Walmart Annual Report

Competitive Advantage

As per Supply Chain Digest, Walmart, the giants in their field of retail industry stocks products which are made in more than 70 countries and at any given time they operate more than 11,000 stores in 27 countries around the world and manages the average inventory of $32 billion. The complete organisation is committed to a business model of driving costs out of supply chain to enable consumers to save money and live better. The company viewed on developing and enhancing cost structures that allowed it to offer low everyday pricing, which led Walmart to concentrate on developing a more highly structured and advanced supply chain management strategy to exploit the competitive advantage. (Walmart Annual Report 2014)

Business

The company knows everything about when products are sold, how long they take to sell, where they are sold. It uses tools that will allow data to be netted, observed, and made useful transforming data into knowledge and then this knowledge is used to polish the flow of products or services. Power is switching from "push" to "pull" strategy, the service or product manufacturer no longer initiates the final transaction at the customer contact point. The final transaction in the supply chain (with the customer) is the most important. Learning from these transactions helps to shape the start and middle of the supply chain. Hence, this enhances in improving customer service, by providing and making all the products available to the customers within the stores or to the customers who shop online.

Walmart’s Retail Link focus largely on providing inventory visibility at stores and local distribution centres, such presentations allow retailers to share plans and forecasts with suppliers and manufacturers. These applications also provide a broad range of reports and key performance measures (i.e. zero sales products, products out of stock at the store or point of use, in-stock measurements, projections of inventory run-out, etc.), to help suppliers identify and respond to demand and accomplishment opportunities and issues.(www.foodquality.com)

Walmart’s Supply Chain Management strategy has helped the company provide with numerous sustainable competitive advantage, which includes lower product cost, reduced inventory carrying cost, shelf life cost, improved in store variety and selection and competitive pricing for consumers. This is all achieved due to flexibility of adapting technology evolving innovations which allows Walmart to focus on the processes and systems to improve its supply chain and achieve greater