Walmart is a multinational retail corporation founded in 1962, operating over 11,500 stores in 28 countries and employing 2.2 million associates worldwide. The company has heavily invested in management information systems and communication technologies, including a retail link system that connects Walmart to its suppliers, enabling efficient inventory management and enhanced decision-making. Walmart is transitioning from barcode to RFID technology to reduce supply chain costs and improve efficiency, although this requires significant investment from suppliers.

2. • Walmart is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain
of hypermarkets discount department stores and grocery stores
• Founded by Sam Walton in 1962
• More than 11,500 stores under 65 banners in 28 countries
• Customers visit e-commerce sites in 11 countries each week
• Walmart employs 2.2 million associates worldwide- 1.4 million in the U.S.
alone
INTRODUCTION (WAL-MART)

3. MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM
• It is a computerized database of financial information organized and
programmed in such a way that it produces regular reports on operations
for every level of management in a company
• This concept include systems termed transaction processing system,
decision support system, expert systems and executive information system
• Its main purpose is to give managers feedback about their own
performance

4. INVENTORY MANAGEMENT
• Wal-Mart invested heavily in IT and communication systems to effectively
track sales and merchandise inventories in stores across country
• With the rapid expansion, it was essential to have a good communication
system
• Hence, Wal-Mart set up its own satellite communication system in 1983
• Wal-Mart was able to reduce unproductive inventory by allowing stores to
manage their own stocks, reducing pack sizes across many product
categories, and timely prices markdowns

5. RETAIL LINK SYSTEM IN WALMART
• It is a decision support system
• It is a bridge between Wal-Mart and its Vendors
• Wal-Mart had invested approximately $4 billion to build a retail link system
• More than 10,000 Wal-Mart retail suppliers used the retail link system to
monitor the sales of their goods at stores and replenish inventories
• Details of daily transactions (~10 million per day) were processed through this
system

6. CONT…
• Retail Link connected Wal-Mart’s EDI network with an extranet, accessible to
Wal-Mart’s thousands of suppliers
• The suppliers could find out how their product was performing vis-à-vis
competitor's product in a particular product category

7. APPLICATIONS OF MIS
• Decision Support Systems
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
• Supply Chain Management (SCM)
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Project Management
• Executive Information System (EIS)
• RFID
• Cross-Docking

8. RFID (RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION)
• In efforts to implement new technologies to reduce costs and increase the
efficiency, in July 2003, Wal-Mart asked its top 100 suppliers to be RFID
compliant by January, 2005
• Wal-Mart planned to replace bar-code technology with RFID technology
• The company believed that this replacement would reduce its supply chain
management costs and enhance efficiency
• Because of the implementation of RFID, employees were no longer required to
physically scan the bar codes of goods entering the stores and distribution
centers, saving labor cost and time

9. CONT…
• Wal-Mart expected that RFID would reduce the instance of stock-outs at
the stores
• Although Wal-Mart was optimistic about the benefits of RFID, analysts felt
that it would impose a heavy burden on its suppliers
• To make themselves RFID compliant, the suppliers needed to incur an
estimated $20 million
• Of this, an estimated 50% would be spent on integrating the system and
making modifications in the supply chain software

10. SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
• The evolution of Walmart’s supply chain includes three elements, according
to an Arkansas Business article: distribution practices, operating its own
fleet of trucks and technology. Benefits from its supply chain efficiency
result in time savings, more cost-effective inventory management and
improved product forecasting, the article said.
• A supply chain begins with purchasing managers who determine which
products will see, find vendors and arrange deals for the products
• Operations portion of a supply chain focuses on demand planning,
forecasting and inventory management

11. CONT…
• Moving the product from warehouses or manufacturing plants to stores
and ultimately to customers is the distribution function of the supply
chain
• Supply chain integration connects the flow of work and information
among all links in the supply chain to maximize efficiencies
• For Wal-Mart, its SCM methods yield lower costs for products and
inventory, better control over selection in its stores and the ultimate
result of lower prices that can be passed to customers

12. THANK
YOU
•WASIM HAIDAR
•SAHAL PATEL
•ARUMAY BANERJEE
•TANMOY BHOWMIK
•SOAUPARNA BASAK