The Supply Chain Year in Stories: May 2024
Walmart's Commitment to Modernising its Supply Chain
With no fewer than 255 million customers visiting its stores every single week, Walmart must ensure its vast operations run as smoothly as possible.
It's why the retail giant recently established its latest high-tech consolidation centre in Minooka, Illinois, marking a significant and welcome addition to its supply chain infrastructure.
The 492,000 square-foot facility is expected to create almost 700 jobs and will utilise automated technology to handle three times more volume, enhancing efficiency and ensuring the right products reach stores when demand arises.
It's the third facility of its kind in Walmart's supply chain, with the first having opened in 2019.
“We’ve made continued investments in our people, facilities, and technology to ensure we have the right product, in the right place, at the right time,” says Mike Gray, Senior VP of Ambient Operations at Walmart.
“As part of these investments, the Minooka facility will provide even more opportunities for small to medium-sized suppliers in the region who do not ship nationwide, the ability to provide products to all 4,700 Walmart stores.”
Benefitting customers and suppliers
Walmart's consolidation centres are crucial when it comes to moving products quickly along their journey to store shelves and to customers.
Each has the capacity to receive general merchandise items from suppliers in smaller freight loads, known in the industry as less-than-truckload (LTL), and consolidate them into larger freight loads known as truckloads (TL).
Products are then shipped to one of Walmart’s 42 regional distribution centres, sorted and sent to stores.
Technology found in these facilities provides benefits for both customers and suppliers. For the former, enhanced efficiencies enable Walmart to make savings which can be directly passed onto customers through lower prices; for the latter, it streamlines the process of purchase order fulfilment, reduces lead times and unlocks faster delivery.
Blue Yonder takes Heineken’s Demand Planning to Next Level
Heineken is an organisation laser-focused on improving its supply chain planning capability.
It’s why the world’s most international brewer is relying on Blue Yonder as a vendor of trust to transform this element of its vast operations.
The Dutch beer giant is implementing Blue Yonder Cognitive Demand Planning, a next-generation, cloud-native, microservices-based SaaS solution that utilises AI and machine learning (ML) to improve forecast accuracy and reduce bias by considering dynamic external and internal variables.
As consumer goods firms encounter challenges due to fluctuations in demand caused by inflation, supply chain disruptions, evolving consumer habits and a growing demand for more sustainable products and processes, conventional forecasting methods are being rendered insufficient.
Blue Yonder’s Cognitive Demand Planning solution, which sits on top of Microsoft Azure, negotiates these obstacles with a new generation of AI-based capabilities, transforming the way companies around the world collaborate, predict, plan and make decisions.
Future-proofing demand planning
Heineken has, for several years, already been enjoying a fruitful partnership with Blue Yonder, implementing its solutions to unlock added value – especially with a view to improving forecasting accuracy through its ML demand forecasting solution.
As a leading supply chain solution provider, Blue Yonder has been selected to future-proof Heineken’s demand planning process and leverage AI/ML, autonomous scenario planning, planning process orchestration and solution extensibility.
“We want to continuously improve our supply chain processes and adopting Blue Yonder Cognitive Demand Planning is an important step in that ambition,” explains Corneel Hindriks, Global Digital & Technology Manager for Supply Chain Planning at Heineken.
“Working together with Blue Yonder will support us in our ambition to become the best-connected brewer and foster functional excellence in demand planning, leading to improved customer experience.
“With the right supply response, it could generate a positive impact on our sustainability targets as well, for example by reducing write-offs and goods movements.”
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