� PAGE �1�
Operation Management
The process strategy that is applied at Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart, a premier Grocery store and the largest chain store in the USA has been constantly striving to improve its product design. In the design of a consumer product not only is the manufactured cost of interest, but also the quality of the product delivered and how well the product meets customer expectations is studied.
Wal-Mart has there own brand name (Sams later named Great Value), a study on there private label soft drink showed new packaging was needed to stay competitive, while not knocking out the brand names as Wal-Mart sells those products also (Fracenda 2007).
Wal-Mart has been able to sustain this competitive advantage by staying ahead of others in designing and delivering products in new fashion, Wal-Mart product can be distinguished just by design and packaging. Products sold by Wal-Mart have measurable and non measurable attributes, both have to consider while preparing a design plan for its products.
A protest in Utah against Wal-Mart
English: Exterior of a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Mad...
English: Walmart Home Office, the headquarters of ...Cost is a very important attribute of product design. A key decision making process is the constitution of cost. Wal-Mart works with several hundred suppliers and product testing facilities to measure more than 5,250 products up against leading national brands, to ensure Great Value quality is equal to or better (Canning 2009). Having scored on this advantage Wal-Mart needs to design its product and decide on the most important factor of cost. Many of the decisions regarding cost and quality are made in the preliminary design stage where the design engineers and the cost engineers sit together to make a workable proposition keeping the corporate strategy in mind. With these two put together deliver a product that can be afforded by the maximum number of people. Since the consumer market is a fast changing...