Walmart - Drivers & Metrics of Supply Chain

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The PPT describes about Drivers and Metrics of Supply Chain at Walmart.

DRIVERS AND METRICS OF SUPPLY CHAIN
@ WAL-MART

AGENDA
• Overview of Wal-Mart

• Competitive strategy of Wal-Mart
? Logistics management ? Cross functional drivers

• Benefits reaped

Wal-Mart’s History
• Started in 1962 by Sam Watson • By 1967 Wal-Mart had 19 stores and sales of $ 9 million • From 1970 to 1985 Wal-Mart’s number of stores increased from 32 to 859

• In 2004 Wal-Mart had 1568 discount centers, 1251 supercenters and 525 Sam’s club

Products/Services
• Wide variety of general merchandise • 36 departments
– – – – – apparel, health & beauty aids, household needs, electronics, jewelry

• Pharmacy Department, Tire & Lube Express, garden center, snack bar or restaurant, Vision Center and One-Hour Photo Processing

Competitive Strategy
• Reliable • Low cost retailer

• Efficiency
• Responsiveness

Logistical drivers
• Facilities • Inventory • Transportation

Facilities
• 40 Regional distribution centers • Each with over 1 million sq feet in size

• Centrally located
• Increasing efficiency

Inventory
• Cross docking • Allowing stores to manage their own stock

• Magic Wand and Point of sales system

Transportation
• Runs its own fleet • Hired only experienced drivers

Cross-Functional drivers
• Information • Sourcing

• Pricing

Information
• Significant investment on technology • Used EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) system efficiently • Implemented RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) by 2005

EDI
• WM pioneered the use of technology in the Retail industry. • It gave over 3200 vendors the POS data for inventory position from approx 2000 stores. • This fine-tuning allowed WM to reduce the SKUs by 25%, while the sales kept on increasing

….EDI
• The integration with the suppliers was not easily copied by the competitors. The competitors lost out in the race • In August 2002, WM made it mandatory for the suppliers to use EDI over Internet using AS2 software from Isoft • The software was very cheap costing just $300 for a supplier to connect with WM

….EDI
• So, there existed a large gap between WM and its competitors. So WM possessed substantial advantage in information on supply and demand • By November 2003, 98% of the job was over

RFID

(Source:http://en.wikipedia.org)

•RFID uses tags that transmits radio signals •The tracking of inventory became more precise and fine tuned

…RFID
• There was a huge reduction of labor involved in the activities such as manual scanning of bar codes etc. • This was implemented by November 2005. • The estimated cost saving on this was to the tune of $8 billion.

Sourcing
• Large orders • Economies of scales

• 30 days credit
• Direct procurement from manufacture

Pricing
• Every day low pricing

“Always Low Price, Always”

Benefits Reaped
• Strengthening relationship • Was very quick to pass on a learning among the other WM stores. • Low transportation cost

• Good bargaining power

Wal Mart

Source: “Competing on capabilities” by Stalk, Evans and Shulman, HBR, 1992

References
• ICFAI ICMR Case collection
– Wal-Mart Supply chain Strategy by P.Mohan Chandran

• www.wikipedia.com • www.wal-mart.com • Strategic Management and competitive advantage by Barney and Hesterly

Thank You



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