KION North America has opened its new Aftermarket Distribution and Training Center in Summerville, South Carolina. The new location, near KION North America's production facility, triples the warehouse space for high-demand spare parts. The new location also offers a state-of-the-art Sales and Service Training Center for in-person and live events, which will support over 1,600 dealer technicians and sales representatives in 2022.

The distribution warehouse increases floor space by 86%, vertical storage by 80%, high-rack storage by 64% and small parts storage by 30%. This allows KION North America to increase the total number of parts in stock to more than 30,000 SKUs to best serve its customers. 

The Aftermarket Distribution Center utilises brand new Linde Material Handling warehouse equipment for the highly efficient storage and picking process. 

Daniel Schlegel, vice president of customer service, says: ”The new Aftermarket Distribution Center and the new Sales and Service Training Facility are important milestones of our North American growth strategy. It puts the necessary foundation in place to provide state-of-the-art aftermarket support to our high-performing Sales and Service Dealer Network. The entire project execution took 11 months from planning to launch, and it also substantially improved the work environment for our Customer Service team.”

The new training centre will support roughly 400 dealer technicians and sales representatives in 2022. In addition to in-person training, the training centre will produce up to 20 live webinars in the new virtual studio. An additional 1,200 service technicians and sales representatives throughout North America will be supported through these live webinars in 2022.