Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that, for the retail industry, globalization, the integration of the global supply chain and improvements in transportation and logistical planning are making it easier to ship products from different facilities and warehouses to any outlet point around the world. The author points out that the Wal-Mart stores use centralized warehouses, electronic data interchange (EDI) systems and a cross-docking strategy to maintain the required inventory levels. The paper relates that Wal-Mart uses high technology (1) to plan effectively and schedule workers shifts, which permits a larger usage of part-time workers, and (2) to identify products that are preferred by the customer and offering them at prices much below departmental and specialty stores through consumer information systems.

From the Paper:

"Technology and common platforms for information transfer also require greater transparencies in operation from the supplier. In turn, this allows retailers greater knowledge of the operations and the costing offering them insights into the manner in which the supplier conduct their business and in some cases forcing some changes to better suit their own retailing operations. Wal-Mart mandates that all its suppliers ship their products with radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags on them to the three Wal-Mart distribution centers in the Dallas, Texas. Kerry Pauling, director of Wal-Mart Information Systems Division, pointed out that the new RFID tags would "determine simply if we have merchandise that is in the back room of a store, or if that merchandise has been moved out to the sales floor and what the status of that is."

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