Supply Chain at Wal-

Mart
Sai Rishik
Mansi
Prashant
Pulastya
Focusing on the supply chain

Walmart implemented Zero-based budgeting

Company implemented 300 + Tech based initiatives

Idea was to reduce cost and increase efficiency

Two major areas covered to fulfil corporate strategy: Omnichannel and

Technology
 • Omnichannel. Walmart lists their stores and their website as

Omni-Channel places where meaningful connections happen between

retailer and customer. This, of course, is where customers
are close to purchase.

Explained • Beyond that, Walmart also lists their presence on social

media and around the web on other sites. It’s all part of the
digital discovery stage of the customer journey. Walmart’s
own digital properties serve a role in this journey as well,
through search on their site and through digital display ads.
 “If they now can use that same
It’s innovating on the back end to leverage
infrastructure to get stuff to the e-commerce
its large distribution network. Lore
users by using their employees to do the
introduced a pilot program to let employees
‘last mile,’ that’s going to be hard for
deliver packages on their way home for
Amazon to duplicate,” says Leonard Lodish,
extra pay, to take advantage of the fact that
Wharton emeritus marketing professor. The
Walmart has stores within 10 miles of 90
“last mile” to the customer’s doorstep is the
percent of Americans.
most expensive part of delivery.

Walmart announced it had hired 40,000
store workers to pick groceries for online
orders.
Walmart worked with Spark Delivery, a
crowd- sourced delivery platform that
matched independent drivers with
Walmart delivery orders.
Walmart announced partnerships in
January 2019 with Point Pickup,
Skipcart, AxleHire, und Roadie, aimed
at providing home delivery services to
customers."
The company was installing 900 pickup
towers each 16-feet high and located in the Customers placed orders online at
store parking lots- that would allow Walmart.com or on the smartphone app
customers to pick up online orders without and then received a barcode.
speaking to a store associate.
Once orders were placed, Walmart's
In September 2018, Walmart purchased
personal shoppers would pick up the
Cornershop for $225 million."
merchandise and hand the orders off to
Comershop was a crowdsourced delivery
independent delivery drivers managed by
platform for supermarkets, pharmacies,
Delivery Drivers, Inc., a logistics service
and food retailers in Mexico and Chile.
provider.
The service would be available in three
cities: Kansas City (Missouri), Pittsburgh
On June 7, 2019, Walmart announced the
(Pennsylvania), and Vero Beach (Florida),
launch of a service, Walmart InHome,
and employees would wear body cameras,
which would see employees deliver
for security purposes, and enter residences
groceries directly to a customer's fridge.
equipped with smart locks that could be
remotely unlocked.
• Shipping Pass, had been introduced in 2015 and offered free two-day shipping for customers who paid
a$49 membership fee.
• The program was replaced by free shipping for all orders greater than $35.An attempt by Walmart to
turn its U.S. associates into an after-hours delivery workforce was scrapped in July 2018 A report in
the industry magazine Chain Store Age noted that " the initiative failed to gain.
Walmart vs Amazon
Omnichannel
Technologies – For customer service
improvement
• Food Tracking Technology - to track leafy greens, such as lettuce and spinach,
from farm to store to improve food safety and quality.
• Robots - Walmart introduced robots in 300 U.S. stores to scan shelf inventory and
boxes as they were unloaded from trucks. Robotic floor scrubbers were deployed
in 1,500 stores after having been tested in stores in 2018
• Walmart was also running an experiment with a shelf-scanning robot that travelled
up and down store aisles, verifying shelf labels and looking for gaps in shelves
signalling that product was out-of- stock.
• Mobile Apps - The company was also actively developing new apps
for customers and store associates. The My Productivity app was
designed to improve inventory management in stores
• Associates could access the app on their smartphone and review real-
time data and sales trends.
• Walmart also launched a detailed mobile store map for customers
looking to navigate a particular store and "Check Out with Mean app
that allowed customers to pay for their purchases while
they were shopping
 1. Scan & Go

Self-serve checkout and Scan & Go technology is nothing new and

has been adopted by many supermarkets around the world. After
initial resistance, consumers found they liked having the option to
speed up their shopping by checking out their goods themselves. The
next natural progression was to allow customers to scan their items as
they take them from the shelves, allowing for an even faster checkout
process.

2. Smart Life
Technological
Innovations SmartLife is essentially a large tablet computer built into a counter-
top. With SmartLife technology, Walmart’s employees can
demonstrate any number of digital products – from computers and
smartphones, to baby monitors and digital thermostats.

3. Endless Aisles

Being tested in select stores, the endless aisle system aims to

seamlessly integrate the in-store and online shopping experiences. A
kiosk placed at the end of a physical aisle allows customers to access
the online Walmart store. This means, if a customer comes into a store
looking for a specific product only to find they are out of stock or
don’t carry it, they can order the item there and then.
• 4. Call buttons
Walmart is even using digital technology to change
the way customers ask for help. New next-gen call
buttons activate GPS-enabled devices worn by staff
members, meaning, only employees who have
training in the appropriate department will be called
to that department when that button is pressed.
• 5. Robotics
Walmart uses ML and AI to supply fulfillment carts in
thousands of stores, as well as find efficient ways for
customers to receive orders in a timely manner. Another use
has been in a robotic associate that roams aisles and scans
stock, freeing employees to complete other tasks.
Walmart quiet transformation
• Walmart was transforming itself-leveraging its store network and investing heavily in e-
commerce as part of a new strategy.
• Walmart's supply chain had grown more complex over time. The company had saturated
the United States with stores within minutes of 90 per cent of the country's population
while simultaneously improving supply chain operations. Traditional customers still
visited Walmart stores to stock up on food and merchandise at low prices.
• But now the world's largest retailer was in the middle of a transformation in the face of
threat from a new class of competitors online retailers, led by firms such as Amazon-
who were winning over customers with a wider variety of goods and the convenience of
home delivery