Walmart Smart Inventory System Essay

(3) In an effort to replace foreign- sourced goods sold at Wal-Mart stores with American-made ones, Wal-Mart developed its “Buy American” program. By 1989, the company estimated it had converted or retained over $1.7 billion in retail purchases that would have been placed or produced offshore, and created or retained over 41,000 jobs for the American work force.

Another strong point of the SMART system is that it is linked to the cash registers. When a product is sold, inventory is updated automatically. On hand counts are updated and on some products they are reordered automatically, depending on how many are left. While we are on the topic of strong points I think I will quote the web site I have been using as reference. “Because SMART Inventory is process-driven, storeroom managers and shipping department teams quickly learn how to access the critical information they need to update cycle counts, receive purchase orders and issue parts. Training usually takes less than one day.” (Inventory FAQ)

1) Should Wal-Mart be expected to protect small businesses in the communities within which it operates?

The purpose of this business report is to gain familiarity with Wal-Mart and to learn about the different aspects that make Wal-Mart a successful company. This report gives an in-depth analysis of the company history, services and products provided, the company philosophy, business methods, organizational structure, and financial and competitive analysis.

Retail super-giant Wal-Mart has fought its way to becoming the world's largest company. Wal-Mart’s legendary supply chain technology has allowed them to break the three-day barrier that some economists in the eighties felt that it was unbreakable. In other words, Wal-Mart is often able to replenish items on the Wal-Mart shelf in less than three days – not from the central warehouse to the shelf, but from the manufacturer to the shelf. With quick and reliable 2-day turn around, Wal-Mart is able to maintain lower levels of inventory and still meet customer demand. These lower inventory levels result in either a reduced floor plan with lower carrying costs and lower interest expense – or a greater diversity of products on the store shelves.

Walmart’s approach means frequent, informal cooperation among stores, distribution centres and suppliers and less centralized control. The company’s supply chain allowed consumers to effectively pull merchandise to stores rather than having the company push goods onto shelves by tracking customer purchases and demand. Through the use of universal product codes, implementation of Retail links at the store, use of RFIDs and smart tags, suppliers and manufacturers within the supply chain synchronize their demand forecaste under a collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment scheme, and every link in the chain was connected through technology that includes a central database, store-level point-of-sale systems, and a satellite network. As per report, there was a 16% reduction in out-of-stocks with the use of RFIDs and pointed out that the products using an electronic product code were replenished three times as fast as items that only used bar code technology. These strategies have made Walmart to be the dominant force over other competitors with information and technology helping its supply chain strategy attain greater

Let’s go back to a few pages ago. Walmart collects their customers’ data and use them in offering personal customized leaflets. Over one hundred million patrons get those leaflets from Walmart. As one of those

Strong investment in Information technology to streamline information flows and product flows along supply chain(RFID, Retail-Link system)

Another thing Wal-Mart uses is many of their departments are cash wraps. Most of these cash wraps tended to be things like batteries, gum, candy, and soda. With Wal-Mart being such a large store, many departments also have their own checkout counters that allow customers who are only looking for certain items to be able to get in and out. Wal-Mart also uses end caps on almost every aisle in the store. These end caps are usually impulse buy items that are offering special promotional prices. Another thing that Wal-Mart does is that it shelves their items based on frequency. The most popular items or the items that most consumers buy will be located in the beginning of the aisle and at eye level, while other infrequent items are placed lower on the shelves and more towards the end of the aisle. To accurately keep track of what items need to be restocked or what items are selling the best, Wal-Mart uses a planogram. The planogram they use utilizes SKU’s and will allow for employees to figure out exactly where everything goes and when it needs to be restocked.

The Walmart is able to keep track of its inventory with the help of a little gadget called, Telson. It scans the bar code which is not just a simple thing but it is almost like an encyclopedia as it tells all the information. The power of information is hidden in a bar code. It is very important as it keeps track of all the sales for example what is being sold, when is it being sold, history, sale prices and trend prices.

Retail super-giant Wal-Mart has fought its way to becoming the world's largest company. Much of their success can be attributed to providing a vast assortment of products at exceptional prices all under one roof. Wal-Mart began operations in 1964 and has since become the world leader in retail. Today, Wal-Mart is visited by 138 million customers per week at their 4,750 stores. Wal-Mart operates under four basic rules in order to satisfy such a large number of customers:

point of sale system. The POS system is a perpetual inventory counting method that electronically records items immediately upon their point of sale (Stevenson, 2015, pg. 552). In other words, as a cashier scans a customer 's groceries, each scanned item is automatically recorded in the system and deducted from the store’s inventory. Implementing a point of sale would benefit a business’s inventory management function in several ways. First, the POS system will provide managers with a continuous flow of updated information (Stevenson, 2015, pg. 552). As a result, the information will provide more accuracy when used for sales forecasts and analysis, which substantially affect inventory decisions. Continuously, this inventory system would also allow greater flexibility in the sense that it can be wirelessly linked to the main company’s inventory system, creating a network of the company’s inventory systems. The POS system is capable of tracking many operations at once and can be modified according to management’s needs (MacCarthy, n.d.). This flexibility would undoubtedly benefit a large company like Wegman’s with many store locations. Lastly, the system is able to help businesses maintain a high level of customer service. Because the system gives customers a receipt with the price and quantity of each item purchased, the customer is able to see exactly what he or she purchased. This practice

by taking actions other than reducing consumer transaction costs and through devising new products and services. Wal-Mart.com will offer products from all 25 categories you can find in a regular Wal-Mart store. To create additional value, it will offer a richer choice of high quality products, for example DVD players and cameras. But not only will it offer these higher-priced items, it will also offer them as complements, which means that Wal-Mart.com for example will sell DVD players with a set of the latest DVDs.

1. Wal-Mart has been able to achieve respectable leadership in the retail industry because of its focus on supply chain management. Discuss in detail the distribution and logistics system adopted by Wal-Mart.

What is Wal-Mart dong that seems to fit a definition of “successful” e-commerce operations? What cold they do better? How does shopping on-line compare to your experience looking for a similar type of item at a bricks-and-mortar store? How does this site compare to other experiences you’ve had with e-commerce??