Case Name :      Half a Century of Supply Chain Management at Wal-Mart

Authors :           P. Fraser Johnson, Ken Mark

Source :             Ivey Publishing

Case ID :            W12894

Discipline :        Operations Management

Case Length :    23 pages

Solution Sample availability : YES

Plagiarism : NO (100% Original work)

A stock analyst is preparing a recommendation on what his firm, a large U.S. investment house, should do with its stake in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, was trying to recover from a series of missteps that had seen competitors such as Dollar Stores and Amazon.com close the performance gap. Competitors had copied many aspects of Wal-Mart’s distribution system, from cross-docking product to eliminate storage time in warehouses, positioning stores around distribution centres, and widespread adoption of electronic data interchange (EDI), to manage ordering and shipping from suppliers.