Exotec Robots Power First Supply’s 5 PM Next-Morning Delivery Guarantee

Warehouse robotics company Exotec said in an announcement dated October 6, 2026, that its Skypod-powered warehouse automation system has enabled First Supply to guarantee next-morning delivery on orders placed by 5 p.m. at the wholesaler’s new Wisconsin distribution center. Exotec released the results after just over one year of system operation.

Exotec listed expected business impacts on warehouse operations including 4x growth in storage capacity without expanding the existing racking footprint while maintaining 30% additional capacity for future hardware expansion, picking speeds 10 times faster than manual processes, and more than 14,000 SKUs handled within the Skypod system. The announcement said the system allowed First Supply to vertically concentrate products in the distribution center and accelerate robotics-supported picking while decreasing travel time and distance for operators.

With overnight replenishment supported by the Skypod system, next-day order demand can be as much as 20% of the new distribution center’s daily volume, Exotec said. “Having a significant percentage of each day’s order volume delivered via the ultra-fast and efficient Skypod system enables First Supply to meet peak season and peak daily demand,” Steve Baer, Chief Logistics Officer of First Supply, said in the announcement. “The system is productive, efficient, and will enable the facility to grow with minimal disruption over time.”

The announcement also described an exceptional demand event: when massive flash flooding hit southeastern Wisconsin in the summer of 2025, First Supply quickly delivered products the community needed to hundreds of affected customers. “We had terrible floods in southeast Wisconsin last summer, just after the new DC opened,” Baer said in an Exotec case study of the project. “Because we had that next-day capability, we were able to deliver many more products that the community needed right away. Water heaters, for example. It enabled us to have next-day delivery for something that would have taken us days to satisfy in the past.”

Stanislas Normand, Managing Director of Exotec North America, said First Supply’s results show that the right automation strategy can deliver operational and business value for current operations and for what comes next, adding that Exotec is proud to support the company’s progress.

The System and the Facility

The system operates at First Supply’s Joe Poehling Distribution Innovation Center in West Salem, Wisconsin. First Supply hosted a ribbon cutting and grand opening on September 18, 2025, officially naming the facility for Chairman Emeritus Joe Poehling, whose career at the company began in June 1979, according to the company’s grand-opening announcement. The 308,000-square-foot building rose on what had been 45 acres of open ground. MSI General Vice President John Kutz said the construction involved 1,400 concrete truckloads, 215 precast wall panels, 450 tons of steel, and nearly 1,200 solar panels.

According to the case study, the facility has 40-foot clear-height ceilings, and the installed Exotec system consists of 38-foot-tall vertical storage racks with capacity for over 50,000 bins, 31 robots, three picking stations, six packing stations, 12 destination sortation lanes with a return lane, three induction workstations, and one compaction station that keeps bins as full as possible when necessary. Beyond the Skypod system, the distribution center holds over 12,000 standard pallet-racking locations for larger items such as water heaters, condensers, and furnaces. Supporting systems across the building include two Cubiscan dimensioners for product measurement and weight capture, integration between the Jungheinrich order pickers’ navigation system and First Supply’s warehouse management system, five robotic pallet wrappers, an automated floor scrubber, and hands-free scanning devices.

E-commerce orders and branch replenishment are prepared from the same inventory in the same system, which allows a single building to serve all locations and ship directly to customers, the case study states. Exotec’s software layer connects to First Supply’s warehouse management system for a real-time view of inventory and movement through the distribution center, and orders received by 5 p.m. go onto an overnight run that reaches the branch before the morning crew arrives, in time for that day’s last-mile delivery.

Partnership History and Expansion Headroom

First Supply and Exotec announced their partnership on May 21, 2024, when the partnership announcement described a planned Skypod system of over 43,000 storage bins, 36 robots, three picking stations, and three induction workstations, using Exotec’s Skypath conveying technology to feed six packing stations and a sortation loop with 12 outbound destination lanes. The 2024 announcement said the automation was intended to manage a growing variety of SKUs, use available space effectively, and reduce labor-intensive manual picking, and that the center was designed to scale storage capacity by up to 30% by adding bins and robots. Katie Poehling Seymour, First Supply’s president and CEO, said at the time that the company was transforming its supply chain with a focus on optimizing inventory management through enhanced technology and refined procedures.

The case study describes the distribution center as the largest capital project in First Supply’s history. In 2020, a building boom brought a surge in demand that pushed the company’s distribution network to capacity: e-commerce buyers wanted next-day delivery, replenishment ran through too many stops, and most branches were running out of space. Poehling Seymour’s father, who led the company before her, challenged her to push the order cutoff as late in the day as possible while still guaranteeing next-morning delivery, according to the case study. First Supply’s selection process included visits to operators already running Exotec systems and competing systems, and the case study cites Exotec’s in-house design, manufacturing, and integration of its own technology, along with an on-site technician and a 24/7/365 remote control center, as differentiators.

On capacity, the case study states the system can scale SKU capacity by 4x without an expansion of the existing racks, and that First Supply can increase throughput by approximately 30% by adding bins and robots to the Skypod system. First Supply bought the 20 acres east of the building, enough to double both the facility and the Skypod installation. The case study also states that new hires reach independent picking or packing rates within hours, that ergonomic workstations bring product to the operator instead of sending the operator to the product, and that First Supply scaled staffing proportionally less for the items moved through the Exotec system.

First Supply is a fifth-generation, family-owned business that has operated for more than 125 years, distributing HVAC, builder, plumbing, lighting, waterworks, industrial PVF, pump, well, and septic supplies from 54 locations across five states, including 16 kitchen and bath showrooms, with more than 80,000 SKUs sold in any given year, according to the case study. The 2024 announcement described First Supply as the largest Wisconsin-based wholesaler.