Analysing and evaluating the operations management of Wal-Mart for future expansion in India

Question

Task: Evaluate the strategic concerns in operations decisions and demonstrate the link between operations strategy and organization performance. Evaluate the alignment of supply chain decisions with operations goals and the contribution of quality management practices to continuous improvement. Analyse the role of technology in operations and determine specific emerging technology needs that can improve organization performance. Develop a project plan for successful implementation of emerging technology to solve operational challenges, explaining the business needs and justifying the project.

Answer

Introduction

Most of the organisations which start their operations within the national boundaries aim at expanding to overseas markets. In this report, the organisation taken under consideration is Walmart. Walmart has been operating successfully in various countries. However, this report will try to analyse the scope of business of Walmart if it enters the Indian market. Walmart is now planning to start its operations in an emerging market like that of India in the Asian continent. The operations management of the organisation will be analysed in this report to understand its appropriateness and suitability in the Indian market context.

About the Organisation

Walmart Inc. or popularly known as Walmart, is a multinational organisation of American origin which operates in the retail industry (Jindal et al, 2021). It is a retail corporation which has a long and widespread chain of supermarkets. These are also referred to as hypermarkets or supercenters. Walmart under its brand name has several discount departmental stores as well as grocery stores across the United States. Walmart has its headquarters in Arkansas, in Bentonville. The organisation was founded by James Bud Walton and Sam Walton in the year 1962 near Rogers in Arkansas. Today, Walmart Inc. is the largest company in the world when considered in terms of revenue. The annual revenue of Walmart as per the Fortune Global 500 records released in 2022, May is 570 billion US dollars. Walmart as an organisation employs highest number of people. The total number of employees working under Walmart is around 2.2 million. The company is originally a family owned business that is controlled by the Walton’s, and is publicly traded. The company was the largest grocery retailer in the United States in 2019. Around 65 per cent of the total sales of Walmart, which is around 510.329 billion US dollars comes from its operations in the U.S.

Business Context

Walmart is one of the most successful retail business based organisations in the world. The company however could not strengthen its position in the Indian market. This largest retailer of the world is yet to explore and make inroads into the retail market of India (Polisetty, Manda and RV, 2019). There are several reasons which have hindered the entry and business setup of Walmart in India. One of the major obstacles have been the laws and regulations prevailing in the Indian market. Moreover, Walmart is considered to be a discount store and India is a place for luxury shoppers. This hinders the business expansion of Walmart as well in India. The operations and scope for growth and expansion of Walmart would be analysed in context of the Indian retail market.

Operations Management

The operations management and the operational processes of Walmart have to be such that they support the business strategy of Walmart. The operations of Walmart focus on the Every Day Low Price (EDLP) strategy (Smith, 2019). This has been the pillar of the business of Walmart which it needs to bring along in India. There are various retailers which give tough competition to Walmart. These rivals are selling at higher profit margins. However, Walmart has been offering its products at lower margins. They have always concentrated on the higher sales volume. The company also prioritises cost cutting to match up with the low prices. The company further keeps a check on the competition in the market. They try to empower their employees and enhance their welfare. Walmart uses information and technology (IT) for making its logistics and distribution system highly efficient (Lacity and Van Hoek, 2021). In order to align the operations and processes with the strategies, Walmart has to focus on the quality management of its products, process and capacity designing, human resource management and location planning for stores, supply chain management, inventory management, etc.

Performance Objectives

Walmart being a successful international organisation has its set performance objectives which it aims at achieving through its operations. The main focus of Walmart is on being the cost leader in the industry (Nilufer, 2020). The company focuses on quality of the products which it includes in its product range. The other aspects which Walmart considers in its performance is the timely delivery or speed of delivery when it comes to online orders. The company has also adopted a flexible operation management system so that it can adapt with the changing market conditions. To achieve the competitive advantage, Walmart constantly emphasises on the price, assortment and access which are the three main aspects of the business strategy of Walmart. The company has been striving to enhance its performance by widening the product choice set, and making cheaper products available for customers. The company tries to emerge as a discount store for the mass customers and offers the opportunity for the customers to choose the most efficient channel of purchase. The operations of Walmart focuses on the design of the retail service. They concentrate on the cost effectiveness and the efficiency to attain competitive advantage (Walmart, 2022). Their generic strategy is to focus on low costs and selling at low prices. In India, Walmart specifically has to compete with retail e-commerce giants like Amazon and domestic companies like Snapdeal. The acquisition of Flipkart has boosted the business and position of Walmart in India.

