Walgreens held a ribbon-cutting ceremony this week at 4741 Chapmans Road in South Whitehall Township, marking the opening of a new micro-fulfillment center that will use robotic technology to process prescriptions for stores across the region. The facility is expected to handle nearly 29 million prescriptions annually and support nearly 650 Walgreens stores across the region, including 55 locations in Pennsylvania.
As reported by WFMZ.com, the new facility is bringing about 185 new jobs to the area, according to a Walgreens spokesperson, though not all of those positions have been filled yet. Interested applicants can view openings on Walgreens’ jobs website, where a pharmacist role for the Allentown Micro Fulfillment Pharmacy at the same Chapmans Road address is listed as remaining open until filled, according to Walgreens Careers.
Walgreens says employees at the site process, fill, and ship prescription orders to Walgreens stores with the help of robotic technology, part of a design the company says is meant to streamline prescription fulfillment. The idea, per the same account, is that centralizing routine prescription work frees up store-level pharmacists to spend more time with patients rather than behind the counter counting pills.
A Years-Long Path From Warehouse to Robotic Pharmacy
The Chapmans Road building wasn’t originally built with pill-sorting robots in mind. The site had been approved back in 2019 under general guidelines for use as a standard warehouse, but local reporting noted that Walgreens needed new approval because the proposed tenant was a fulfillment center rather than a conventional distribution operation, according to Lehigh Valley Public Media…