The Grundy Economic Development Commission led a group of local business leaders, politicians and educators on a tour of the Procter & Gamble Greater Chicago Fulfillment Center at 222 Airport Road in Morris on Thursday.

The warehouse has about 1.34 million square feet and it’s filled with Procter & Gamble products, many of which are selected and stacked in layers on pallets by a completely automated system. The inside of the warehouse has robotic arms and self-driving fork lifts that put the pallets in place, while the last stretch of the pallets’ journeys are handled by humans.

Erin Hayden, a site engineering and safety leader, said products from the warehouse ship to 20 states, and 17% of Procter & Gamble’s volume of products are shipped from Morris. The warehouse handles 34,458 trucks coming in and 35,837 trucks leaving on average per year. Hayden said Walmart is their largest customer.

“This is the most automated fulfillment center that we have in North America,” Hayden said. “We have our auto-guided vehicles that went live as of Aug. 29, 2022. To give you perspective, we got building occupancy in Feb. 2022, so it was a very quick turnaround.”

She said the auto layer-pick system builds custom palettes by layer quantity: Customers can order a pallet of product that has different layers of products in it.

“We’ve automated pretty much everything inside the building, so now we have to innovate outside the building,” Hayden said. “We’re in the early stages of bringing a solar farm to our property.”

She said the proposal to build a solar farm will use the extra space on the lot to build a two megawatt solar farm that would put energy back into the grid. It would also have a local pollinator garden.

While the warehouse is mostly automated, there are still many employees working inside both in the office and laboring and driving forklifts. Overall, Procter & Gamble employs 400 people in Morris. A company representative said the Morris site sees less than 10% turnover in employees.