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Performance Food Group Adopts Tennant’s T16AMR to Drive Efficiency in Food Distribution
Background
As one of North America’s largest food distributors, Performance Food Group (PFG) operates fast-paced facilities where cleanliness, efficiency, and compliance are critical to daily operations. Serving customers across the foodservice industry, PFG’s distribution centers manage high-volume movement through refrigerated and dry storage environments where maintaining clean, safe floors is essential.
To improve operational efficiency and reduce the burden of manual cleaning, PFG deployed Tennant’s T16AMR Industrial Robotic Scrubber in 2024, bringing autonomous cleaning technology into its food distribution operation.
Challenge
Before implementing autonomous cleaning, PFG relied on a manual floor scrubber that required between two and four hours of operator time each day. The lengthy cleaning process pulled valuable technicians away from critical maintenance responsibilities and other operational priorities.
In a facility handling beef, pork, fish, and other refrigerated products, maintaining audit-ready cleanliness standards was non-negotiable. PFG needed a solution that could improve cleaning consistency, provide measurable reporting, and free up skilled employees to focus on higher value tasks.
Solution
PFG selected the T16AMR for its ability to deliver reliable autonomous cleaning, detailed machine reporting, and ongoing software upgrades that keep performance optimized.
What once required hours of manual scrubbing is now handled autonomously. The T16AMR completes routine cleaning in 30 to 45 minutes before employees arrive each morning, while larger deep clean runs take approximately 90 minutes.
By reducing a task that once consumed several hours of labor to a fully autonomous process, PFG has been able to reallocate valuable labor toward preventive maintenance, machinery repairs, and other high value technical work that keeps the operation running at peak performance.
“The manual scrubber took two to four hours on a regular day, and that wasn’t even a deep clean. Now I send the robot out, and I don’t have to worry about it.”” - Robert, Maintenance Manager, Performance Food Group
Results
Since deploying the Tennant T16AMR, PFG has transformed its cleaning operation. Autonomous cleaning has reduced manual labor, improved floor appearance, and allowed technicians to spend more time maintaining critical equipment instead of operating cleaning machines.
“It saves us money in manpower, cleaning supplies, cleaning equipment, and time alone. It earns its money.”
Robert
Maintenance Manager
Performance Food Group
Since implementation, the T16AMR has logged more than 110 hours of autonomous runtime, and more than 2.4 million square feet / 223 thousand square meters have been cleaned autonomously.
The team has also seen reductions in cleaning supply usage, equipment wear, and tire damage caused by debris accumulation, helping lower operational costs while improving facility condition and safety.
Consistently cleaner floors have also reduced debris being tracked throughout the facility, helping create a cleaner, safer operating environment while reducing wear on tires and mobile equipment. Daily machine reporting supports internal audits, while consistent autonomous cleaning has helped maintain higher cleanliness standards across the operation.
Making Autonomous Cleaning a Reality
With Tennant’s T16AMR, Performance Food Group has reimagined what clean looks like in food distribution. By automating a critical but time intensive task, PFG has improved operational efficiency, strengthened audit readiness, improved facility conditions and safety and empowered its team to focus on the work that matters most.
