Winning extends far beyond the warehouse as Medline names its top-scoring DCs
By Medline Newsroom Staff | March 5, 2025
Winning extends far beyond the warehouse as Medline names its top-scoring DCs
Five U.S. facilities recognized as DCs of the Year, five with SAFE Award in annual contest built on better practices and bragging rights
DCAwards-Auburndale-Banner
Employees in Auburndale, Fla., celebrate under their newly hung 2024 DC of the Year award banner.
Teams at Medline’s 45 distribution centers around the United States aren’t just continuously finding ways to make their facilities run as smoothly and safely as they can for the benefit of customers. They’re also trying to outdo each other.
Ten DCs were recently honored for their efforts throughout 2024 – five as Distribution Centers of the Year, five as standard bearers of safety – through a Medline awards program that for roughly 20 years has positioned ongoing operational and safety improvements as a friendly competition among the sites.
Here’s how it works: Each year, the DCs are divided into four tiers based on the total amount of sales volume they handle, with Tier 1 representing the largest volumes and Tier 4 the smallest. DC of the Year winners – typically one for each tier – are determined by how they score throughout the year in five areas: safety, quality, cost performance, staff turnover and the rate of on-time delivery of products to customers, both by MedTrans trucks leaving the facilities and through deliveries directly to patients’ homes. Medline as a company delivers by the next day to 95% of its U.S. customers.
One DC per tier also receives a SAFE Award – standing for Safety, Awareness for Everyone – for its total safety scorecard, which is based on a combination of culture, correct processes and results (number of safety incidents). This model is known at some DCs as “the three-legged stool” because all three components are needed for optimum safety, said Chris Goodenough, senior vice president of operations.
DCAwards-Wilmer-MHECombo
Team members Hoa Coa (left photo), Aimie Silvia and Ricky Langrum with some of the material handling equipment (MHE) at Medline’s distribution center in Wilmer, Texas
For this latest cycle, there were ties for both DC of the Year and the SAFE Award in Tier 2, resulting in 10 total winners instead of the usual eight. The more sites recognized for their efforts, the better, Goodenough said – especially when safety and efficiency ultimately affect the customer experience.
“Looking at this from the customer perspective, their expectation is to receive the right item in the right condition at the right time with the right invoice,” Goodenough said. “Those four ‘rights,’ if you want to call them that, are what they look for every day. And by doing what we are doing here with regard to improvements, customers served by our DCs and trucks should see even more consistent and reliable service from Medline on a daily basis.”
2024 Winners
Distribution Center of the Year
Tier 1 – Rialto, Calif.
Tier 2 – (tie) Auburndale, Fla., and Jeffersonville, Ind.
Tier 3 – Oklahoma City
Tier 4 – Lathrop, Calif.
SAFE Award
Tier 1 – Katy, Texas
Tier 2 – (tie) McDonough, Ga., and Wilmer, Texas
Tier 3 – Tolleson, Ariz.
Tier 4 – Mt. Juliet, Tenn.
Each winning facility receives a banner to be hung high – “a little bit like what you see in the rafters in a basketball arena,” Goodenough said.
Employees also receive T-shirts and take part in site-specific celebrations. Auburndale, Fla., one of the five DCs of the Year, rewarded each employee with a gift card to a local supermarket.
“Everybody here knows this is what we’re doing,” said Larry Randall, Auburndale’s senior director of operations, who tracks progress on metrics throughout the year during weekly leader meetings and monthly all-staff meetings and admits to playfully jabbing his counterparts at other DCs about who will win. “It’s pretty exciting because we’ve been a DC of the Year a few times now – in 2018, 2019, 2023 and now 2024. A lot of our employees are engaged. The pressure’s on now to three-peat.”
DCAwards-Auburndale-Picking
Team member Raisa Baez in Auburndale, Fla., wears her 2023 DC of the Year shirt. The facility has been recognized the last two years and four times in the last seven.
In Wilmer, Texas, Brandon Forcier is elated about sharing a SAFE Award banner with the employees at his DC when it arrives in March. In his second year as Wilmer’s senior director operations in 2024, he oversaw efforts to add new safety precautions around material handling equipment (MHE) – distance lights on vehicles, a speed-limit reduction and more stop signs. Combined with other safety and housekeeping measures, these adjustments helped bring down Wilmer’s number of recordable safety incidents from the previous year. Employees on every shift will savor the achievement with a celebratory meal.
“One hundred percent, there’s a level of pride and excitement,” Forcier said. “Anytime you build an action plan and you go out and execute, and then you’re able to deliver top-line, best-in-class results, there’s definitely pride within that.”
As for how safety impacts the customer?
“I believe there’s a direct correlation,” Forcier said. “This kind of housekeeping is about more than just safety. It’s quality and efficiency. And when you can say you were a DC of the Year as far as safety, that goes a long way with the front-line team members to be a place where people want to come and work. That’s why it’s a foundational piece of all the decisions we make, because we do know how important it is, not only to our customers and the company, but it’s also extremely important to our team members as well.”
Learn more about Medline’s distribution centers and their approach to operational resiliency.
Medline Newsroom Staff
Medline Newsroom Staff
Medline's newsroom staff researches and reports on the latest news and trends in healthcare.
