Swot Analysis Of Walmart's Supply Chain

Strength of Wal-Mart’s Supply Chain Author’s Name:

Course Number:

Instructor’s Name:

Institutional Affiliation:

Department:

City/State:

Date:

Abstract

A supply chain consists of all individual processes and firms involved in the development, marketing, selling storing and delivery of a company 's product or service. The chain often starts with the materials that the company requires to make its products, and the people relied on to create the product or service. An effectively managed supply chain ensures that materials for making products and the final products reach their destination in time. Walmart, the leading retailer in the world, has learned to manage their supply chain effectively, and hence their supply chain management

The company was among the first retailing firms across the globe to centralize its distribution system using the hub-spoke system. The system has enabled Wal-Mart to enjoy substantial cost advantages (Walmart, 2017). Additionally, the remarkable growth of the company over the years is largely attributed to its reduction of costs through its other efficient and effective supply chain management practices. The strengths of the supply chain are discussed in the successive parts of this paper.

Making Investment in Emerging Technology

Wal-Mart has heavily invested and continues to invest in communications and IT systems to successfully track merchandise inventories and sales in its stores across the areas that it operates. A good communication system was necessary for the expansion of Wal-Mart in the US (Khade& Nathan, 2011). The firm is one of the growing numbers of big-box retailers that are creating their supply chains with distribution centers intended to meet the demands of online shopping. Wal-Mart is expected to open four giant online shopping in 2017 as it anticipates to triple online sales by 2018, from the $ 12 billion experienced in the first quarter of 2017 to $ 35 billion (Walmart,

The company was among the first firms to advocate for Universal Product Code bars across all of their stores, develop collaboration with suppliers through the Retail link and implement RFID chips across their supply chain. One of the greatest strength of Wal-Mart 's supply chain was the enactment of the Universal Product Code throughout the whole organization (Feng et al., 2014). The code allowed the company 's managers to swiftly conduct inventory by scanning the codes and then storing the information in the central computer instead of hand counting the pallets. Furthermore, the system permitted the quick analysis of inventory count of all Wal-Mart 's stores at one, facilitating the immediate creation of accurate