The Wal-Mart Slayer: How Publix's People-First Culture Is Winning The Grocer War

[luckytxn 2,265]

Home depot, Lowes, Target for nationwide. Regionals would be more like Meijers, Cabelas to name a few.

To name one specific. Many have heard of In and Out burgers. They wanted to expand into Texas. The babe that owns them wouldn't until the distribution center was built and set up before even building her first store. Once she did that she became aggresive and started opening stores and was able to keep her quality at a high standard. She didn't want to ship from the west coast and build and wait to see if the move worked first before building her distribution center. It was a bold move on her part and one that was questioned. Very expensive gamble that is paying off.

Now to go with the publix. They made the move into North Carolina and announced it but didn't expand or build a distribution center to handle the new area. They are planning on waiting. Walmart though already has their DC's set up. Now in this set up who is going to be able to be more aggressive?

Walmart is the leader and logistics and transportation is king. For the past decade any big players have been setting up and doing things the "Walmart" way. They have to to be able to compete. You don't you will be buried.

Interesting. What are some of the specifics?

If WalMart is #1 in this aspect, who are the "best of the rest"?

[luckytxn 2,265]

Have no idea what you are asking here. JB Hunt made a deal in the early stages to run Wal Mart distribution centers but the few they had in and around Arkansas. They still handle the logistics at some of the DC's. My company has the contract for a few in and around the Houston area. It is a yearly contract that has to be renewed by their corporate. To get renewal certain targets have to be met. Walmart owns their own DC's.

Didn't Walmart buy out their own distribution network? Was it jb hunt? Is that right?

Edited May 10, 2014 by luckytxn

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

Home depot, Lowes, Target for nationwide. Regionals would be more like Meijers, Cabelas to name a few.

To name one specific. Many have heard of In and Out burgers. They wanted to expand into Texas. The babe that owns them wouldn't until the distribution center was built and set up before even building her first store. Once she did that she became aggresive and started opening stores and was able to keep her quality at a high standard. She didn't want to ship from the west coast and build and wait to see if the move worked first before building her distribution center. It was a bold move on her part and one that was questioned. Very expensive gamble that is paying off.

Now to go with the publix. They made the move into North Carolina and announced it but didn't expand or build a distribution center to handle the new area. They are planning on waiting. Walmart though already has their DC's set up. Now in this set up who is going to be able to be more aggressive?

Walmart is the leader and logistics and transportation is king. For the past decade any big players have been setting up and doing things the "Walmart" way. They have to to be able to compete. You don't you will be buried.

Did you know that it was only the last few years that Home Depot had an RDC's at all.

[luckytxn 2,265]

Really? I been going to the one out of Corsicana for many years now. Also have to go into the one that has for many years out of Houston. And I am talking about over 10 years. Maybe they were a figment of my imagination or I was dreaming.

Did you know that it was only the last few years that Home Depot had an RDC's at all.

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

Really? I been going to the one out of Corsicana for many years now. Also have to go into the one that has for many years out of Houston. And I am talking about over 10 years. Maybe they were a figment of my imagination or I was dreaming.

I would say you either imagined it or were at an LTL conslidation faclity and did not know it. In 2006 80% of HD stock was LTL straight to the store. I was plant manager of a company that sold a lot of Products to HD. They had some private companies that consldiated friegfht, but most of our product went straight the store LTL many times.

Home Depot's supply chain remodel

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.php?app=forums&module=post&section=post&do=reply_post&f=145&t=495283&qpid=7000088

The remarkable story of the Home Depot has many chapters. But supply chain excellence never made the book.

For its first 30 years, a period in which the company set all kinds of retail growth records, the Atlanta-based home improvement giant virtually ignored its supply chain—a fact even its top supply chain executive freely acknowledges. "Supply chain had not been the focus of the company for many years," says Mark Holifield, who joined Home Depot as senior vice president of supply chain in 2006. "Management instead had [its] focus on growing its stores."

Holifield defends the company's emphasis on expansion as right for the time, which is hard to argue with given the retailer's history of double- and even triple-digit annual growth. But by the time he arrived at Big Orange, times—and market conditions—had changed. Home Depot was confronting several challenges that were about to thrust the supply chain into the spotlight and put Holifield at the center of the action.

