Michelin Opens Largest Distribution Center in South Carolina

Michelin has opened its largest warehouse and distribution center. The Woodruff U70 distribution center which is located near Greenville in South Carolina is the largest distribution center in the Michelin Group.

Woodruff U70 has the capacity to accommodate over 4 million tires a year. It has a unique automated system that has been designed for the most efficient distribution of tires to all of Michelin’s customers in North America. Michelin began construction of the facility which comprises five buildings back in November 2016 and now the center is fully operational. Each building is the size of nine football fields and the entire center covers a total area of just over 3 million square feet.

This is the first time that Michelin has employed such a unique automated system in its supply chain network and thanks to this system, the center will have the capability to process over 200,000 tires on a daily basis on a 24/7 basis, with turnarounds of 100 to 120 trucks per day. This represents a capacity of up to 550 trucks serving nearly 3000 customers.

Michelin had completed the installation of the automated system in 2018 and today it has 16 operational robots and 29 cranes at the facility.

Michelin’s Systems team implemented two important digital elements in the architecture: the warehouse management system (WM6) and the stock yard management system (YMS). The use of paper has been completely replaced by barcodes, scanners RFID chips and computers to align with Michelin’s sustainability commitments. U70 is Michelin’s first genuinely paper-free site.