Attachment concepts and applications

Wal-Mart Warehousing

Wal-Mart is a corporation that has successfully utilized its business model and mission of providing high-quality products to its customers at the lowest price possible. With the utilization of such beliefs, Wal-Mart has become one of the most successful corporate entities within the United States and its respective success has been noted further on an international level. To fully understand Wal-Mart's success as a company, one can view it comparatively. If Wal-Mart were a country, it would be the world's 26th largest economy, just behind Austria -- that says quite a lot (Lecavalier, 2010, p.1). While Wal-Mart's success has generally been linked to this business model and its corporate policy, there is one facet of Wal-Mart's success that is less frequently noted, despite its significance in the company's respective success, and that facet is warehousing. Wal-Mart's ability to provide its customers with top-quality products would cease to exist if the company was unable to warehouse and store its resources and products efficiently. In understanding Wal-Mart's ability to efficiently warehouse its products, one can better understand its relative success in the market. Additionally, one can view the standards that need to be met for Wal-Mart's distribution of services, which cannot be warehoused.

Wal-Mart's Warehousing Strategies and Methods

Wal-Mart's efficiency as a company can be largely contributed to its ability to manufacture products all over the world and get them to retail outlets, which are also all over the world, and this ability requires a flawless logistical system that allows products to be shipped anywhere at a moment's notice (Russell, 2011, p.1). Such flawless logistics are the result of efficient business models and innovation, both of which Wal-Mart possesses and utilizes in nearly each business decision or action that is made or taken. One of the biggest innovations that Wal-Mart has introduced is its flexible regional warehousing system. Most Wal-Mart stores are within a six hour drive of a Wal-Mart warehouse, which ensures easy access and transportation of products with quick turnaround (Brown, 2006, p.1). Author and business analyst J.W. Camerius (2004) wrote, "As the nation's largest retailer and in many geographic areas the dominant distributor, Wal-Mart exerts considerable influence in negotiation for the best price, delivery terms, promotion allowances, and continuity of supply, and many of these benefits could be passed on to consumers" (Camerius, 2004, p.C382).

Much of these success factors come from the company's ability to store and distribute its products at company-run warehousing sites, that allow Wal-Mart executives and employees to hold complete control over their product storage and transportation, cutting out the middle man and ensuring that product maintenance and distribution meet only Wal-Mart's standards and nobody else's. In addition to maintaining a series of warehouses across the country, Wal-Mart maintains significant numbers of differentiating types of warehouses in each state. Wal-Mart operates both grocery warehouses and regular merchandise warehouses that are strategically placed throughout the country. Such a distribution allows Wal-Mart to offer its stores the ability to keep shelves fully and consistently stocked, with the aid of a massive fleet of transportation trucks and tractors.

Service Distribution without Warehousing

Most corporate employees as well as laymen to the industry understand that services are incapable of being warehoused -- the logistics of storing services simply do not line up. How, then, do companies like Wal-Mart maintain the capacity to retain these services despite the inability to physically house them in Wal-Mart facilities and locations?

Apart from its retail services, Wal-Mart provides a series of other customer service options in its locations including pharmacy services, photo development services, video services, banking services, and auto services, all which utilize the trained skills of employees operating in these specific departments within Wal-Mart facilities. While Wal-Mart is technically unable to store or warehouse these services in a capacity like its retail items, the company has found ways to ensure that such services are provided on a national level, available to all customers and maintained under the same standards as those items which are physically maintained within a warehouse setting.