SWOT

There are certain strengths and weaknesses of Walmart which would impact its business in India.

The strengths of Walmart include its brand recognition. The brand is known to the global customers as it has more than 60 million retail products in its product range. The global presence of Walmart is another strength of the company. Walmart, in order to increase its global presence has purchased the e-commerce giant of India, Flipkart (Rajan, 2021). Walmart has further entered into a joint venture with the largest retail store of Indian named Bharti. These are areas of strength for Walmart as it increases its global presence. The distribution system and logistics are the strength of the company. For monitoring the process of logistics, they use the IT system. Besides, effective resource management, the human resource management, strong control over suppliers, advantage over competitors, fast adoption of e-commerce, etc. are other strengths of Walmart.

The weaknesses of Walmart include thin profit margin. This occurs because the company mainly focuses on cost leadership. Their business model can be easily copied, which makes the business model weak and imitable. The image of being a discount store is a weakness for Walmart in the Indian market context, where there is a huge population of luxury shoppers (Kalyani, 2018). The company is mostly dependent on the US market which is another weakness.

The new market, i.e., India, has various hidden opportunities for Walmart. However, the market or the retail industry of India is not free from threats.

The biggest opportunity of entering India is the huge population of the country, which automatically offers a vast customer base(Simms, 2020). There are customers who regularly visit shopping centres and stores for their daily need items. Thus, Walmart could be grow their business in India. Through strategic acquisition and joint ventures, like Flipkart and Bharti respectively, Walmart could expand its business in India.

The threats to Walmart in India include the strict laws and regulations which hinder the business of Walmart. The company has to partner with a local organisation to operate in India which is obstructing the business expansion of Walmart. The government has also imposed regulations on the products which can be sold. The competition from e-commerce companies like Amazon, and malls in India is also a constant threat to Walmart (Chakraborty, Deniz and Omari, 2021).

Appropriateness of Operations Strategy

The operations of Walmart must be aligned to its business objective and expansion goals. In order to thrive in the Indian retail market and to survive and sustain in the business, Walmart has to understand the complex business environment of the Indian market, the tastes and preferences of the people, the segments of the market and the affordability and consumer behaviour. The company has now moved away from the direct sales to the customers by staring their cash and carry format stores. Through these cash and carry (CC) stores, the company is trying to boost its sales by selling directly to the small wholesale buyers. Walmart would be benefitted through these CC format stores because 100 per cent foreign direct investment is allowed in wholesale ventures in India. The main operation strategy of Walmart in Indian retail market should be effectively managing its supply chain, efficient handling of human resources, cost effective designing, strategic location of stores and supercenters, etc. The company has to ensure that they can meet the requirements of the Indian customers. Walmart must focus on mass produce and low pricing for its products in a developing country like India (Pandey et al, 2021). The average income of the people in India is not very high. Thus, the pricing for the items available at Walmart should be aligned to the purchasing power of the population. To overcome the restrictions of the Indian government, the company has to strategically maintain its joint ventures with local companies.

2. Contribution of Supply chain strategy and TQM in Operations Management

The concept of supply chain

The management of the flow of commodities as well as services is termed as supply chain management. It deals with the procedure that includes transformation of raw materials into final goods. A company is able to decrease additional costs through management of the supply chain. In other words, a company is able to maintain tighter regulation of internal inventories, distribution, sales,internal production in addition to the inventories of company salespersons. It is known to deliver goods to the customers rapidly as well as more productively (Gligor et al., 2019). Supply chain management (SCM) signifies a determination by suppliers to develop and incorporate supply chains that are as effectual and cost-effective as possible. Every possible step that starts from production to developing a product is covered under supply chains. A network of companies, activities, raw materials as well as individuals comes under supply chain that are used to produce and sell a goods or service. A supply chain is initiated through delivering raw materials from a supplier to a producer. It ends with delivering the finished commodity to the end customer. The nuanced supply chain of Walmart has been regarded as the largest in the world. The company operates its own distribution centres with logistics firms that includes ShipBob to enlarge their supply chain network.

