Operations Management Assignment: Impact of Project Management & Operational Functions in Business Context

Question

Task: This operations management assignmentconsists of two tasks.

Assignment Task 1:
Read the following Scenario and prepare a report with the guidelines provided.

Scenario:The learner is acting as an internal Operations Management expert for a chosen organization (a fortune 500 organisation delivering products or services). Learner is required to look at existing operations management & quality management processes, procedures & systems within the organization, &, evaluate competitiveness of the organization in achieving key strategic objectives both in the domestic and global contexts. Where required, compare with other best-in-class organizations to further support your responses to the different parts of the report.

Assignment Task - 2:
Project Management using Program evaluation and Review technique (PERT) and Critical path method (CPM) Based on the project scenario given below, answer the following questions

Scenario: Your organisation, ABC construction group has made a winning bid to construct a new manufacturing plant. The client expects the plant to be functional within a year. You are assigned as the Project Manager to ensure that the whole project stays on schedule. The two important conditions as per the client contract are: -

• ABC construction group will incur a penalty if the work is not completed by the deadline of 47 weeks from now.
• ABC construction group will be provided additional incentive if the work is completed within 40 weeks.
The table below describes the activity list for ABC construction group for this project: -

(Source: - Turner, 2016)

For any given activity, its immediate predecessors (as given in the third column of Table) are those activities that must be completed by no later than the starting time of the given activity. (Similarly, the given activity is called an immediate successor of each of its immediate predecessors.) For example, the top entries in this column indicate that:-

• Excavation does not need to wait for any other activities.
• Excavation must be completed before starting to lay the foundation.
• The foundation must be completely laid before starting to put up the rough wall, etc.

When a given activity has more than one immediate predecessor, all must be finished before the activity can begin. In order to schedule the activities, you have consulted with each of the crew supervisors to develop an estimate of how long each activity should take when it is done in the normal way. These estimates are given in the rightmost column of Table. Adding up these times gives a grand total of 79 weeks, which is far beyond the deadline for the project. Fortunately, some of the activities can be done in parallel, which substantially reduces the project completion time.

Given all this information, please develop answers to the following questions: -

1. Develop a project network diagram to visually display the whole project and describe the project network diagram–
2. Schedule the whole project with PERT/CPM. In doing so, you must be able to satisfy these crucial objectives: -

• Total time required to complete the project if no delays occur
• The start and finish of individual activities to meet the project completion deadline
• The start and finish of individual activities if no delays occur
• Critical activities where any delays must be avoided to prevent delaying project completion
• The delay that can be tolerated for other activities, without delaying project completion.

Answer

Assignment Task 1
1. Executive Summary
Thereport on operations management assignmentconveys the introduction, vision, mission, and core values of the organization named Walmart. Well, Walmart is an American multinational corporation involved in operating the chain of hypermarkets, grocery stores, discount departmental stores. It has also included how Walmart has successfully achieved the existence of quality management processes and existing operations management processes within its organizations. It has also briefly explained some of the tools of operational management and how these tools helped the organization to achieve success. The report has also presented the challenges beings faced by the company and the possible recommendations to make it efficient.

2. Introduction of Chosen Organization
Walmart was established by Sam Walton in 1962 at Rogers, Arkansas, that grew in different parts of the country later. At the end of the 1900s and middle of the 2000s, Walmart became capable to make itself into a big scale retailer that grew its commerce across many countries like China, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Rico, and India. At present, Walmart is the biggest company retailing across the U.S. Till October 2021, Walmart was established in 24 different countries with having 10566 stores worldwide. The company runs under different names in different countries like Walmart in the U.S., Flipkart in India. Over 2300000 employees are working under Walmart worldwide.

