth. “We needed to
consolidate, but it was tight. However, the utilization of the building was not what it should have been,”
recalls Beth Kroutch, general manager of the Lancaster DC.
The company chose to keep this facility rather than relocate because its proximity to major interstate
highways provides efficient access to stores in key Mid-Atlantic markets. But it needed to make the building more efficient to serve the stores, as well as gain additional space to grow the business. It also sought
to improve order filling accuracy, inventory accuracy, and product handling—and to do all of this with significant labor savings.