Relevance of Supply chain in operations management

Supply chain is relevant in operations management as it helps to accomplish several businesses aims. In other words, a supply chain is able to control manufacturing procedures that improves quality of products as well as diminish the risk of lawsuits while helping to create a reinforced customer brand. Similarly, supply chain in operation management regulates shipping procedures. This in turn improve customer service by evading expensive scarcities or stages of inventory oversupply (Xu et al., 2019). As a result, supply chain is relevant in operation management as it provides a lot of prospects to companies in order to improve their marginal profit. It is mostly imperative for companies that deals with global as well as large operations.

Supply chain of Walmart

The supply chain of Walmart has been a successful strategy due to its clearly demarcated inventory category, a smart distribution system along with an updated supply chain operation. The art of supply chain has been mastered by Walmart to help individuals save money to help them live a better life. Technology along with automation has been embraced by Walmart and the company has continuously innovated their supply chain to track their seamless replenish inventory. The retail giant has been trying their best to generate an optimized supply chain to make it easier for the Indian customers to purchase their goods at lower prices. The strong relationship with suppliers has played a key role in the supply chain procedure of Walmart. The company has been able to maintain a strategic partnership with the suppliers that in turn guaranteed them with high-volume purchases (Tan et al., 2018). As a result, the company has been able to relish wholesale prices that in turn kept customer prices competitive all through the years. The company has been able to reinforce the supply chain by outsourcing inventory control. This in turn has made it easier to observe the overall availability of stock and the way certain commodities are sold. Walmart has been committed towards a future in Indian retail sector that has been an amalgamation of shopping experiences.

Supply Chain Strategy Decisions

The supply chain strategy decisions supported the operations strategy of Walmart. This has been possible as the company has streamlined the supply chain operations strategy. In order to support the operations strategy, Walmart has incorporated an electronically supported vendor-managed inventory system as a part of supply chain. This system helped suppliers to deal with their own inventory that gets stored in warehouses of Walmart. This approach made it easier for the company to hand over the responsibility of dealing with inventory to the suppliers, so they can save time as well as money on inventory management. The operations strategy decisions are also supported by supply chain strategy as Walmart started working directly with producers and distributors to streamline the supply chain by cutting out any middleman. This will make it easier for Walmart to expand in Indian retail market (Rebs, Brandenburg and Seuring, 2019). This in turn helped to reduce overall cost thus making the products reasonable for customers. The company approaches the vendors straightforwardly who can provide Walmart with the best price and also help to meet their excessive demands. As a part of supply chain, Walmart has also established open communication channels with the suppliers. Consequently, the inventory flow has been improved within the supply chain. It has also been helping in predicting probable disruptions before any major issues takes place that includes stockouts, backorders as well as delay in delivery. Walmart has been committed to expand its business in India through supply chain strategy decisions thus being dedicated towards making a difference in the live of Indian customers.

Specific Supply Chain Strategies

Early investment: This has been regarded as one of the specific strategies where the focus has been on optimising the supply chain. The retail giant has been continuously looking forward to develop their existing systems in India to generate an effectual supply chain. Among several supply chain optimization strategies, omnichannel has been more emphasised on that makes various channels available to the customers (Vyas, Beije and Krishnamachari, 2019). The marketplace of Walmart provides home to thousands of retail stores with the eventual goal to save time for the customers. Several marketplace fulfilment alternatives have also been provided by the company that includes in-store pickup, smooth digital pharmacy accomplishment as well as store-shipping.