One was the downturn in the housing sector. As construction and credit began to dry up, Home Depot moved swiftly to cut expenses by streamlining its operations. As Chairman and CEO Frank Blake puts it, "A downturn is a terrible thing to waste."

Another was the realization that the retailer could no longer afford to ignore the logistics side of the business. After nearly three decades of operation, Home Depot had little in the way of a formal distribution network. Vendors and suppliers shipped merchandise directly to the retailer's cavernous warehouse stores, which served as their own distribution centers. At an average of more than 100,000 square feet, the facilities were easily able to accommodate vast inventories of building materials and supplies.

But as the business evolved, that model began to fall apart. Over the years, the retailer, which had saturated the major metropolitan markets, had turned its sights on secondary markets, where it had begun building smaller stores that were more in keeping with the markets they served. But the smaller stores lacked the space to house vast inventories, making them particularly vulnerable to stock-outs and other forecasting errors. Eventually, customers began to notice that items weren't always available when they came looking for them. And that was something Home Depot was unwilling to tolerate. "In-stock is a key issue with any retailer," Holifield says.

Old versus new

Although it was clear they were looking at the supply chain equivalent of a total rehab, Holifield and his team were undeterred. After conducting a distribution network study, they came up with a strategy for rebuilding Home Depot's distribution process and reining in costs by centralizing operations. That would be a big change for Home Depot, which had traditionally left many key decisions to the individual stores. Take ordering, for example. When Holifield came on board in 2006, about 70 percent of items were ordered by store managers; only 30 percent were ordered centrally.

The retailer's transportation model was equally store-centric. At the time of Holifield's arrival, about 80 percent of products were shipped directly from vendors to stores. The remaining 20 percent moved through a variety of distribution channels, including company-owned lumber handling facilities, import warehouses, and centers known as "carton DCs" that were designed to handle bulky items. In addition, a small percentage of orders moved through Home Depot-operated LTL consolidation points, known as transit centers.

That will all change under the new strategy. While in the past, only 20 percent of goods moved through company-run DCs, the new plan calls for half of the goods sold by the company (by value) to move through Home Depot facilities.

At the core of the new strategy is construction of 24 rapid deployment centers (RDCs). The RDCs, which will be strategically located throughout the country, will each serve approximately 100 stores. These will be flow-through distribution facilities engineered for the swift cross-docking of large volumes of merchandise, so very little will be stored in them. Most products will ship within 24 hours of arrival, according to Holifield.

The RDCs will receive freight in pallet loads that can be broken down for case-level shipments, but they will also have the flexibility to accommodate limited split-case picking. Some— but not all—of the facilities will be automated. The first automated facility, which features print-and-apply systems as well as a sliding shoe sorter, opened in April in Valdosta, Ga. Right now, eight RDCs are operational. All 24 are expected to be up and running by the end of 2010. As the facilities come on line, responsibility for ordering is being transferred from the stores to the RDCs. The plan calls for 75 percent of items to be centrally ordered through these centers.

Items not suitable for cross-dockingat the RDCs will continue to move through other channels. These include lumber, which will continue to flow through the lumber DCs; imports; and bulky domestic products like lawn tractors. About 20 percent of items will still ship directly from vendors to stores. These include products supplied by regional vendors and items like trees and other live plants that require specialized handling.

With the RDCs in place, the transit facilities will no longer be needed. They will close as the RDCs serving their areas come on line, Holifield says.

The ripple effect

Although only a third of the RDCs are up and running at this point, Home Depot is already seeing some benefits. One is increased flexibility. With products now flowing through the centers, decisions on which products to ship to which stores can be postponed until the last minute. As a result, the company is doing a better job of store replenishment, according to Holifield. In addition, forecasting errors have dropped significantly. "It is far easier to be right with forecasting for 100 stores, than [for] one store as it was before," he says.

Out-of-stocks have been reduced by half, and customers find product available 98.8 percent of the time, says Holifield. And because replenishment functions have migrated closer to stores, overall inventory has also been reduced by $1 billion on a year-over-year basis, he adds. Holifield expects to see further inventory benefits as more RDCs come on line. It's not just Home Depot that's profiting from the new initiative. The benefits are filtering down to its vendors as well.

