General Motors on June 20 broke ground on a $65 million parts-processing facility in Burton, Michigan, the automaker’s largest single investment in a U.S. warehousing and logistics center in four decades.
When the facility opens in early 2019, it will be the company’s main induction point in the United States for ACDelco and Genuine GM service parts that need to be unitized and packaged for sale, according to GM.
With 1.1 million square feet of floor space, the facility will be more than twice the size of the company’s existing parts-processing center, which is about five miles away.
“GM is executing a focused and disciplined strategy to improve our core business and position the company for the future, guided by our vision of a world with zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion,” said Tim Turvey, GM global vice president, Customer Care and Aftersales. “Our new facility in Burton will help us deliver that future. And projects like this only become a reality when you have great teamwork and true collaboration, like we have with the city of Burton, the UAW and NorthPoint Development.”
GM is building the parts-processing center on a vacant 141-acre lot near the intersection of Genesee and Davison roads in Burton. After the new facility opens, GM said it will close its existing processing center on Davison Road in Burton, and those employees will transfer to the new site. Nearly 700 hourly and salaried employees will staff the facility, according to GM.
The new facility will have 84 shipping and receiving docks, up from 35 today.
“The building’s layout will give us tremendous operating flexibility, much more efficient work spaces and sharply reduced congestion throughout the facility,” said Lisa Veneziano, executive director for GM Global Aftersales supply chain, warehousing and logistics. “Within this larger, more efficient footprint, we also will be expanding the size of break rooms and locker rooms for our employees to help make it a great place to work.
The landfill-free facility will boast LED lighting “and a sophisticated energy management system both for comfort and to help GM meet its goal of reducing the energy intensity of our operations by 20 percent in the five years ending in 2020,” Veneziano added.
