Walmart Supply Chain Research

We have a great deal of information on this site about the Walmart Supply Chain.  To make it easier for you to find it we have tried to aggregate most of it here.  The Walmart Supply Chain is one of the best in the world. Ever since Sam Walton founded Walmart the company has focused on always improving, always getting better.   If you read “Made In America” by Sam Walton or know Walmart’s history you know that some of Walmart’s greatest innovations came out of necessity.  Walmart started in rural America so Sam Walton had to do things a bit different than the stores in major cities.  Swimming against the current can greatly pay off.

Learn More about Walmart Supply Chain.

• All About Walmart Ecommerce.
• Amazon vs. Walmart: reinventing how we buy everything.
• CEO Doug McMillon Outlines the Walmart Digital Strategy
• CEO Quotes: Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma, Tim Cook, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Sam Walton.
• Changing face of retail: A conversation with Walmart CEO Doug McMillon.
• Concept Truck: Walmart Advanced Vehicle Experience. 
• E-commerce Supply Chain Blogs: Amazon, Alibaba, Walmart, Ocado.
• FlipKart: Walmart’s Biggest Deal Ever.
• How Alibaba Plans to Take on Walmart in China.
• How Walmart Is Betting Big On Stores To Catch Amazon In E-commerce.
• Indra Nooyi, Pepsi Co CEO and Doug McMillon, Walmart CEO.
• Inside How Walmart Uses Big Data.
• IS in Action – WalMart Supply Chain. 7 minute video. 
• Sam & Bud Walton: Reflections. WALMART.
• Sam Walton quotes and sayings.
• “Sam Walton’s Values.” Look at how people treat others and it says a lot.
• Two of the Keys to Walmart’s Success.
• Walmart, Amazon, Alibaba Eyeing Parcel Delivery Services.
• Walmart CEO Doug McMillon.
• Walmart CEO Doug McMillon Quotes.
• Walmart’s Food Safety Solution Built on the IBM Blockchain Platform.
• Walmart History. Sam Walton and the growth of Walmart.
• Walmart Robots Working Store Aisles, Checking Stock.
• Walmart’s supply chain.
• Walmart Supply Chain Information.

Quotes by Walmart CEOs.

• “We’re going to make shopping with us faster, easier and more enjoyable. We’ll do more than just save customers money and you, our associates, will make the difference. Looking ahead, we will compete with technology, but win with people. We will be people-led and tech-empowered.” ~Don McMillon
• “Many of our best opportunities were created out of necessity.“ ~Sam Walton

“You can learn from everybody.” ~Sam Walton

• “The secret of successful retailing is to give your customers what they want” ~ Sam Walton, Supply Chain Guru.

• “I was always intrigued when I was growing up, and then in engineering school, with the idea of a perpetual machine. I think of the Wal-Mart culture as that.” ~ Mike Duke, former Walmart CEO
• “It’s interesting: the letters I get from mayors that want Wal-Mart to look and invest in their community.” ~ Mike Duke

“High expectations are the key to everything.” ~Sam Walton

• “One of the things that strikes me is so many of the critics are people whose lifestyle doesn’t change when the price of fuel changes, or if they keep a Wal-Mart store out of their area.” ~ Lee Scott, former Walmart CEO and VP of Logistics.
• “We’re changing. We’re adapting. We continue to transform.” ~Doug McMillon
• “Appreciate everything your associates do for the business. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free and worth a fortune.” ~ Sam Walton, Supply Chain Expert.

“First, we will be a customer-driven company.  We’ve always said the customer is our boss and we’ll make decisions based on how we can serve them better.” ~Don McMillon,  CEO of Walmart.

• “There’s a lot more business out there in small town America than I ever dreamed of.” ~ Sam Walton, created the Walmart Supply Chain.
• “To succeed in this world, you have to change all the time.” ~Sam Walton
• “We’re changing. We’re adapting. We continue to transform the company.” ~Doug McMillon

“Focus on something the customer wants, and then deliver it.” ~Sam Walton

• “There’s not an individual in these whole United States who has been in more retail stores than Sam Walton” ~ Bud Walton (Sam’s brother)
• “We’re playing the long game. Our priority is to position our company for long-term success.” ~Doug McMillon
• “I learned a long time ago that exercising your ego in public is definitely not the way to build an effective organization.”  ~ Sam Walton

“Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing your competitor.” ~Sam Walton

• “So today we’re very focused on creating a seamless experience for the Walmart brand, bringing the stores and e-commerce together.” ~Doug McMillon

“Many of our best opportunities were created out of necessity.” ~Sam Walton

“We get to reimagine retail again, and that’s what we are going to do.” ~Doug McMillon, Walmart CEO

“I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they’ve been.” ~Sam Walton

• “If somebody’s doing something better than we are, let’s copy and paste what we should. In the case of Amazon and others, clearly customers are responding to convenience.” ~Doug McMillon

“Today’s leading real-world retailer, Walmart, uses software to power logistics and distribution capabilities, which it has used to crush its competition.” ~Marc Andreessen

 

I had the opportunity to work for Walmart Logistics early in my career and learned a great deal.  While at Walmart I did not hear the word supply chain and very rarely heard the word logistics. However,  I learned a great deal about supply chain fundamentals and what truly matters to the bottom line.  Whenever I am doing supply chain research I always relate it back to my time with Walmart Logistics.

One of my interview questions from the Distribution Leadership team was as follows:  Put in order of importance Quality,  Safety and Productivity. I said safety, quality and then productivity.  We then discussed why safety is so important. That is the only question I remember from the interview but the discussion really stayed with me.