A rendering of the Fort Worth facility.
Cardinal Health (NYSE: CAH) said on Tuesday that construction is underway on a new distribution center in north Fort Worth
Officials with the Dublin, Ohio, company said the new facility will support its at-Home Solutions business, a leading medical supplies provider that serves more than five million patients each year in the United States.
The new 340,000-square-foot distribution center will combine the company’s two existing warehouses into a single, larger facility, adding approximately 74,000 square feet of inventory capacity while retaining its current workforce. Once operational, the facility will handle the shipment of an average of 10,000 packages per day to patients’ homes nationwide.
The building is expected to be fully operational by the summer, officials said.
"Our business plays a critical role in the lives of the patients we serve, and we are honored to continue this important work in the Fort Worth community," said Rob Schlissberg, Cardinal Health president of at-Home Solutions, in a statement. "When it comes to delivering medical supplies directly to patients in need, there is absolutely no room for error. Our team in Fort Worth is passionate and committed to delivering on our promises, and I am thrilled to see what they accomplish in this new space."
Cardinal Health is a distributor of pharmaceuticals and specialty products; a global manufacturer and distributor of medical and laboratory products; a supplier of home-health and direct-to-patient products and services; an operator of nuclear pharmacies and manufacturing facilities; and a provider of performance and data solutions.
The facility will be located in the Melody Hills section of town, near the confluence of Interstate 35W and Loop 820 in north Fort Worth.
The new facility will be fully equipped with some of the world's leading robotics and automation technologies. These enhancements will assist employees with picking, packing and shipping packages with enhanced speed, safety and efficiency, according to the company.
Those technology features include 74 robots, a 1,500-foot-long automated conveyor system, and four automated box-making machines that create 500 custom boxes per hour while minimizing waste.
Additionally, the facility will use a leading cloud-based warehouse management system that utilizes artificial intelligence to maintain resiliency and flexibility in inventory volume management. The system is used across at-Home Solutions' entire warehouse network to unify distribution operations across demand, labor, robotics, automation, inventory and transportation within a single platform.
"Because of the investments we've made in our warehouse network already, in our first quarter of fiscal year 2025, we reported the best on-record metrics in quality, service, efficiency and employee safety," said Schlissberg. "In Fort Worth and beyond, we will continue to invest in these critical technologies that are already proving their value in improving customer experience while making us a great place to work."
