Walmart is a US multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets,discount department stores, and grocery stores. Walmart moved to Vendor-ManagedInventory (VMI) systems to improve its inventory process and purchasing function.Required:a) Discuss two (2) potential advantages and two (2) disadvantages of thisarrangement.b) Discuss what special controls, if any, should be developed to monitor VMI systems

In this opening Discussion you are to describe the differences between the supply chains for the retail business of Walmart and Dell.Think about this: What makes two organizations a bit different? It could be what they sell? it could be where their products comes from? Examine what your colleagues find as a "difference" with your replies asking about what they found. Here is a source to use; but you are more than free to do an Internet search for Walmart and Dell supply chain.

The income statement of Walmart reports net sales of $559,151 million and cost of goods sold of $420,315 million for the year ended January 31, 2021. The comparable sales and cost of goods sold figures for the year ended one year earlier were $523,964 million and $394,605 million, respectively. To be able to achieve this extremely high level of sales, a great deal of inventory must be maintained so that customers will find what they want to buy when they shop in Walmart stores. In fact, in the January 31, 2021, balance sheet, inventory is presented at $44,949 million and the comparable figure for a year earlier is $44,435 million.Required:Using the year-end inventory figures, compute the inventory turnover for Walmart for both years.Compute the average number of days required by Walmart to sell its inventory for the same years.In which year was the company more efficient in its management of inventory?

In this opening Discussion you are to describe the differences between the supply chains for the retail business of Walmart and Dell.Think about this: What makes two organizations a bit different? It could be what they sell? it could be where their products comes from? Examine what your colleagues find as a "difference" with your replies asking about what they found. Here is a source to use; but you are more than free to do an Internet search for Walmart and Dell supply chain.Maybe you will uncover something about supply chains that will surprise you. They are often a surprise to some waiting customers.Also, do not forget to think current timeframe. What is this year? Hmmm. Anything big going on between customers and the supply chain side of things?Source to start with: Textbook 1: Hugos, p. 26, question #5; end of chapter 1.

Several former Walmart managers have come forward to allege recurring inventory fraud at the world’s largest retailer, according to The Nation.In an effort to improve their store’s apparent profitability on paper, several managers claim they were encouraged by higher-ups to manipulate inventory records to reduce “shrinkage,” or the cost of inventory gone missing due to theft or other reasons. Such loss of product inventory can affect a retailer’s bottom line, and for a company the size of Walmart, a shrinkage rate as low as one percent can cost billions of dollars each year.Walmart sets stringent goals to define acceptable levels of shrinkage, which some managers say are unrealistic. One former manager, Vikki K. Gill, claimed her superiors expected shrinkage rates so low that they were “impossible to achieve without manipulation.” By doctoring inventory numbers to reduce the shrinkage rate at a store, managers can make a store appear more profitable than it really is. If the practice were widespread enough throughout the company, Walmart’s entire profit margin and stock value could be inflated.Erica Davidson, another former Walmart store manager, told The Nation that her superiors would not question suspicious inventory numbers, and in fact, openly lauded her efforts:“It was like, oh, great job. There was never any accountability or any investigation that went into why – not just in my store but in any store throughout the region.”She went on to explain that a high shrinkage rate could even affect a manager’s annual salary and year-end bonus, adding greater pressure to consider falsifying inventory numbers.Beyond pressure from above, managers also claimed a simpler reason for the common practice of cooking the books: chronic understaffing. As The Nation reports,“One former assistant manager spoke of the irregular accounting that resulted simply from low staffing levels, causing overstretched employees to fabricate inventory numbers because they didn’t have time to perform a proper count of physical merchandise.”Walmart has faced public scrutiny for empty shelves and poor customer service in recent years. In 2013, Bloomberg News reported “the company has forfeited some sales because it doesn’t have enough workers in stores to keep shelves adequately stocked.” In an interview with Salon, an assistant store manager echoed the claim, saying understaffing and inadequate hours were to blame.The revelations in The Nation this week affirm the claims of OUR Walmart, the association of current and former Walmart employees who have pointed to inadequate hours as one cause of Walmart’s declining sales. For years, members of OUR Walmart have demanded more hours and a minimum annual salary of $25,000 from the highly profitable company. Many Walmart associates are advocating for increased hours in order to have a job that allows them to simply make basic ends meet. Walmart defines “full-time” work as just 34 hours per week and has been accused of systematically slashing hours over the last decade. Last year, Rochelle Jackson, a Walmart employee from Springfield, Missouri, told Bloomberg the scheduling policies originate from Walmart’s headquarters:“We’re not getting as many sales because there’s simply no one to help the customers throughout the stores.… I asked, ‘Why can’t we have enough hours to make the store work?’ They said, ‘It’s orders from Home Office.’”

Walmart: Scripting Success through Customer AnalyticsAbstract: Retail chain Walmart, ranked no. 1 in the Fortune 500 list of largest US companies,had sales of $466 billion in fiscal year 2013. Walmart’s supply chain operational competitivenesswas legendary. The company operated more than 4,000 stores in the US as of January 2013.Walmart had more customer connections than any other retailer in the world. Walmart hadstrong presence in social and digital media as well. More than 300,000 people accessedWalmart through social media, per week, in 2012. Most of the customer data were beingcollected from in‐store and online transactions and also from social media conversations.Walmart had effectively used customer analytics to improve operational performance.Customer analytics enabled to know about consumer preferences from social media to gaincompetitive advantage. Walmart used customer analytics to increase customer base byspending on marketing and promotional activities. Walmart’s prime challenges in the onlinemedia were from Amazon (world's largest online retailer) to attract customers in the onlinesegment. Hence Walmart had to improve upon its customer analytics advantages and stayahead in the retail segment overcoming the challenges posed by Amazon in the ecommercespace. Amidst this background, it remained to be seen whether Walmart would succeed inestablishing a stronger foothold in the retail market using customer analytics in the long run.