Walmart Perfomance Analysis Essay - 1100 Words

Walmart Perfomance Analysis (Essay Sample) Content: Walmart Performance AnalysisNameInstitution AffiliationWalmart Performance AnalysisWal-Mart is the worldà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s largest retailer with revenues exceeding hundreds of billions of dollars each year. It consequently is also the worldà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s largest employer with a workforce of about 2.1 million people globally. A company of its size is prone a tirade of ethical issues and in the period between 2005-2011, Wal-Mart paid out approximately $ 1 billion in damages to employees in the U.S. in six different cases all related to ethical malpractices. The company has also been involved in multiple cases of bribery over the years, the most conspicuous case being the suspect payments made to Mexican officials that exceeded $24 million. In Asia alone, Wal-Mart had received about 90 reports of bribery from the 18 months beginning January 2012. However, despite the enormity of all settlements made by Wal-Mart to close cases related to ethical malpractices, the settlements rare ly exceed $2 billion which is a tiny fraction of Wal-Martà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s global earnings.Ethical issues extend to problems such as minimum wage for manufacturers in developing countries that supply their products to Wal-Mart. Most recently, the minimum wage of textile workers in Bangladesh, the worldà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s second largest exporter of garments after China, which amounted to $37 per month was among the lowest in the world and amounted to utter exploitation. Bangladeshi officials have been advocating for an increment of the minimum wage but they were met with resistance from foreign companies because it would result in increased prices for the eventual buyers of the garments around the world. Meanwhile, the CEO of Wal-Mart got a significant raise in his annual salary which amounted to $20.7 million.Over the past eight years, 2007-2015, Wal-Mart stocks have generally been on an upward. This is in resonance to the general economic recovery since the stocks market crash and recession th at began in 2007. The economic slowdown significantly impacted Wal-Mart operations and a number of strategies were adopted in an effort to enhance revenues while also sticking to the corporationà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s core competence of providing affordable products to its customers.Wal-Mart operates wholesale and retail stores across the world and its current store count stands at 11,156 stores. However, Wal-Martà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s earnings before interest, tax depreciation, and amortization trailed that of another major retailer, Costco, despite Wal-Mart achieving greater overall profitability. This could show that Costco runs its store much more efficiently than Wal-Mart which translates to greater EBITDA. Costcoà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s revenues per square foot were about three times higher than Wal-Martà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s. But this is explained by the fact that Costco is a wholesaler, which translates to greater sales metrics but this surely impacts its margins.Wal-Martà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s per square foot profitability al so trails other major retailers such as Metro AG, Tesco and AHOLD. To alter this position Wal-Mart has initiated several strategies aimed at improving its store profitability. Part of the solution to this problem is a shift towards larger stores, supercenters. Supercenters comprise the largest market segment reportedly worth $585 billion(Rothaermel, 2012). It provides Wal-Mart the opportunity to provide its whole variety of merchandise to customers thereby providing an opportunity for the company to improve it store profitability.The supercenters also enable Wal-Mart to use them as fulfillment centers for its online sales as well as distribution points for the much smaller stores. Wal-Mart plans to increase its number of supercenters by 120 in 2015 and another 70 in 2016. This will translate to greater revenues and its stock prices will rise as a result. However, Wal-Mart will have to contend with information on the expected acquisition of Family Dollar Stores by Dollar Tree.The mos t significant retail trend in recent years has been the surge in e-commerce activity and Wal-Mart has invested significantly in this area. Wal-Mart has put into great effect its existing network of supercenters and other retail outlets to be applied as fulfillment centers for its e-commerce sales. Wal-Mart has a significant competitive edge over its main e-commerce rival, Amazon, because if this incredible network of fulfillment centers while Amazon is trying to expand its network of fulfillment centers. Also noting that Wal-Mart is the worldà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s largest merchandiser of grocer, which is also Wal-Martà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s biggest revenue provider.Wal-Mart particularly enjoys economies in purchasing as well as supply chain management and hence can offer lower prices than smaller companies. Besides grocery, Wal-Mart also provides a large variety of products ranging from electronics, health and wellness products, home improvement, among many other products. Entertainment also provides s ignificant amount of revenue for Wal-Mart and this category accounts for up to 11% of Wal-Martà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s revenues annually.Wal-Mart is particularly looking to exploit international markets from the current 27 countries within which it operates. However, Wal-Mart faces stiff competition from other international retailers such as Carrefour SA, Metro AG, Loblaw Companies, Tesco, and Ahold. Wal-Mart has had a surge in international revenues which grew at a compounded annual growth rate of 7.3% from 2009 to 2014. However, Wal-Martà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s international operations still trail its US operations which are partly due to high front-end costs that are involved in expanding their overseas efforts.Wal-Mart isnà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬t really pushing towards investing the China market, which offers sig...