"It's huge for our suppliers," says Holifield. For example, the move to centralized ordering means suppliers now have just one order to process instead of a hundred POs from individual stores, he says. In addition, suppliers can now ship their products in truckload quantities to the RDCs, which is much cheaper than sending LTL shipments to individual stores. The combined savings have enabled Home Depot to negotiate better prices with its vendors, which further reduces overall costs, Holifield says.

As one of the world's biggest users of transportation services, Home Depot has also been able to negotiate better deals on outbound transportation, Holifield says. The retailer is also doing a better job of carrier selection and controlling its overall transportation spend, he adds.

Although all of these changes have helped streamline its supply chain operations, Holifield emphasizes that the overarching goal is to make Home Depot a better place to shop. "What the whole network is about is providing on-time and accurate service to our stores so that they can focus on the customers," he says.

help wanted

Housing and construction may be slumping, but Home Depot is pressing ahead with plans to open 24 new fast-flow rapid deployment centers (RDCs) around the country. Eight centers are now open and more are under construction. Still, Mark Holifield, the company's senior vice president of supply chain, isn't ready to relax. Nothing can be accomplished, he says, until he has hired the right people to staff the facilities.

Holifield is currently looking for capable people to help manage the new RDCs. Check out this site if you'd like to make Home Depot your new home away from home.

[luckytxn 2,265]

These places are known as distribution centers. These places I said have been around for a long time. Yes we do ship directly from vendors to a staore often when that store can handle larger quantities. Such as often we deliver whole truck loads of water to a store. I just delivered straight from mulch facility a truck load of soil and mulc. Sam's gets a lot of straight to store freight also because they can handle a whole truck load of a product. The reason I mention water is because the past month is the time for a lot of water shipments.

What do you do then when you have needs such as a hammer? We will deliver a truck load of hammers to a DC. They then break down the load and palletize them for different stores. Sometimes I will deliver a load of some such to a DC and then grab a trailer load of merchandise for individual stores. The last time I did so out of the Corsicana Dc I delivered to 4 stores in Louisiana. It is according to what kind of freight and how much and such. Since you seem to understand the freight business you are saying nothing new or able to refute what I posted before.

Now Home depot is unique in able to do this because they push a lot of certain products. All day you can watch truck aftr truck getting unloaded of lumber. They also do a fair amount of appliances. During that day they may get 2 trucks of varying merchandise tat would encompass their various departments. So maybe 10 trucks of wood and appliances and 2 trucks of various merchandise. It would be ludicrous to bring a truck load to a DC and then reload a truck and deliver when that truc can go to the store itself.

Now let us get to the retail supermarkets. They have to have trucks come in to bring their merchandise. They can't push a whole truc load of canned products or freezer goods. Home depot has in the last decade become very adept at using the Walmart model to schedule their logistics and transportation needs which is what we are or were talking about. Tbone asked me to name some others and I named a few I am familar with recently. I and most trucking companies know Walmart DC's well. I have been to Publix DC's in Florida so I know them somewhat but they are a rarity to me as I refuse most loads to Florida. I have been to about every major retailer DC's in this country at one time or another so maybe just maybe I know a little bit about the business. I am only a truck driver though and since you know the corporate side maybe you have more info that I don't.

I would say you either imagined it or were at an LTL conslidation faclity and did not know it. In 2006 80% of HD stock was LTL straight to the store. I was plant manager of a company that sold a lot of Products to HD. They had some private companies that consldiated friegfht, but most of our product went straight the store LTL many times.

Home Depot's supply chain remodel

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.php?app=forums&module=post&section=post&do=reply_post&f=145&t=495283&qpid=7000088

The remarkable story of the Home Depot has many chapters. But supply chain excellence never made the book.

For its first 30 years, a period in which the company set all kinds of retail growth records, the Atlanta-based home improvement giant virtually ignored its supply chain—a fact even its top supply chain executive freely acknowledges. "Supply chain had not been the focus of the company for many years," says Mark Holifield, who joined Home Depot as senior vice president of supply chain in 2006. "Management instead had [its] focus on growing its stores."

Holifield defends the company's emphasis on expansion as right for the time, which is hard to argue with given the retailer's history of double- and even triple-digit annual growth. But by the time he arrived at Big Orange, times—and market conditions—had changed. Home Depot was confronting several challenges that were about to thrust the supply chain into the spotlight and put Holifield at the center of the action.

