One day at a Wal-Mart DC

Its been close to two months and I am refreshing my knowledge of Retail domain. I have never got chance to work so closely in Retail domain before my current assignment for Wal-Mart Stores. Having a know how of Retail domain is not sufficient to understand all Wal-Mart retail practices, because Wal-Mart follows its own standards. Its so huge that its a world in its own with its own standards and practices. My retail funda right now require a real good uplift to come to the expectation. A feel good breeze came in this direction today when Wal-Mart guys organised a DC visit for us. DC as in Distribution Center which basically is the routing channel for all the goods to various stores of Wal-Mart all over the world. DCs recieve goods from vendors and they ship out replenishment stocks to the stores so the stores are well stocked for the customers like use to go and purchase.

Yesterday evening we recieved a mail from our manager that we will be going to a US Groceries DC nearby at Bartlesville, OK. Activity started right there at our area for the car pooling things and were ready with 6 cars and 20 people. We assembled today morning at 7 AM in the parking lot of a nearby restaurant. Two Wal-Mart guys were going to be escorts cum guides for us. They were there with directions flyers for the DC which is well close to 3 hrs drive from Bentonville. So we started from there at 7:30 AM, we four of us in one car. Took Route 412 W towards Tulsa, OK. From there we had to head north for Bartlesville. It was a quite beautiful drive through the hill with mix or city and express way roads. Route 412 W was quite impressive to me. We started with 412 as a city road with traffic lights and all with 45-55 as speed limit, as soon as we crossed city limits it was 65 MPH, the best was when we entered Oklahama and the same 412 became Cherokee Turnpike with speed limit of 75 mph. Well I have driven in US a lot in past one year, only because of driving as my passion, this was the first road which has official speed limit of 70+. Cherokee Turnpike converted into normal highway after some time but with speed limit still 70 mph, still higher than any highway limit in NJ or NY. We reached Tulsa at around 9:30 and by 10 we were at the Wal-Mart Distribution Center of Bartlesville which actually comes under Ocheleta town limits.

Here we go, we had our team with two very informative guides, we had our initial assembly and we started for the DC tour in two groups. Our group headed for the Dry Groceries section understanding the way it operates at DC level. I was looking at way high item slots and forklifts, which are known as RRs here, moving from here and there operated by DC people. Moving goods from one place to other. It was interesing to actually look the Prime Slots and reserve slot for any single Item. Various aisle and levels in different warehouse areas. Warehouse areas are broadly divided on the basis of conditon required for goods. Like Dry Groceries need room temperature but Produce needs colder areas with temperature range from 0 degree to -40 degree F. Mark, our guide for today was explaining things and answering to our questions helping us understand and gather whatever we can from this visit. We covered Reclaim section and saw the DC people do the order filling for very fast moving items. Interestingly the aisle of fast moving items are called super highyway. Essentially because of high traffic of RRs there.

Then we moved to the shipping area where pallets created for various stores were automatically wrapped and stacked into the Trailers. RRs honking, moving here and there carrying item pallets or stacking them somewhere, we didnt knew when it was 12 Noon and we realised that we are really hungry. We went back assembled again with the other group and headed to a nearby restaurant called Ella's. Nice food and real nice lemonade.

Second half was for Produce including Dry Produce like Banana, fruits to wet produce and Meats. We are all decked up as now we were about to enter cold zones. Dry Produce area was well as cold as temperature outside today. And it was quite cold, really. We learnt the importance or what we can say the attention required for Banana. We were joined by the DC's QC head Keith. He explained the process - they recieve Bananas in stage 1 condition from Guetamala, when they are green in clor and hard and actually smell also like cucumber. They put them in a chamber and raise the temperature, release ethylene gas for riping them to stage 3 when they are yellow in color and softer. Thats the ideal stage for delivery of Banana to store. All this process of ripening of Banana to right stage before delivering is done by application of various degrees of temperature and ethylene gas during the time span of 5 days. Keith was telling that Banana is the highest selling, fastest moving items of all time for Wal-Mart. He gave an analogy that if one day some top shot moves into a Wal-Mart store and found no Banana, its like the world has come to and end. And maintaning Banana is the most cumbersome process which is actually not controalable to the full extent. It invlves extensive manual effort to turn Bananas into correct stage so that when they reach homes of the cumsumer they are perfect in looks and taste. One deviation can result in bad banana in the morning breakfast.

Crossing the Dry Produce section we entered Wet Produce area. Any leafy item is actually termed as Wet Produce. They require colder storage area and close to 95% of humidity. Next was Meat produce section, definitely colder and chilly. The best thing there was the stacking of goods based on there characteristics like Poultry should be at the lowes level in the pallet. It should not be put on top of any other meat item. And seafood shoud always be at top level etc. The other thing was the mechanisation of Replenishmet moves. There were huge cranes installed to moves Reserves stocks to the primary slots. Awesome. Starting from the recieving to the Prime slots movement of items/Pallets, everything is mechanized. In between we saw people moving with RRs for inspection and orderfilling, shipping etc. The last stop was freeze section for frozen items. We only went to -20 degree F area. The group consent was to skip the -40 degree F area. All were already numb and were barely able to sleep. We head back for smokesticks and coffee. Had a quick assembly again and called the day off. Thanks to Mark and Donald for this trip.

Started back for Bentonville with an amazing educative day at Wal-Mart DC. Day by day a simple fact in getting rock printed in our minds that Its takes a lot to be largest and number one retailer in the world.