OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Choosing an Organization Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Identify an organization and situation you want to study over the remainder of the course.
2. Describe the organization and the situation

Complete the following making sure to support your ideas and cite from the textbook and other
course materials per APA guidelines. After the peer review, you have a chance to update this and
format for your Electronic Portfolio due in Module 6.

1) Name and describe your organization.

CONFIDENTIAL
My organization is a Fortune 500 industrial supply company, W.W. Grainger. Grainger is
a distributor, not a manufacturer, which was founded in 1927 just outside of Chicago.
Currently, 25,000 people are employed at the 41.8-billion-dollar company. Its main
presence is in North America with four distribution centers in Canada, twenty-one in the
U.S., and three in Mexico. Grainger has a heavy presence in military onsite branch
locations as well, bringing the total number of its branches to just under six hundred,
spread across the world. Grainger has earned a solid reputation over the near century the
company has been operating, winning multiple Fortune awards such as World’s Most
Admired Companies in 2023.

2) Describe your role in the organization (it can be an internal or external role).

I have held various roles in the eight years I’ve been with the company. I began my
career in the distribution center (DC) in Illinois, holding supportive and leadership roles
with both inbound and outbound operations for four years. I’m currently on the corporate
side of supply chain in a supplier performance role and still working closely with the DC
operations side of the business as well as other internal departments. The main focus in
my role is working with my portfolio of suppliers to hold them accountable to performing
to our organizational metrics, delivering products to our DCs and customers on time
according to their promised lead times, and being the voice of the supplier to internal
departments.

3) Describe the situation, including information you think the will help the reader
understand the most important elements of the situation. (This will require
selectivity: part of the art of case writing is separating the essential facts from the
mass of information that might be included).

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As artificial intelligence (AI) progresses, Grainger looks into ways it can utilize it in its
DCs to become more efficient as a business. The more recently built DC buildings in the
U.S. have been built with automation used for picking and receiving departments. The
DC Engineering Team continuously works with DC Operations, Inventory, and other
supply chain departments to research and implement different AI options for older
locations. In one of these older DC locations, the DC Engineering Team has been
working to implement a racking system that uses robots to pick and marshal products for
customer orders in order to increase productivity and efficiency within the picking
processes. This system would replace the hourly team members that are on the picking
teams with the intent to provide them with more impactful or elevated roles. The higher-
level leadership teams communicated this across the organization in a positive
announcement during a town hall meeting, while leaving the middle management to
deliver the announcement in person to the affected teams at that DC.

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 References
- Macrotrends LLC. (2024). W.W Grainger Net Worth 2010-2023. Retrieved January 20,
2024, from https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GWW/ww-grainger/net-worth
- Built in Chi. (2023). [Grainger company information and job listings]. Retrieved January
20, 2024 from https://www.builtinchicago.org/company/grainger

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