One was the downturn in the housing sector. As construction and credit began to dry up, Home Depot moved swiftly to cut expenses by streamlining its operations. As Chairman and CEO Frank Blake puts it, "A downturn is a terrible thing to waste."

Another was the realization that the retailer could no longer afford to ignore the logistics side of the business. After nearly three decades of operation, Home Depot had little in the way of a formal distribution network. Vendors and suppliers shipped merchandise directly to the retailer's cavernous warehouse stores, which served as their own distribution centers. At an average of more than 100,000 square feet, the facilities were easily able to accommodate vast inventories of building materials and supplies.

But as the business evolved, that model began to fall apart. Over the years, the retailer, which had saturated the major metropolitan markets, had turned its sights on secondary markets, where it had begun building smaller stores that were more in keeping with the markets they served. But the smaller stores lacked the space to house vast inventories, making them particularly vulnerable to stock-outs and other forecasting errors. Eventually, customers began to notice that items weren't always available when they came looking for them. And that was something Home Depot was unwilling to tolerate. "In-stock is a key issue with any retailer," Holifield says.

Old versus new
Although it was clear they were looking at the supply chain equivalent of a total rehab, Holifield and his team were undeterred. After conducting a distribution network study, they came up with a strategy for rebuilding Home Depot's distribution process and reining in costs by centralizing operations. That would be a big change for Home Depot, which had traditionally left many key decisions to the individual stores. Take ordering, for example. When Holifield came on board in 2006, about 70 percent of items were ordered by store managers; only 30 percent were ordered centrally.

The retailer's transportation model was equally store-centric. At the time of Holifield's arrival, about 80 percent of products were shipped directly from vendors to stores. The remaining 20 percent moved through a variety of distribution channels, including company-owned lumber handling facilities, import warehouses, and centers known as "carton DCs" that were designed to handle bulky items. In addition, a small percentage of orders moved through Home Depot-operated LTL consolidation points, known as transit centers.

That will all change under the new strategy. While in the past, only 20 percent of goods moved through company-run DCs, the new plan calls for half of the goods sold by the company (by value) to move through Home Depot facilities.

At the core of the new strategy is construction of 24 rapid deployment centers (RDCs). The RDCs, which will be strategically located throughout the country, will each serve approximately 100 stores. These will be flow-through distribution facilities engineered for the swift cross-docking of large volumes of merchandise, so very little will be stored in them. Most products will ship within 24 hours of arrival, according to Holifield.

The RDCs will receive freight in pallet loads that can be broken down for case-level shipments, but they will also have the flexibility to accommodate limited split-case picking. Some— but not all—of the facilities will be automated. The first automated facility, which features print-and-apply systems as well as a sliding shoe sorter, opened in April in Valdosta, Ga. Right now, eight RDCs are operational. All 24 are expected to be up and running by the end of 2010. As the facilities come on line, responsibility for ordering is being transferred from the stores to the RDCs. The plan calls for 75 percent of items to be centrally ordered through these centers.

Items not suitable for cross-dockingat the RDCs will continue to move through other channels. These include lumber, which will continue to flow through the lumber DCs; imports; and bulky domestic products like lawn tractors. About 20 percent of items will still ship directly from vendors to stores. These include products supplied by regional vendors and items like trees and other live plants that require specialized handling.

With the RDCs in place, the transit facilities will no longer be needed. They will close as the RDCs serving their areas come on line, Holifield says.

The ripple effect
Although only a third of the RDCs are up and running at this point, Home Depot is already seeing some benefits. One is increased flexibility. With products now flowing through the centers, decisions on which products to ship to which stores can be postponed until the last minute. As a result, the company is doing a better job of store replenishment, according to Holifield. In addition, forecasting errors have dropped significantly. "It is far easier to be right with forecasting for 100 stores, than [for] one store as it was before," he says.

Out-of-stocks have been reduced by half, and customers find product available 98.8 percent of the time, says Holifield. And because replenishment functions have migrated closer to stores, overall inventory has also been reduced by $1 billion on a year-over-year basis, he adds. Holifield expects to see further inventory benefits as more RDCs come on line. It's not just Home Depot that's profiting from the new initiative. The benefits are filtering down to its vendors as well.

