Walmart Supply Chain Assignment 2022

WALMART
Supply Chain

Contents
Walmart................................................................................................................... 2
Introduction............................................................................................................... 2
Supply chain of Walmart............................................................................................... 2
Upstream Element....................................................................................................... 4
Demand management and Inventory system of Walmart........................................................4
Sourcing of product and materials / Producing goods and services............................................6
Transportation and warehousing system............................................................................ 9
Conclusion.............................................................................................................. 12
References........................................................................................................... 13

Walmart
Introduction
Walmart is an American retailing organisation started its operation in the year 1962. It
was started by Sam Walton. The retail chain functions on the warehouse stores and large
discount departmental stores. It is proved to be biggest developing organisation in the retail
management and supply chain. The food category of Walmart includes the items related to
snacks, grocery, beverages, baked food, organic certified foods, meat, coffee, cookies, frozen
foods as well as many more. The distinct competitive advantage of the company is mainly its
target market (Jawad, 2017). It targets both rural as well as small community people by
lowering down the operating cost.
Walmart is one of the biggest store that operates its stores across all over the world.
the operation of Walmart has different cultures, laws and customs. It also make use of the
organizational theory whereas company tend to utilise its resources effectively for increasing
the productivity. Walmart uses the decentralized structure that helps in improving the
performance of company. It also uses the orientation program that involves the retention
practices. Employees are informed about the warm welcome that treats the employees well.
Employees of the Walmart also offer the training program that is consider as the part of the
daily working environment. from the report, it is also found that the Walmart operates around
11,695 retail units as of march 2019. It also operates the e-commerce websites in several
countries. Walmart continues to offer the low prices that further help it in increasing the sales
due to the wide customer base.
Everyday low price is the major basis of the strategy where it gives emphasis on the
best services at lower price. From entertainment to the grocery items, Walmart provides those
products that customer appreciate. In addition to this, it also give emphasis on the
sustainability initiative.
Supply chain of Walmart
In the supply chain of Walmart, technology plays a significant role. It is found that
Walmart has the most dominant information technology infrastructure of the private company
across the globe (Weill and Woerner, 2015). Network design also assists the Walmart to
properly forecast the demand by creating the effective transportation routes and managing the

relationship with customers. The best example is the Universal Product Code. It was the first
company who introduced barcodes in the year 1983. Due to its effective technologies, it is
able to work on several innovative aspects (Navimipour, Rahmani, Navin and Hosseinzadeh,
2015). With the skilled and competent people, it is able to distribute the goods effectively to
the different dealers and then to the customers for final use.
Manufacturers and suppliers tends to synchronise the demand projection under the
collaborative forecasting, planning as well as replenishment scheme. However, each chain in
its supply is connect properly through the technology. This approach of Walmart helps it in
information, frequent corporation among stores with less centralised control. The supply
chain of the company also effectively tract the purchase and demand of customers that allows
them to properly pull the products in the stores. At the same time, Walmart also tend to use
the “radio frequency identification tags” that tends to use the mathematical codes that is
further scanned from the distance also. In the recent time, company has also just started to use
the smart tags that further allow its employees and members to hastily learn which items are
needed to be replaced (Muñoz, Kenny and Stecher, 2018).
Due to the effective and effecient supply chain model, it is able to capture the huge
market share. It also meets the demand of several segments. It follows the multiple store
formats that helps in extending its market reach. Besides this, the supply chain system of
Walmart is most technologically advanced. Walmart is also committed in promoting the
dignity of bowmen and men in its supply chain. It also collaborate across the organisations
and industries across the world for holing the underage labour and addressing the unsafe
working conditions (Neumark, Zhang and Ciccarella, 2008). Walmart make use of the
bargaining power and information technology over the suppliers. Therefore, the supply chain
of the company is effectively connected with the information technology. In this way,
information technology is directly linked with the Walmart for minimising the cost of
operation.
Therefore, it can be stated that supply chain management of Walmart is based on the
electronic information regarding the product, warehouse layout, as well as role in
distribution. Besides this, the distribution operation of Walmart is one of the biggest serving
stores that provide direct delivery to the customers. For bringing the improvements, it has
also started using “RFID technology” for its distribution channel where the product scanning
will be done on the basis of numerical codes. At the same time, it also tends to encourage the