Wal-Mart Swot and Qfd Integration

SWOT and QFD Integration

A SCLM White Paper

01/04/2019

Bellevue University

Contents

Executive Summary .…………………………………………...………………………………3

Target Audience ......………………………………………….....……………………..……….4

Cases per hour increase of 7%.......................... ..………...……………………….. …………..5

Analysis and Proposed Solutions ……….……………………………………..… ……………6

Potential Benefits and Summary. ...…….…………………………..…………………………..7

References…………………………………...………………………………………………….8

Executive Summary

In today’s ever changing business environment, organizations need to find a way to identify their position in the market and the opportunities available to them.  Just as important is a need to stay focused on the needs of the customer throughout the company’s processes to accomplish the goals and metrics the business has established.  Through the implementation of the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) methodologies together a business can identify their unique position and determine what it can do to better align itself in the market.

Every business leader understands the importance of offering quality service to gain a distinct advantage over the competition.  Gaining an advantage over the competition is the key to success and this is what will make a company survive.  By combining the SWOT matrix, which identifies the critical success factors, and the QFD function, which is a powerful quality assurance tool designed to ensure the voice of the customer (VOC) is heard and followed in the development of a product, companies can clearly plan strategically to best align to their organizations goals.

Target Audience

This analysis is meant to be reviewed and considered by key Management team members within Wal-Mart’s leadership hierarchy.  This includes but is not limited to the following:

• Board of Directors
• Executives and Directors
• Sr. Vice Presidents
• Logistics General Managers and Assistant General Managers
• Operations Managers
• Salaried Area Managers

All material presented in this white paper is factual and data driven.  Additionally, this review can be presented to any direct reports or hourly team members to engage, enable, and empower each of them to deep dive into the key components of driving the business.  If there are any further questions regarding this information please reach out to me.

Cases per hour increase of 7%

Once known as one of the best Supply Chain networks in the world, Wal-Mart has rested on its laurels too long and Gartner.com has recently ranked Wal-Mart’s Supply Chain as 20th best.  The environment surrounding Logistics is changing rapidly in an effort to meet customer’s needs, deliver the freight in an extremely efficient fashion, and have the lowest price available.  The world of e-commerce has shaken the foundations of all supply chains, even the behemoth Wal-Mart.  In an effort to stay relevant and not end up like so many retailers who closed their doors (Toys-R-Us, K-Mart, Sears, etc.…), the Logistics network will need to sustain a 7% increase in Cases per man hour (CPH) for fiscal year 2020.

The whole Supply Chain network must take a step back and understand what led to this decrease in our overall ranking.  Was it negligence, complacency, or just a mere thinking it wouldn’t happen to us due to our size?  Whatever the root cause is/was, our organization must dig in, keep our nose to the grindstone, and become best in class (BIC), just as it used to be.  However, due to the changing nature of the customer, we will need to take a deep dive into our processes to become more efficient.  Using the concepts of Six Sigma Lean, we will need to run as lean as we can and reduce as much waste in our business if we want to remain competitive.  

Analysis and Proposed Solutions

Implementing QFD and the SWOT methodologies will enable each operating area to dissect their own business unit to better understand what they can do to increase efficiencies.  The QFD is often referred to as listening to the voice of the customer, is a structured method for translating customer requirements into appropriate technical requirements for each stage of product development and production.  Several benefits will surface when using QFD to include:

• Improving our companies processes
• Helps our team stay focused
• Allows for easy management and peer review

Traditional quality systems focus on reducing negative quality whereas QFD looks for customer requirements and maximizes quality that creates value.