Fig: Walmart sore
2.1 Walmart’s Mission
• Making the lives of people comfortable- Walmart tries to give their clients the best experience of shopping. They always take attractive prices of the goods from their clients refers that Walmart works for their client satisfaction and its main focus is not to satisfy their personal needs (Tikhonova 2021).
• Liberation in finance- Company reflects to enhance the capacity of saving of its customer. This component of the company is part of the first component. They give their customer to do shopping effectively for their needs. This component indicates that the company wants that its clients should have more experience to buy products from the company.
• Outstrip expectations- They have a great range of products and good customer services shows that Walmart is one of the largest retailers in the world. Walmart tries to provide various options to its client by going the extra mile.

Fig: Walmart mission

2.2 Walmart’s Vision
• Walmart’s vision is to meet the convenience of its client and that is why Walmart is owing to its worldwide reach.
• The company mainly works to tailor its services to make commerce customer-oriented that is the main vision of the company.

Fig: Vision of Walmart

2.3 Walmart’s Values
• Walmart priorities its customer before anything.
• Respect for individual is another core value of Walmart.
• Act with integrity

2.4 Objective of Walmart
The objective of the company is Affordability, Convenience, and customer-oriented. Walmart sees the overall cost in the retail business and because of that, they are capable to attach convenient bills to their goods. Pricing of goods is generally referred to in the affordability concept but this also relates to convenience since affordability needs are advanced and are according to the client so it indicates convenience of customers (Mendly-Zambo et al. 2021). It is capable to meet the preferences and requirements of the customer and this is the main objective and commitment of the company.

3. Success of existing operations & quality management processes
Every company has its management system to achieve its goals and to become a large retailing company. Likewise, Walmart also has a great strategy to achieve their goals and build their company to make success among retailing companies (Tan et al. 2018). Present processes of operation management and quality management of Walmart to achieve the company’s goal has mentioned below. Many factors helped Walmart to make itself a retail giant, some of them are:

• Chain management system- Walmart has great management for the supply chain. There are more than a thousand suppliers of commerce in the whole world and the majority of the suppliers are from abroad. Walmart has a capable team for supply chain management t get products of good quality made from foreign countries at low prices that it sells. When those products from abroad arrive in the U.S. then they are sent to different distribution stores (Smith and Crawford 2019). Then from distribution centres, the goods are taken to Walmart stores and from these stores, the customer buys their goods. Walmart has good inventory management and because of that, they are capable to buy products from foreign countries at a low price, and then they offer low prices of products to their customers. Walmart has a better process to select the locations of its stores and better demand planning, because of that they always have products to meet the needs of customers timely. Walmart retains its customers because customers' needs are always fulfilled and that makes its customer come back for shopping again.

Fig: Supply Chain Management System in Walmart
• Fewer links- During 1980, Walmart decided to decrease the links involved in the supply chain to control the supply management of the company. This step was stated as vendor-managed inventory that transferred the workload of product management to vendors from Walmart. Walmart joined the vendors who were capable of providing products at low prices to compete with its competitors (Pandey et al. 2021). Walmart made good relations with these vendors and also provide them discounts and they also buy the product from these vendors for the long term that gives security to the vendor and a buying agreement is made in exchange for the goods at low price. Walmart focuses on the communication and network of its vendors so that they can improve their processes and operations. This made Walmart gain so much success.
• Inventory tactics- The inventory tactics of Walmart are one of the main processes of quality management and operation management. The cross-docking theory was used to design Walmart that makes them capable to restore inventory expertly. This concept involves direct transport from trailers or trucks without exceptional storage. Walmart is capable to keep its transportation cost low, decreasing the time of transportation, and removing inefficiencies. It nearly takes a day for trucks to cross-dock loaded by goods. Drivers drive these trucks continuously to the centres of Walmart and then unload the goods in its stores. Here goods are repackaged and assigned without placing in the inventory of the company. By using this concept, Walmart enables to reduce the extra cost for storage, and then the cost saved is given to customers as pricing in products to compete with its competitor that is almost impossible for Walmart’s competitor to beat Walmart.

