Dive Brief:
- Amazon will build an Operations Center of Excellence in Nashville, Tennessee to run its customer fulfillment, transportation and supply chain activities, the company said in a press release.
- The one-million-square-foot facility will create more than 5,000 jobs in the company's Operations business and cost more than $230 million in investments.
- The facility will begin hiring in 2019, although no specific date has been set. The news came at the same time the company announced two new headquarters, in Arlington, Virginia and New York City.
Dive Insight:
Cities have been vying for Amazon's presence since the tech and retail giant announced it would build a new headquarters, but instead of building one, it chose three locations.
The New York City and Arlington locations will each employ 25,000 people dedicated to doing all-things Amazon. Like in Seattle, this means managing the company's products, technology and customer services.
But strategy, at least when it comes to supply chain, appears to be reserved for a third, not-previously-teased facility in Nashville, Tennessee. Amazon will join giants including Dollar General, Nissan North America and Tractor Supply as the corporate powerhouses of the city.
It's good company to keep for supply chain managers. Dollar General runs its own trucking operation and was part of Gartner's Top 25 Supply Chains in 2015. Tractor Supply, meanwhile, has been a force at supply chain trade shows, with keynotes sharing its last-mile expertise.
Now Amazon can share in the talent pool for its own benefit.
Talent, of course, is an essential asset for a Center of Excellence. Global companies such as Kraft Heinz use the facilities as a "brain" for their supply chain, centralizing planning to coordinate key performance indicators from end-to-end and reducing bottlenecks. The centers also help automate tasks, although they require data prowess.
Amazon has not released more details on how exactly it plans to use the Nashville facility. But by tapping into the trend of central planning, Amazon has made a statement: It will continue to rely on supply chain as a core competency in its operations.