Tuning the Supply chain: The company has initiated eradicating links within the supply chain and bought goods in wholesale to be transported directly to the stores. Walmart started directly engaging with producers as well as distributors to streamline the supply chain. With lesser members in the supply chain, Walmart has been able to cut down on overall expenses as well as lead times to provide rapid and reasonable fulfilment. This will act as a major support for Walmart for making a well-planned entry in the Indian retail market.

Technology capitalizing: Walmart has been making widespread investments in supply chain digitization and infrastructure thus undergoing transformation in digital supply chain. These widespread investments have initiated a successful supply chain at present. The technological capitalization has helped in reducing packaging waste. Walmart has incorporated a progressive warehouse management system in their distribution centres (Ge et al., 2019). This distinct WMS brace improved inventory control and labour proposal to rationalize their supply chain operations. Autonomous mobile robots, also part of technology capitalizing has been aiding warehouse employees to shift pallets.

ShipBob Strategy: As a part of supply chain strategy, the connection between ShipBob with Walmart has been regarded as a triumphant combo. ShipBob provided solutions to warehousing issues that started helping with inventory issues in a more effective way. The integration of ShipBob has also improved the visibility of products produced by Walmart. The inventory levels are updated through the omnichannel completion by ShipBob.

Quality Management Practices

Quality management is defined as the determination related to quality policy. It helps to create as well as implement quality proposal and lead to quality improvement. The decision area related to operations management is approached by Walmart through three tiers that comes under quality standards. The lowermost tier indicates minimum eminence expectations of the most of thepurchasers. Great Value is one such brand for which Walmart maintains the lowermost brand. The average quality in the market for low-priced retailers is indicated by the middle tier. The middle tier is utilized by Walmart to evaluate performance targets of employees working in the company as well as some goods (Bastas and Liyanage, 2018). The top tier that is regarded to be the highest indicates levels of quality that surpass market averages in the retail sector. The goods that come under Sam’s choice brand are mostly regarded under this tier. This three-tier method contents quality management aims in the strategic decision regions of operations management all through the retail business organization. Walmart has been able to create a resource planning system that has helped to enhance collaborations with suppliers thus raising profits and diminishing expenses.

3. Role of Technology & IT in Operations Management

Walmart, that is regarded as the largest retailer in the world, has been using information technology since a long time to improve the overall operations management. The enhanced information technology has also been providing a better experience in shopping for the customers. As a part of technology and IT, Walmart has developed a partnership with Adobe to implement Marketplace of Walmart. Through Adobe commerce, the company has been looking forward to initiate both offline as well as online-store fulfilment. This in turn has been providing seamless pickup and delivery to the customers using unique cloud-based services provided by Walmart. The use of information systems has been imperative in the retail area. Through the utilization of information systems, Walmart has been able to track customer information, inventory as well as sales (Gupta and Gupta, 2019). This in turn could be used to develop the overall effectiveness related to operations in addition to customer service quality. Ivan?i?, SušaVugec and BosiljVukši?(2019) stated that Walmart is the only organization that has been using facial recognition technology in the stores. This has been helping the retail to maintain self-checkouts to recognize shoppers who has been trying to steal anything from the store. The system has been developed in such a way that the staff gets alert if any inappropriate action takes place in the store. Technology has been playing an imperative role for Walmart in several ways. The company has also been using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to develop its overall experience for customers shopping. An AI-powered chatbot has been developed by this giant retailer that has made it easier for shoppers to look for goods that they require. The chatbot utilizes natural language meting out to comprehend queries that customers come across thus providing relevant results. Walmart has continued to leverage technology in order to support operational performance. As a result, it has implemented machine learning, pickup abilities as well as cloud motorized checkout. These technologies have been providing more suitability and improve the overall shopping experience for customers.

The Operational Challenges

The three major large challenges that is being facedby Walmart related to operation:

Size of operations: The massive scale of Walmart has posed massive challenge in logistics sector as it comprises of approximately 10000 stores with more than 2.2 million workers. The sheer scale along with complexity in operation of the company is regarded as the major challenge the company has been witnessing recently. The vast supply chain, international channel of stores as well as several products moving across long distances has been leading to complexity in supply chain on a daily basis. In other words, coordination as well as management in movement of commodities has been turning out to be difficult due to vast operational size and scale.

