Lowe’s Logistics The number two home improvement retailer in the world started its humble beginnings as a little hardware store in the town of North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, in 1946 when Carl Buchan and his partner purchased North Wilkesboro Hardware. Buchan had a vision of opening a chain of hardware stores and cutting out wholesales and buying directly from manufacturer’s to cut cost. As sales grew and Lowe’s got a reputation of providing great products at low prices the company began to grow. Now Lowe’s operates stores in the across the United States as well Mexico and Canada. They have always remained customer focused, improving the way their customers go about improving the home and giving contractors the materials needed to complete …show more content…
They currently have 15 Regional Distribution Centers, 3 Specialty Distribution centers, 2 Coastal Distribution centers, 3 Trasnsload distribution centers, and Flatbed distribution centers. The regional distribution center consists of a 1 million square foot facility that receives stores, and shipping products to up to 200 stores. The team members work in one of three different departments receiving, material flow, and shipping. Receiving team members are responsible for verifying the receipt of incoming products, and designating the product line to either go on to be shipped to a store, or to be stored for later shipment. Material flow team members are responsible for the movement of product from the receiving floor or storage to shipping for placement on trailers to their corresponding stores. Shipping team members are responsible for the placement of product into the trailers and securing them for transfer to the …show more content…
Once the item is allocated for demand the corresponding distribution center is notified to allocate however many of that item was ordered to that store. The process of retrieving that product relies on the warehouses interface known as Distribution Management System (DMS) this system is available to the team member to track and store products as well as locate and forward the allocated product to the store. The distribution centers are designed and located in areas that are centralized or near harbors or major networks of commerce. For instance the California distribution center receives all of the containers imported from Asia and then they are either broken up there or sent to different distribution centers or the entire trailer can be forwarded to a desired distribution center. All distribution centers are able to accept less than truck loads and full loads, and even time sensitive