Walmart is a service and product based company, they break down their planning into three groups services and products, workforce, and lastly time. When it comes to organizing their store and product layout they utilize a product family approach. A product family approach is defined as, " a group of customers, services, or products that have similar demand requirements and common process, and materials requirements." Walmart organizes the store by departments such as grocery, electronics, garden, etc., making it extremely simple for managers to organize the products, and staff employees to each department. The workforce's flexibility to work in multiple departments is an advantage allowing management to classify them as a single aggregate group. Employees are able to transition to departments when need be, as well as every employees availability to be classified as back-up cashier. The Teterboro Walmart changes their sales and operations strategy seasonally to meet demand.
Walmart relies heavily on their information input. They constantly refer back to their previous years numbers and try to do better than they did last year. They also compare current daily, weekly, and monthly sales with other Walmart's in the area such as Saddle Brook, Seacuses, and Garfield. This information is provided to all associates in the daily morning meetings, and posted in the break rooms to motivate associates to help in the efforts of increasing sales.
Scheduling
Walmart implements a chase strategy. They hire and lay off employees as demand fluctuates. Walmart's operations scheduled is broken down to three shifts, morning, afternoon, and overnight. They use a mix of conventional hours (7am-4pm) and flexible scheduling to accommodate their full time and part time personnel. During thing these shifts they have predetermined amount of managers, co-managers, assistant managers, and associates that have to be scheduled to cover the store to ensure good customer service is provided. However, during seasonal peaks they bring in seasonal employees to help with the maintenance and upkeep of different areas in the store. As well they implement vacation Schedules which are dates in which managers and associates cannot request off.
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