Technology and Supply Chain Working Together for Customers

Thank you Greg Smith for the great partnership. I am incredibly proud of the swiftness with which we reimagined our fulfillment network assets to enable our customers to shop where they want, how they want and when they want during this holiday and beyond.

This effort is a testament to how we enhanced, reused and leveraged our existing tech stack and simultaneously launched 42 pop-up fulfillment centers within our existing distribution centers all in a way that helps ensure the health and safety of everyone involved. This not only allowed us to continue distribution of inventory to our stores but also enabled us to add capacity to manage online order volume for the holiday season. Our Multi-Channel Sourcing Engine (MCSE) scans the entirety of our fulfillment network in less than a second and will assign orders to these eDCs when it determines they offer the fastest and most efficient option to fulfill the order.  

 Recounting some of the tech enhancements instrumental in making this happen:

• Implementing random stow for both sortable and non-sortable items
• Improving pick times to avoid congestion in aisles with frequently purchased products
• Warehouse management app compatibility on BYOD
• A single cloud-based integration platform managing multiple third-party fulfillment solutions
• Enhanced visibility into entire fulfillment operations to meet promised delivery dates

The technology we’ve developed is allowing Walmart to leverage more of our current warehouse space to meet customer demand. We anticipate up to 30% of our holiday volume being shipped from our pop-up eDCs. After the holiday, EDC’s will have the flexibility to scale up and down, and the lessons learned will be applied as we continue to further evolve our network in the future. A true transformation of our assets through technology.