• Technology- Technology assist Walmart to enhance its management chain of supply faster to know the inventory and stocking of products at shelves in time to decrease shortage. Technology plays an important role for Walmart to enhance its commerce by decreasing expenditure and saving capital. Walmart has the biggest infrastructure of information technology among all the private companies worldwide. Technology assists to know the demand of clients understanding and track levels of inventory, making highly effective transportation routes, and management of the relationship with customers. Walmart was the first company to use a bar code system for a product that made the commerce to know the information of store to analyse it (Saurabh and Dey 2021). At present Walmart applies a system known as radio frequency identification tags. This system assists a code of numbers that are scanned to identify pallets of commerce with the supply chain. Currently, Walmart is applying another technology named smart tags that enables the workers to quickly know about the products that are to be replaced that make the employees continually fill the storage and shelves to reduce the shortage of products. The information on the shelves is sent to a computer network to know and bring the products sooner before the shelve goes empty. This technology plays a key role to keep the storage of products for customers. Another technology is used by Walmart is self-check counters that assist the customers to move faster in line for checking. This enables the clients not to wait in line for the cashier to scan their products.

3.2 challenges and their Solution
By identifying the challenges, Walmart can develop and enhance the strategies that they are working on. The strategy of operation management has provided the commerce to tackle competition challenges. That involves fewer costs of products, an enhanced variety of products, and good competitive pricing of items for its customers (Neebe 2020). This management system made Walmart become the leading retail company in competition worldwide. Walmart is introducing many technologies to tackle the challenges like out of stock of products in storage. So, RFID technology was introduced to analyse the availability of products.

Few challenges and their solution are:
Affordability: The organization is lagging behind because of the factor affordability and this one of the challenges of Walmart. Walmart work on inventory tactics and less linking that helps the company to save billions and then that capital is used to give a discount to clients and make their item affordable

Monitoring: Walmart is facing difficulties in monitoring its operational activities. Therefore, to cope with this situation, Walmart has made great strategies to monitor the needs of consumers to make sure the services they received.

Competition: Competition is one of the things that is becoming more challenging day by day for every business organization. Walmart is also facing challenges in this competitive environment. There are so many organizations in the whole globe who is competent of doing competition with Walmart and hence to survive in the environment Walmart works on pricing their product at low prices to compete with other retail companies. Linking: Linking is the other challenge being faced by the company Walmart currently. Walmart involves less linking of the product chain from its manufacturing to consumption.

4. Tools and Techniques
Pareto Principle: Vilfredo Pareto made the 80/20 principle in 1906 that stated for many works, 80% of the result or output is given from 20% of the causes, time, or input. That shows the difference in the relationship between inlet and result. Pareto principle is a simple step management tool that assists in knowing the main cause of an issue by going through data. This data involves the process: distinguishing the data, classifying the data by density of event, and then by making a bar graph (Kaplan 2021). When the bar chart is graphed, one can know the most frequent issue to solve and also know the main reason for the problem.

Fishbone concept: The fishbone concept is in form of the skeleton of fish that can be assisted as a simple issue-solving tool. This concept is also known as the Ishikawa concept. This concept shows a diagram that simplifies the problem as the head of fish and all the possible causes of the problem is followed by the spine of the fish. After knowing the problem, one can use sub tools to solve the problem (Niu 2020). These factors in Walmart may include suppliers, technology, supply chain management, and inventory tactics.

