McLane Company, Inc., a supply chain services company providing grocery and foodservice solutions, opened its new $150 million, 417,338-square-foot grocery distribution center in Findlay, Ohio this week.

"Of our 80 grocery and foodservice distribution centers nationwide, the Findlay facility is the most technologically advanced, combining teammates, state-of-the-art automation, advanced robotics and artificial intelligence," says Tony Frankenberger, president of McLane Grocery.

The distribution center — which will serve c-stores, mass merchants, warehouse clubs and drug stores in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Pennsylvania — will employ somewhere between 400 and 500 people. Those employees, combined with robotics and artificial intelligence, will deliver more than 325,000 picks of items per day at peak operation. 

The center will store approximately 16,000 grocery and convenience store items representing more than 700 suppliers. Robots utilize bar codes on products to store and transfer pallets of goods, traveling up to 60 mph to fulfill orders. McLane employees will help control and program the robots as well as load and organize products into binds based on the products' final destinations.