Supply Chain Management at Wal – Mart Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

Supply Chain Management at Wal – Mart Case Solution

Introduction

I am student of this subject is part of the course . I am intend to evaluate the comprehensive practices of supply chain at Walmart. This paper will provide practical implementation of the course, which I have studied. Moreover, this case will bring in more ideas to evaluate Walmart’s current situation and the practical implementations needed to utilize for bring it out of its current situation.

Problem Evaluation

Walmart was founded in 1962 by Sam Walton. With the help of its innovations and its relationship with its suppliers,it started to expand and in 1960s to 1980s it continued to grow. The innovations at Walmart that led to its expansions comprised of Bar codes, in-house trucking fleets for distribution, collaboration with suppliers by sharing data and computerized point of sale systems. However, in 2006 its competitors brought up using similar tactics of modern supply chain and by that time, Walmart had 3,900 stores in the USA and 2,600 in other 13 countries. Now, Walmart wants to gain competitive advantage through its supply chain.

Reason

Wal-Mart has continually searched for cost saving advantage as it was unable to meet the stock of inventory that had been targeted and that is why it was not able to get the targeted sales.

Critical Success Factors of Walmart

Walmart provides products with low – cost edge, in other words it could be said that it provides quality goods at low cost and due to this everyone can easily afford the products. Moreover, it entails differentiation of goods by providing quality products at lower prices.

Competitive Advantage

Walmart buys at large quantity from its suppliers, therefore this is a competitive edge for Walmart. Due to this, it is able to negotiate with the suppliers and take the information of the vendors of those suppliers as well, as a result this practice provides an efficient way for Walmart to guide the suppliers in its product manufacturing, product designing and even in increasing the range of products.Walmart is a departmental store acquired with comprehensive techniques of distribution through innovative supply chain. In addition, Walmart entails the following combination of efforts to enhance its supply chain for the profitability of the organization:

External Analysis

Porters Five Forces Analysis

Porter’s five forces analysis provides a comprehensive analysis of the industry in which the company operates.

Bargaining power of buyer

Walmart operatesin the industry where innovations are at boom. The supply chain practices are getting rich with the advancement of the information technologies. Moreover, cost cutting edge can make any company beneficial that can attract the customers of the Walmart easily. Thus, the buying power of the buyers is anticipated to be high in the departmental stores segment.

Bargaining power of suppliers

Numerous suppliers are there in the retail industry of USA. Many departmental stores have the opportunity to take the advantage of collaborative approach with them. Although Walmart caters the brand name in the market and the suppliers’ approach of Walmart is also strategic, however, suppliers can easily approach other retailers against the pricing strategy of Walmart. Thus, the bargaining power of the suppliers is high.

Competitive rivalry

In the retail industry, there are many competitors of Walmart. Their strategies of supply chain comprise of sharing information of the suppliers, RFID implementation and order quantity approaches can also be used to evaluate others to be significant by the suppliers. For instance, Cisco and Albertsons, if appropriately find collaborative approaches with their suppliers, then as a result they would make small retailers out of the market. Hence, the competitive rivalry is expected to be high in the industry.....................

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