7-2 Final Project

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Jan 9, 2024

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1 1-3 Final Project Milestone 1: Company Case Study Selection 12/08/2023 James Scarborough QSO 328
2 The company that I have chosen to focus on is Walmart. Walmart is one of the top companies that comes to mind when it comes to sustainability. Walmart is my go-to store and my families favorite store to shop at. When doing some research on Walmart I learned that Walmart is in the process of making their company as sustainable as possible. The company is hoping to make all their stores, distribution centers, and their main headquarters 100% functional by only using renewable energy. They are hoping to have this phase fully completed by the year 2035. In 2020, Walmart had 59% of their packaging made from recyclable materials that was reuseable and industrially compostable. (corporate.walmart.com, 2022). This is also great for the environment and Walmart hopes to achieve zero emissions in their operations by 2040. Walmart hopes to not only engage their suppliers to go eco-friendly but also hopes to eliminate supply chain emissions by 1 billion metric tons by the year 2030. Walmart is taking those steps by starting a project called Project Gigaton. (Climate Change, Walmart.com, 2023). In 2020, Walmart started to become socially sustainable. The company started to donate food to those in need. They ended up donating 627 million pounds of food to the needy and the less fortunate. These donations were sent to nearby women shelters, homeless shelters, children group homes and local food banks in the community. Walmart also is maintaining sustainability by bringing more jobs into the community and offering their workers higher pay, bonus incentives, and programs to employees that further their education and skill sets. Walmart is about helping the community and giving back to those in need. Walmart is continuing to find ways to improve sustainability in their company and the community around them.
3 I. Overview Emerging technologies and best practices that affect environmental and social sustainability efforts of Walmart would be changes that are occurring to the surrounding energy grids, climate changes, and the changes in weather patterns that is requiring their facilities to have to constantly run their heating and cooling units more than usual. Another technology that affects environmental and social sustainability from Walmart’s end is their shift in their assets, supplier willingness to make changes, the type of refrigeration technology they use for their products, lack of laws being enforced per regulation guidelines not being followed, operating at capacity to implement new ideas to reduce emission projects for environmental awareness, and lastly innovation technologies in manufacturing and agriculture that would line up with the scientific community on how measurement approaches should be established and handled. (Walmart 2019 ESG Report, 2019). There are many challenges that Walmart faces environmentally and socially through their sustainability efforts and the complexity of their supply chains and how they are incorporated into the manufacturing, agriculture, and production aspect of supply chains. Some challenges that Walmart can point out that affecting their sustainability and triple bottom line is pricing, availability of products, financial tradeoffs, costs and capital gains, revenue, and supplier willingness to meet sustainable practices that are environmentally efficient. All these challenges not only affect Walmart’s sustainability but also affects their TBL (Triple Bottom Line). (Walmart 2019 ESG Report, 2019). When it comes to assessing Walmart’s collaboration with its suppliers and customers, I believe this collaboration improves its environmental sustainability across the entire supply chain because they are working together to improvise new ways of doing things. They are collecting
4 new data from their drivers across the supply chain to see how much waste is being dumped, they are instilling new policies to the public to help minimize waste and ways of prevention, Walmart has added local recycling and waste containers into their stores, they also made changes to their packaging materials while making sure they stay on top of the surrounding market costs for demand, supply and costs to operate recycled management / waste management operations. Walmart also is incorporating different packaging solutions across all their facilities in their markets. (Walmart ESG Report, 2019). Walmart also incorporated inventory management technology software known as Trade Gecko to help stay on top of shipping and to cut back on wastes. This software uses cross docking at the warehouses to move inventory from the arriving or leaving trucks. The inventory is then moved from these trucks and packed into another truck that will transport these products to designated stores so that they aren’t sitting in a warehouse and racking up storage costs. Walmart is known to have 160 distribution centers that uses local logistics company to make sure the distribution centers are running smoothly when it comes to transportation of products. The metrics that Walmart is using to assess how well it is meeting its environmental and social impact goals by using 8 waste lean manufacturing processing systems to limit waste products and to make sure their service process is running smoothly. Lean Waste Manufacturing is known in lean methodology to eliminate unnecessary waste within that operation. Lean Waste manufacturing can be used during labor routines, help cut down waste costs, material costs, and shave off time of shipping. However, there is some downside to LWM which is costs, time, money, unhappy customers, lack of resources available. The second processing system that Walmart uses is Excess processing which isn’t meeting its environmental and social goals
5 because it is a poorly designed process that isn’t doing too well on getting rid of excess goods fast enough. The third WLM processing system is Process mapping which is known as an effective tool to eliminate waste and optimize workflow that can help eliminate over processing of products. The fourth WLM processing system Walmart is having trouble with is known as Overproduction which occurs when products are being produced before they are needed. The fifth element of WLM processing system that is affecting Walmart’s sustainability and impacting environmental and social goals is Turnaround time/ Waiting. Customers are having to wait much longer on their products, equipment is taking much longer repair wise, excess change over time, shipping slowed down due to climate and weather conditions. The fifth WLM that Walmart is facing trouble with is Inventory. Too much inventory sitting in warehouses is also known as waste because of the holding cost it is causing them for storage. The sixth WLM that Walmart needs to improve environmentally is Transportation. Older transportation vehicles that need serviced more often is causing not only more costs, more wastes in the environment due to more O2 being released into the air, but it’s also causing more down time maintenance which is affecting shipping. The seventh and eighth WLM that Walmart needs to improve on to meet environmental and social needs on their behalf would be Motion implantation which is costing them money from raw materials, staff, and equipment maintenance charges but also non-utilized talent in the workplace that is going to waste with a higher employment turnover rate. (SKHMOT,2017). Walmart methods that they use different from other companies and the way their supply chains operate. However, Walmart is finding different ways to refine their methods of operations, purchasing, integration, and distribution when it comes to their supply chains. We know that for
6 supply chains to have successful operations they need purchasing managers to find their vendors, pick which products need to sell, and set up deals for those products. The operations aspect of supply chains put all their attention into planning, forecasting, and inventory managing. Forecasting helps supply chains focus on sales and promotions, changes in competition in the market and change in trends. Demand planning helps supply chains accrue correct forecasts to help them with inventory management. Distribution comes into play for supply chains when it comes to moving the products from warehouses to stores then to its customers. Integration in the supply chain operation makes sure all this flows smoothly to maximize efficiency whole maintaining costs. By Walmart using these SCM methods they can lower their product costs, have better selection of products that meets consumer needs, and be able to offer lower price to customers. (Robinson, 2020). Sustainability Plan Emerging technologies and best practices that affect environmental and social sustainability efforts of Walmart would be changes that are occurring to the surrounding energy grids, climate changes, and the changes in weather patterns that is requiring their facilities to have to constantly run their heating and cooling units more than usual. Another technology that affects environmental and social sustainability from Walmart’s end is their shift in their assets, supplier willingness to make changes, the type of refrigeration technology they use for their products, lack of laws being enforced per regulation guidelines not being followed, operating at capacity to implement new ideas to reduce emission projects for environmental awareness, and lastly innovation technologies in manufacturing and agriculture that would line up with the scientific community on how measurement approaches should be established and handled. (Walmart 2019 ESG Report, 2019).
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