Sourcing products from multiple vendors and Suppliers: The sourcing of products from multiple vendors and suppliers has also been posing a major challenge for Walmart. The company has been finding it difficult to manage relationship with each of them. Due to multiple sourcing, Walmart requires to maintain a complicated and sophisticated procurement procedure along with effectual tools to track vendor performance (Neebe, 2020). This challenge in turn has been giving rise to another challenge in the form of raising importance of sustainability in the supply chain. While expanding in India this might lead to a major hindrance as there are several unorganized retail sectors based in India.

Coordinating inventory levels in an effective way: The coordination of inventory levels has also posed a major challenge for Walmart. With multiple stores as well as warehouses globally, Walmart must prudently stabilize the amount of inventory that it embraces in every location so as to make sure that it has the goods that customers require without tying up too many capitals in unsold belongings. Walmart has been looking for access to real-time data regarding inventory in order to coordinate mass levels of inventory. The rapidly altering characteristics in the retail sector has also making it difficult to deal with coordination of inventory in a proper way. This has been regarded as the pertinent challenge that Walmart has been witnessing for long in terms of its operation (Bahramimianrood and Bathaei, 2021). The speedily changing characteristics of the retail industry has been posing such challenge that gave rise to the importance of online shopping. As a result, Walmart has been forced to acclimatize as well as evolve its supply chain operations by adapting to online shopping. The retail giant as a result, has been continuously competing to stay competitive in the retail sector by being innovative.

Specific Emerging Technologies

The specific emerging technologies that are likely to help Walmart to overcome the challenges as well as enhance competitiveness are as follows:

Automated Delivery: According to Vyas, Beijeand Krishnamachari(2019), delivery is regarded as the most reinforced part of Walmart and the company has been looking forward to enhance it to remain ahead of its competitors. As a result, Walmart has been trying its best to improve overall delivery services through particular emerging technologies so that it can make a mark in the Indian retail market. Walmart has constructed a tech platform that utilizes automation along with machine learning (Jindal, Gauri, Li and Ma, 2021). This is being used to alter a near-infinite number of aspects into operational data that helps in developing its last-mile delivery ecosystem. In India, Walmart has been planning to build a holistic ecosystem that will comprise a wholesale cash-and-carry business, eCommerce platforms and financial services platforming addition to logistics and supply chain competences. The tech platform of Walmart is improving with each passing day through the use of artificial intelligence. The automated delivery will help to mitigate all the above-mentioned challenges as it could provide a tough competition to the competitors in the rapidly growing Indian retail sector.

Fintech: This is another emerging technology that is likely to enhance competitiveness of Walmart. Walmart already announced its collaboration with Fintech firm Ribbit Capital. This particular emerging technology will eradicate the issue size as well as massive operation scale that has been turning out to be a challenge for Walmart. Walmart has its own team in India located in Chennai, Bengaluru and Gurugram in the form of Walmart Global Sourcing in India. The team members have been engaged in generating front-line engineering and product expansion solutions to support strategy of Walmartto provide customers an anyplace, anytime shopping experience to all customers globally.

Robotic automation: Even though robotic automation is not anything new to Walmart but the company has been looking forward to utilize robotic technology from GreyOrange that will eliminate the issue related to sourcing of products from multiple vendors and suppliers as well as coordinating inventory properly. This emerging technology has the capability to ship 20 million products yearly from the facility to customers of Walmart (Ivan?i? et al., 2019). Since India is a diversified retail market with diverse cultural background, language, diverse food habits, language as well as purchasing power of individuals, robotic automation will prove to be a major solution to its challenges. It will also help to store 500000 products to accomplish direct-to-home and in-store pickup orders.