Decision Making Tools - 1100 Words

Decision Making Tools (Research Paper Sample) Content: Decision Analysis Name Institution Date Evaluation Summary The analysis is all about analyzing the current workflow with analyzing the improvement things in total. There are number of things which have been considered in this scenario and Shuzworld has to consider the same in total for enhancing the situation and productivity of the company with efficacy. Enhance the current level of workflow The essence of continuous growth as well as advancement is mainly some of the considerable aspects from the perspective of the company, which is uniformly favorable for the Shuzworld. The layout of the production line is comprised on eight different locations, the work of employees, dedicated to accomplish things, like, extremely resistant work boot (RWWC) requirements. The company has got the availability of resources through which they can enhance their growth as well as business process, by keep considering and maintaining the competency of their produc tion units. It is highly recommended that the total amount which is used to operating the working stations should be carried to its lowest level, as it should be five, instead of 8. Secondly, it is quiet significant to ensure that the actual assembly line goods is manufacturing, and decreased slightly between the productions The total production time for the boot is mentioned below,

The projects A, D and H having a large project allocation of time, relative to any other type, which will reduce the amount of items associated with G. It is recommended for Shuzworld to reduce the level of their working stations from level 8 to the 5, and it is verified from the tables and diagrams given below:

The recommendations which are proposed to reduce the numbers of working stations from the level 8 down to 5 which is basically a provision of module tool called balancing which is taken into consideration for minimizing the total number of working stations are mentioned below: Worksta tion A Workstation B and C Workstation D Workstation combined of E, F, and G 5. Workstation H After evaluating the above working, it is obvious that the production cycle time is 46 minutes per cycle, when eight stations; it will go to the level of the workstation 50 to the level 5. Reduced down to the level of the workstation, evidently increases the competency and reflect positive effects over the workflow of Shuzworld, particularly from 92% as a whole and the total average delay in this particular case would be stood at 8% It is necessary to choose a perfect decision-making tool and for this, the Balanced Module tool is the most favorable tool for this purpose. Behind choosing this particular module reason is that it will augment the productivity of the company to it greater extent, and because of this particular model, the nature of the allocation and division of work between the workforces would certainly be easy enough. By utilizing this specific module, the important task is t o correct the sequence, and by working down from 8 positions to 5, a great influence over the production, because it will fall to 92% level. In addition to balancing module, â€Å"Line balancing component is used to display a graph showing the change on the floor in all of the operations. Line balancing is such a module that integrated the statistics from single or several plans. Multiple parts can be balanced on the same line. Based on the times, the Line Balancing module retrieves all operations and their associated elements and displays a Chart showing the amount of time each part spends at each workstation. The Line Balancing Module lets you evaluate multiple analyses to predict the impact before implementing changes on the floor. Applied Logistics supports your lean manufacturing initiatives Analysis of the initial and follow-up costs In order to improve the efficiency of the workers against reduced cost of production, it will be important to undertake a critical analysis of t he data provided. This can be achieved through a revisit of the overall production cost schedule. The integration of sandals line from the point of view of production as well as operations will be extremely important and with the new sandal line, it would be considerably amplified, called a Maui Sandal. And the area of focus which is requires in this specific case is the scheduling the timing of production. As reported the Shuzworld’s case, it will need something with a new line of shoes for about 1,000 hours of labor on the basis of a certain historical value generated. The standard cost of labor in the U.S is $ 1.08, and the learning curve is inclined downward by 80%. Moreover, the following month, and batches of sandals are given below:
From the above working, it is quite clear that the lots scandal increased 100 percent per month and this would be followed by the coming 3 months as a whole. The total amount of all these four months batch is "50." The learning curve is the amount of time required for different types and through the implementation of the total of 3,737 for the $ 1.08 level, labor costs are mixed. The total budget comes to about $ 4,036 level. The Costs, working hours and per month starting in the associated table and graph formats are mentioned below:

Learning curve
It is evident that the cost of production is increasing with the increase in labour hours but at a relatively lower rate. This simply means that learning cur...