Fig: Supply Chain Management in Walmart

4.2 Other Management Tools
Lean manufacturing: Quality control is done with the assist of the Lean manufacturing tool. It is a method that works on a system by removing waste and consistent improvement. This tool was developed by the production system of Toyota. This method assists to decrease the waste and operations that are streamlined within Walmart. The term ’lean’ confers the process of waste management within a company that doesn’t include any real cost to the client. This tool is used by Walmart to increase profitability and supply products of higher quality to consumers. This offers Walmart an advantage in the competition with other retail companies (Muñoz et al. 2021). There are mainly seven types of waste in Walmart that include: Transportation of goods, Motion of employees, Defects in items, Extra production, Extra processing of products, Wait by people, and an inventory of items. And to reduce the above wastage of resources and expenditure, Walmart uses lean manufacturing tools to eliminate them. Lean manufacturing works on five principles to achieve its goal. They are: Specify price of products, Know the value stream, pulling customers that make customers buy more and more, End with perfection and flowing of value making steps.
Six sigma: It is a tool that shows defects in every million opportunities. This tool was founded by Bill Smith who was an American engineer in 1986 when he was working at Motorola. The output of a process of manufacturing can be implemented by a sigma ranking that shows the percentage of defect-free items. The implementation of six sigma in Walmart allowed the commerce to enhance developing and monitoring the activities of the organization to decrease waste of resources while improving client satisfaction. The work of six sigma in Walmart consistent process enhancing and make stable output. This tool provides processes to enhance the quality of the product, efficiencies, and increase output profit. The six-sigma method is used to identify a statistical enhancing method that can deduct the identified issues, this is a very innovative method of management and also this method is spreading globally. Six sigma also assists in enhancing customer satisfaction, making customers come back again, enhancing commerce performance, transporting, and packing to decrease rejection of products and lastly it assists to decrease the risk in the business of Walmart. A few features of the Six Sigma tool are as follow:
Teamwork: Six sigma introduction in an organization needs efforts by a team to enhance the quality of items to sell. Based on methodology: Six sigma follows a system of management that assists to enhance process quality. Customer-oriented: Six sigma works on the needs of the customer. Its first preference is to work according to customers and then it looks for profit and these preferences are the same as the main objective and preference of Walmart.

Approaches based on technology: Six sigma implements on basis of techniques of statistical tools, DMAIC technique based on technology that includes: define issue or opportunities, measuring baseline performance, analysing the cause of an issue, improving needed performance, and controlling performance to make sure profit (Matloob 2019).

Control in statistical quality: Six sigma has come from Greek work Sigma that is termed for quality derivation in math of statistics. Quality derivation implements variance that is an important tool to know nonconformance.

Implementation of Six sigma in Walmart help in:

• Enhancing the resulting quality of the process.
• Knowing and eliminating the reason for defects of the product.
• Decreasing cycle time of processes.
• Decreasing input expenditure
• Improving satisfaction of consumers of products from Walmart.
• Increasing the output profit of the retail company.
• Knowing works requiring improvement.
• Introduce initiatives for improvement.

Fig: Lean and Six Sigma in Supply Chain of Walmart

5. Role of Information Management System

5.1 MIS and ICT Application’s role in Walmart’s Operation
The innovative approaches are taken by the organization Walmart in the field of software, hardware, services, and the product have hep it so much to be world-renowned in its organizational model. Walmart has maximized its revenue with its leadership model and multifunctional organizational structure to a great extent. The CEO of the company AAAA has put so much effort to bring the innovative success of IT, electronics, online services, and many more filed. The structure involves an expert team at each level who work together in the time of bringing new product (Islam 2019). High-level managers are called upon while making the decision. This makes the leader responsible for the function and provides maximum satisfaction to the customer. Walmart can get access to this only when if the organization has efficient and effective MIS (Management Information System). MIS is very much beneficial to make decisions so that goals can be achieved. It helps to run the business process smoothly, to collaborate the necessary information related to the operation. Hence, Walmart can keep on with the operations and projects with the help of a management information system and it can coordinate with multiple functions across each of the levels (Smith 2019). It is quite beneficial and significant for any business organization to have such kind of system within its organization that can innovate and develop better quality products and services which will help to bring maximum satisfaction to the customers and can be a powerful competitor in this competitive environment.

5.2 Role of ICT application
In the organizational structure of Walmart, the CEO is responsible to take the report of all departments, and hence, they incorporate an ESS (Executive Support System) made of external and internal data recorded through Decision Support System (DSS) and management information system. Such a system provides important data and graphs needed to make a decision at different levels and also shows how much progress is being made in each department of the organization (Hall et al. 2020). Walmart is the company that develops, designs, and creates its personal ERP system, technological stack, hardware, application, and operating system.