4. Proposed Project Plan

Development of a project plan

The project plan will be developed in order to implement the Robotic Automation that will initiate a 5-step procedure:

Picking the procedure: When it comes to implementing the RPA procedure, the selection is very imperative as the correct set of procedures to automate, holds the key to success. In order to perform this, Walmart requires to make a thorough assessment of every operation they are planning to carry out in India. The operation across every department requires to be examined in order to determine which specific procedures can prove to be right contenders for automation. Since Indian retail sector operates in a complicated, diversified as well as sensitive environment, carrying out such an objective evaluation could become a challenging task. The following characteristics can be regarded in a structured way to determine the appropriateness of a procedure for automation:

• The total transaction volume that could be carried out without any human interference.

• The total labour or resources that is required to carry out repetitive tasks at consistent intervals.

• The capability of the components along with subcomponents of a procedure to be digitized.

• The capability of a procedure to deliver an outstanding customer experience without any mutual mistakes.

• The probable restraints should be regarded as well that might provide hindrance to harvest automation benefits.

• The capability of the rules that administer a procedure, to be instinctively well-defined and programmed.

• The sensitivity and significance of a procedure in the overall organizational workflow.

Management of Individuals: The incorporation of robotic automation is all about management of individuals. As a result, an organization right from the top requires to be rung to the grassroots by taking into confidence. It is imperative to create a compelling case in the initial stage. This will make it easier for leadership of a company to become well-equipped about the compelling case thus having an idea about the requirement for automation. Once this is completed, the next step will be convincing the employees. In other words, if the employees are not properly aware regarding robotic automation, then they might be in fear that their jobs are in danger. Authorize the team to cope with operational challenges and complaint redressal while enabling the propagation of robotic automation technologies.

Selection of vendor: The following parameters requires to be considered while selecting the vendors:

• The probable cost as well as time that would be required to deploy software bots.

• The capability to provide bots that could be ascended to deal with transactional variations and financial difficulties.

• Placing systems to aware Walmart in case if any data breach takes place.

• The vendor should be non-intrusive if he is selling robotic automation tool that requires to well-equipped to get easily adapted to altering technologies. The technical ability of the vendor should also be confirmed in addition to the organizational credentials.

Incorporating the Idea: It is imperative to create a careful as well as structured incorporation approach that will demarcate the outlines of the overall strategy. The team that has been tasked with incorporation of robotic automation at the initial stage would recognize the requisites. After designing the framework, the incorporation partner will be selected which can either be robotic automation vendor or an in-house crew.

Measuring the performance: This step requires formulation of key performance indicators based on the success rate. The metrics can however, differ from one firm to a different one that tends to include the following:

• Calculation regarding accuracy of output that should always be hundred percent.

• It is imperative to measure the way deploying robotic automation has influenced back-office procedures.

Project Scope

The utilization of robotic automation by Walmart before entering India will be profitable as it will help the company to expand its service in the diversified country. Through this Walmart will be able to determine as well as document a list of particular deliverables in terms of the areas it could expand its operation.

Risks And Constraints Management

At present, risk management is regarded as the major ingredient in the project plan. Risk management procedures are initiated to observe the project atmosphere to recognize their probable occurrence and deal with them when and if they do occur. A constraint nevertheless is something that will take place and as such an individual will require to remove it from the risk register.

Stakeholder Management

In the project plan, the management of stakeholder while implementing the robotic automation will comprise of management of expectations as well as necessities of every internal as well as external stakeholders who are involved in the project.

Impact of New Technology

The robotic automation is likely to have significant impacts on the overall performance of Walmart. The automation would ensure that there is least chances of committing errors. The entire process from issuing purchase orders to making payments or accepting payments would be carried out automatically without any interference of humans. The overall workflow will increase because the robotic automation would be able to handle more work than humans. Moreover, the automation in retail services further enhances the overall productivity and efficiency of the services (Ribeiro et al, 2021). The customer experiences could be improved through robotic automation. There would be seamless ordering along with easy and swift payment process. This would make the entire shopping experience better for the customers of Walmart. This could bring more customers to the brand. The footfall in the retail stores and supercenters of Walmart can increase due to the robotic automation. The innovation once implemented in the operations of Walmart would streamline the repetitive works, making the operational processes and management effective.

