Logistics Structure of Wal-Mart



Logistics Structure of Wal-Mart

Introduction

Wal-Mart operates internationally and it owns a long chain of departmental stores and stockrooms. It is basically headquartered in America. It is considered as one of the third biggest public limited corporation as per Fortune global 500 in 2012. It has around 2 million employees and it is considered as one of the biggest retailer or vendor. Walton family initially originated this company in 1962 and this family owns still 48% of the company's shares (Troy, M., 2011). It accounted for 51% of sales only from grocery retailing. It has 8500 stores in total located in about 15 countries of the world.

Discussion

Wal-Mart owns one of the biggest logistics structures that are comprised of private trucking fleet particularly in UK and USA. These fleets are basically used for distributing items and finished product across all the warehouses and retailer shops. The main objective of the logistics division of Wal-Mart is to identify the efficient and small routes that save time and transportation cost. It is also aimed at adding more cases per truck to form a sustainable distribution network. The over all fleet efficiency increased by 38% from 2005 to 2008 (Global Sustainability Report, 2009).

The Wal-Mart owns around 3500 trucks and these trucks are used in shipment of goods and carry finished goods from distribution point i.e. warehouses to the location of stores. The whole process takes place in 2 days time period. The whole stock is replaced and refilled two times in 7 days time period. The truck fleet is considered as one of the most important factor behind successful logistics operations for Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has a policy of hiring dedicated, motivated, experienced and responsible truck drivers that had previously no records of accidents and traffic police laws breaches. Every retailing store has its own distribution center or warehouse and there are several trucks scheduled to serve various targets at a time. All the truck drivers are controlled and administrated by the coordinator. The items on trailers are secured and guarded by separate personnel. It has been observed that Wal-Mart possesses more trailers than docks because of heavy transactions and larger number of items. Therefore, it can cause an operational deficiency (Chandran, P. M., 2003).

The Wal-Mart has formulated a booklet of legislation and policies for logistics related staff to educate them regarding dos and don'ts of the work so that they can efficiently comply ...