ICT management has the ability to:

• Increase the operational efficiency of Walmart.
• Can help the organization to compete with others.
• Reduce the operating cost and this will lead to profit maximization.
• Can maximize customer satisfaction.

In the following ways operational strategies involving the use of ICT applications help in gaining a competitive advantage in Walmart: Quality Improvement- Quality of the service and product improves through ICT used in system software and the improvement leads to proper understanding, increases revenue, guess product failure, and gains customer retention. All these things are very much important in gaining a competitive advantage. Automation- It automates so many numbers of operational processes and hence reduces the operating cost which helps Walmart to maximize its profit.

Differentiation- it helps in making the product different from other competitors, for example, it designs its personal computer in very different ways from others and also keeps in mind to make the product easy to understand and use (Fawcett et al. 2020).

Education and Training- Training is provided by Walmart to all the staff so that they can know how to use the system effectively.

ICT platform- Walmart receives feedback from customers through ICT platforms and on the basis of which it responds quickly by improving its product and quality of service and gaining more customers.

6. Role of AI in Business Operations Enhancement
6.1 How business operations can be enhanced by the implementation of AI (Artificial Intelligence)
In this technological era, many businesses are shifting from manual work to leveraging the technologies of modern days. These technologies are not only provided benefits to the business enterprises but customers are also taking advantage of them. Walmart is also included in these businesses and it is very famous and well known for utilizing the advancements of these modern day's technologies.

The technology of the decade is the other name of Artificial Intelligence and the reason behind this is it has almost changed the IT industry. Walmart is one of those companies that can put AI in order to make sure that they can deliver the products to customers according to their needs and interest. AI can enhance the overall performance of the business in many ways. If AI is implemented in the organization, a customer can go for the next product if it is not available at that particular time. While choosing the other product, they will be asked whether to reject or approve the substituted product. The decision taken by the customer will be sent to the learning algorithm and it will eventually improve the accuracy of the upcoming recommendation (Chen et al. 2021). By deploying AI in Walmart, the organization can gain benefits in the following ways.

• It can save money and time by optimizing and automating routine tasks and processes.
• It can make business decisions faster that are based on cognitive technologies by making the collection of industry and customer data.
• Customer preference can be predicted easier and quicker.
• It can increase the revenue of the organization by maximizing and identifying sales opportunities.
• Accessibility features can be improved for the customers using machine learning. It can be proved very beneficial for disabled people.
• The behaviour of the customers can be learned and it can also help the organization to make recommendations related to the app. The feedback of customers can be very much helpful for Walmart and it can operate its operation on the basis of customer feedback.

Fig: Walmart to adopt machine learning in retail (Kaplan 2021)

Fig: AI advantage to Walmart (Niu 2020)

6.2 Challenges that may be faced while the implementation of AI
AI is delivering its advantages to many enterprises but the technology still holds some limitations. Following are some of the challenges that the organization Walmart can be faced while the implementation of Artificial Intelligence in its organization:

Data- It will be difficult to manage and determine appropriate data set and big data quality. Trust- Difficult to develop approach or framework for the storage of data in a safe manner as per the human reviews of artificial intelligence actions and data.
Alignment lacking- lack of understanding and know-how of machine learning among the business manager in its processes and technologies will definitely limit the process of AI implementation. Acquisition of vendor- To find the perfect and suitable AI company is not possible and it is a time taking activity. Walmart will have to overcome the following mentioned challenges in order to incorporate the features of artificial intelligence:

Time- So much time and computer power is taken by the artificial intelligence software to train and produce on a big scale. Walmart will have to give time to make their AI understand how to think and respond quickly to compete with the competitors.
Accuracy- There are so many app developers who do not give accurate and complete information about the user interface and it result is many users do not get access to the device or app developed by the developer.
A machine, not human- humans are very good at remembering and memorizing things but AI can’t do the same as a human. There is always the need for one human expert to provide support and advice and to create a team that will run business operations smoothly (Caraway 2018).