In the short run the problem with robotic automation would be the high cost of installation. The minimal intervention of human resource would be required for handling the robotics processes. These employees would have to be trained to handle such technology. This training would incur costs as well as require time. In the short run, it might be challenging to replace the manually handled processes with robotic automation. However, with time the innovation would prove to be effective and useful for the company. In the long run, the automation in retail service powered by robotics could facilitate the reduction of the costs. The cost of production would be reduced in the long run once the initial installation costs are borne. The robotic automation would enable more workflow, which would bring more revenue. Thus, in the long run it is profitable to shift to robotic automation. The cost invested in human resource would also be reduced to minimal. Therefore, it can be concluded after analysing the impact of robotic automation, that it is essential in the retail business of Walmart. However, if one analyses from the social context, the robotic automation would be harmful for the company in certain ways. The company, Walmart is one of the largest employers of the world. The company has more than 2.2 million employees working under them. The shift to robotic automation would imply the termination of several employees and the cutting down of workforce size. This would create unemployment. The company might become unpopular among the employees. In the market, the customers might be offended by the reputation of Walmart.

Justification of Investment

The investment in the new technology of robotic automation in the retail business of Walmart would require huge amount of money. The entire manual and human handled process would be shifted to automation powered by robots. Thus, the change would incur huge costs. The development of robots for serving the purpose of the company, their installation, implementation of the technology, the maintenance of the robotics automation system, etc. would need huge investment. However, the robotic automation is the future of retail and many other businesses. The use of robotic automation technology would ensure improved accuracy in the operations of Walmart. The reliability of the robotic automation is higher than humans, because it is rightly said that ‘to err, is human’. The overall productivity of the services at the retail or discount department stores, the workflow at the supercenters, the orders through e-commerce, etc. would all improve with the use of robotic automation ((Ivan?i?, SušaVugec and BosiljVukši?, 2019). The employee morale, customer experience and revenue generation would be enhanced through robotic automation. Thus, these benefits surpass the disadvantages, making the investment in the new technology justified.

5. Conclusion

It can be concluded that Walmart Inc. has been successful in the United States and many other countries it had ventured into because of its consistent supply chain and operations management. The operations of Walmart have continuously focused on cost leadership. The aim of Walmart has been to make the lives of the people easier. The company as a retail business based organisation tries to make the life of busy families simpler and helps them to save as much money as possible. The company has gained immense popularity for being the most preferred retail discount store. However, in India the company could not create its place. The company has been constantly trying to cut down their costs, improve their quality and sell at prices lower than their competitors. In India, the main problem which Walmart faced was that the government regulations and restrictions were too strict on the company. The Indian government imposes strict laws on the foreign companies entering India and venturing into the retail industry. Besides, the other drawback of Walmart was that they are globally popular for being the discount store for the masses. India has a huge population of elites, who indulge in luxury shopping. Thus, the popularity of Walmart reduces among this customer segment. However, India as an emerging market has huge scope and opportunities to offer Walmart. The huge population of India forms a vast customer base, which Walmart can exploit. The prices of Walmart if maintained at affordable rates could facilitate more customer attraction. The other advantage which Walmart could reap in India includes the joint venture or partnership with the domestic company, Bharti. Moreover, Walmart on realising that they cannot directly enter, operate and dominate the Indian retail industry has resorted to an indirect method. The company has acquired the retail giant, Flipkart. This helps them to strengthen their position in the retail e-commerce business, giving close competition to Amazon. The paper has highlighted that Walmart has always tried to integrate the supply chain and align it with the performance objectives. However, the company has faced several operational challenges including managing the huge size of operations, managing the accounts with various vendors and suppliers, etc. The company has to sustain in an over-competitive industry. Therefore, they must concentrate on effective inventory management to avoid over-stocking or running out of stocks. The company is very particular about the quality management and follows a three tier process. The new technology of robotic automation which has been suggested for the company would be highly beneficial. The technology will facilitate least human interference and fully automated processes and operations. This would improve the productivity and the workflow.

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