Walmart Case Study

Wal-Mart, now it is branded as Walmart is the world largest public multinational corporation by revenue in 2010, which runs a chain of large discount department stores and a chain of warehouse stores worldwide. Walmart focuses on the improvement of sales, constant reducing costs to offer goods at the best price, the adaptation of efficient distribution and logistics management systems to ensure the constant flow of the goods and the use of innovative IT and systems to accurate efficient operating processes.

There are always great distribution systems behind the successful supply chain management, and the same goes to Walmart. Walmart owes much of its past success and expectations for future growth to an ability to self-distribute merchandise from a vast network of modern distribution centres served by a private truck fleet. It has a developed distribution system that allows company to satisfy customer needs quickly. In the Walmart’s distribution system, the distribution centres are the most important part. Walmart has many distribution centres located at different geographical locations within a certain distance that enable each store to receive replenishment within a day. Each store can choose a number of delivery plans. Walmart also has own warehouses which can directly supply 85 percent of the inventory, as compared 50-65 percent for competitors. Therefore, Walmart can provide replenishment quicker than competitors. It takes only 2 days while others need at least 5 days. Running own distribution centre reduce not only distribution time but also shipping costs. Each distribution centre is divided into different sections on the basis of the quantity of goods received and is managed the same way for both cases and palletized go...

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...strength of both supply chain, Seven-Eleven is more responsive, and Walmart is more efficient. This difference happens because difference in priority. Responsiveness is the most important for Seven-eleven since it is convenience store supply chain. On the other hands, responsiveness is also important for Walmart, but efficiency is priority in my opinion. Customers go to Walmart, because they can get goods at the cheapest price. Seven-Eleven has a franchise system, but Walmart stores are entirely company owned. While Seven-Eleven has all products flow through the distribution centre, some products available in Walmart stores are directly delivered from supplier. Comparing Walmart and Seven-eleven, there are some differences. In my opinion, many of those differences are cased because Walmart has strategies fit Americans while Seven-eleven’s are suitable for Japanese.