"It's huge for our suppliers," says Holifield. For example, the move to centralized ordering means suppliers now have just one order to process instead of a hundred POs from individual stores, he says. In addition, suppliers can now ship their products in truckload quantities to the RDCs, which is much cheaper than sending LTL shipments to individual stores. The combined savings have enabled Home Depot to negotiate better prices with its vendors, which further reduces overall costs, Holifield says.

As one of the world's biggest users of transportation services, Home Depot has also been able to negotiate better deals on outbound transportation, Holifield says. The retailer is also doing a better job of carrier selection and controlling its overall transportation spend, he adds.

Although all of these changes have helped streamline its supply chain operations, Holifield emphasizes that the overarching goal is to make Home Depot a better place to shop. "What the whole network is about is providing on-time and accurate service to our stores so that they can focus on the customers," he says.

help wanted
Housing and construction may be slumping, but Home Depot is pressing ahead with plans to open 24 new fast-flow rapid deployment centers (RDCs) around the country. Eight centers are now open and more are under construction. Still, Mark Holifield, the company's senior vice president of supply chain, isn't ready to relax. Nothing can be accomplished, he says, until he has hired the right people to staff the facilities.

Holifield is currently looking for capable people to help manage the new RDCs. Check out this site if you'd like to make Home Depot your new home away from home.

Apologize for the misspellings. I am only a lowly truck driver so I know little of what is going on in the world. Ise can't be responsible if the spell chic thing misleeds mee.

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

These places are known as distribution centers. These places I said have been around for a long time. Yes we do ship directly from vendors to a staore often when that store can handle larger quantities. Such as often we deliver whole truck loads of water to a store. I just delivered straight from mulch facility a truck load of soil and mulc. Sam's gets a lot of straight to store freight also because they can handle a whole truck load of a product. The reason I mention water is because the past month is the time for a lot of water shipments.

What do you do then when you have needs such as a hammer? We will deliver a truck load of hammers to a DC. They then break down the load and palletize them for different stores. Sometimes I will deliver a load of some such to a DC and then grab a trailer load of merchandise for individual stores. The last time I did so out of the Corsicana Dc I delivered to 4 stores in Louisiana. It is according to what kind of freight and how much and such. Since you seem to understand the freight business you are saying nothing new or able to refute what I posted before.

Now Home depot is unique in able to do this because they push a lot of certain products. All day you can watch truck aftr truck getting unloaded of lumber. They also do a fair amount of appliances. During that day they may get 2 trucks of varying merchandise tat would encompass their various departments. So maybe 10 trucks of wood and appliances and 2 trucks of various merchandise. It would be ludicrous to bring a truck load to a DC and then reload a truck and deliver when that truc can go to the store itself.

Now let us get to the retail supermarkets. They have to have trucks come in to bring their merchandise. They can't push a whole truc load of canned products or freezer goods. Home depot has in the last decade become very adept at using the Walmart model to schedule their logistics and transportation needs which is what we are or were talking about. Tbone asked me to name some others and I named a few I am familar with recently. I and most trucking companies know Walmart DC's well. I have been to Publix DC's in Florida so I know them somewhat but they are a rarity to me as I refuse most loads to Florida. I have been to about every major retailer DC's in this country at one time or another so maybe just maybe I know a little bit about the business. I am only a truck driver though and since you know the corporate side maybe you have more info that I don't.

Apologize for the misspellings. I am only a lowly truck driver so I know little of what is going on in the world. Ise can't be responsible if the spell chic thing misleeds mee.

Don't ever apologize for grammar with me

HD calls their DC's RDC or regional Distribution centers. I did business with Sams,Walmart, Home depot, Cosco for many years. I understand how Dc's work and the rules for each.

My only point was HD did not start building RDC's in Earnest until about 2007-2008. Prior to that 80% of their stock went straight to stores. As a private supplier you could pay, private freight consolidators to store and consolidate shipments to HD, but HD operated and expanded nation wide without A DC network.

[TBoneTX 46,273]

Am learning a lot of things here.

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Aldi Foods is opening a distribution center in Rosenberg, TX, apparently to handle more newly built stores.

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Above, I said that we buy all that we can at Aldi. We also hit 99.99 Cents Only really hard.