FedEx opens up new automated facility at its Memphis World Hub

In advance of the holiday peak season, Memphis-based global freight transportation and logistics services provider FedEx recently announced 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 sort facility in the FedEx global network, with 13,000 team members, spanning 940 acres with 171 aircraft gates and 84 miles of conveyor belt and has the capability to process 484,000 packages per hour, according to FedEx.

FedEx said that this LEED-certified facility is comprised of 1.3 million square-feel (MSF) across four levels, with 11 miles of conveyor belt, a space dedicated to moving bulky, non-conveyable shipments, and sort 56,000 packages per hour. And it added that this facility has the ability to process more than half the volume from the primary sort and, in turn, result in quicker sort times, as well as the ability to more quickly move customers’ packages to their final delivery destinations.

“The Memphis World Hub is the heart of the FedEx global network, and this dynamic, new sort facility is equipped with the latest data-driven technology that enables us to strengthen our hub operations,” said Lisa Lisson, president, Air Operations, FedEx, in a statement. “Modernizing the Memphis World Hub is a key step in our network transformation to help our customers compete and win with the world’s most flexible, efficient, and smartest logistics network.”

A FedEx spokesperson told LM that plans for this facility were put into motion in 2014, adding that facility is part of its $1.5 billion investment to modernize the Memphis World hub, with construction beginning in 2019 and completed this year.

“The biggest benefits the facility provides for our shipper customers are the accurate package sorting, more reliable system, and reduced sort times which allows our aircraft to get out quicker, getting our customers’ shipments to their destination faster,” said the spokesperson. “This building is designed to handle our large containers that fly on our largest aircraft and move freight through our hub in a faster time.”

In terms of competitive advantages this facility provides for FedEx, the spokesperson cited the usage of use of the company’s technology, six-sided scanning, which enables it to scan all six sides of a package as it moves through scanning tunnels on conveyor belts.

“This allows for more efficiency compared to a traditional two-sided scanner that requires an employee to manually position the package on the conveyor belt,” she said. “This facility will sort 56,000 packages per hour. With our day and night sort, that’s a total of 450,000 packages per day. It can sort over 72,000 pieces during peak need.”

What’s more, FedEx also noted that this new facility also features a new Hub Operations Command Center, which is three times the size of the original and serves as the centralized control function overseeing all operations at the Memphis World Hub.