Hence, Walmart is a company that is counted under the most important technology companies in the whole globe. Yet there are so many limitations due to which it is lagging behind other companies. But, using these tools, Walmart can dominate other enterprises and can expand its operations to a great extent.

Fig: Challenges that may be faced by Walmart in the process of implementing AI (Matloob2019)

7. Conclusion & Recommendations
In the whole globe, Walmart is treated as the most significant and technological company. But the company always keeps itself busy in finding new and innovative ways to make its operations better. Going through the whole report, it can be concluded that Walmart is facing challenges or trying to find ways to survive the competition positively. Competition with other E-commerce companies is the current challenges that is being faced by Walmart company. To cope with the challenges and to survive in this competitive environment, there are lots of recommendations has mentioned. The organization should adopt the approaches of attracting more and more customers and by providing best facilities to customer, it can grow its number of product buyers in the whole globe. It is trying to make more and more customers throughout the globe. Now a days, technologies is being used by all the industries to grow its business in the global level. Technologies are helpful in lowering the cost of product, making the productivity higher, in saving the time of product production. Using all these technological tools, Walmart can dominate its competitors and can expand itself to a large area, also it can produce a better quality product and can maximize the satisfaction of the customer. Following are some of the recommendations to Walmart applying which it can boost itself into the emerging market (Barber 2018).

Recommendation for Walmart:
• Walmart is recommended to enhance its product's functions, performance, and features to make the business operations and life easier.
• Machine learning and artificial intelligence should be introduced in the organization to improve the process of decision-making.
• It is advised to develop intellectual services and products.
• Always pay attention to design and developing the product in better ways.
• New features should be implemented so that price of the product can be reduced that eventually attract more and more customers.
• Walmart should expand its business geographically especially in the technology-driven nations so that the product can be produced at less cost that will automatically increase its profit.
• Walmart should go with the approach of customer-centric. There are so many buyers who decide to buy the product by seeing others' reviews and ratings and hence, the feedback of customers should be taken into considerations and should work upon them.
• It should provide the best customer service in comparison with other organizations. This can be done in several ways like it can reduce the product cancel rate, it can maintain the time of shipping, electronic notice can be given to the customers after confirmation of shipment is made by them, it should answer the customers call without delay and should listen and answer to their problem politely.
• Walmart should do SWOT analysis time to time inside its organization to get the knowledge of all the strengths and opportunities it can use and to be prepared for all the coming threats and weaknesses. Hence, the above-mentioned recommendations can enhance operational activities of Walmart and can help the organization to cope with the challenges facing.

8. Assignment Task - 2
8.1 Project Network Diagram

Figure: Project Network Diagram
(Source: created by author using draw.io)

The network diagram is a graphical representation of the flow of activities based on dependencies or linked activities. Immediate predecessors are the activities those need to be completed before starting the activity linked with the predecessors. Same concept is used for demonstrating the activities as the square bokes, arrows represent the flow of the activity (pointing side will only start after completion of previous activity), and the duration taken by each activity is shown in the arrows (Ba'Its, Puspita and Bay 2020). There is only one starting point of the project and two ending points.

8.2 Scheduling project with CPM
Following critical path of the project can be generated in red for demonstrating the critical path:

Figure: Critical Path Management
(Source: created by author using MS project)

8.3 Total Time Required to Complete the Project if no Delays Occur
Performing PERT analysis:

Figure:
PERT analysis
(Source: created by author using draw.io)

If no delay occurs, the project will be delivered in 44 weeks. Based on the pert analysis performed in the above section, it can be observed there are two critical paths: A, B, C, D, G, H, M and A, B, C, E, F, J, L, and N. Since, the second path has more activities and also taking more time, this is the that should be considered by project manager for further deliveries of project (Bodunwa and Makinde 2020).

8.4 The Start and Finish of Individual Activities

8.5 The Start and Finish of Individual Activities if no Delays Occur
If no delay occurs, then the start and finish will be same as planned:

8.6 Critical Activities

Since, the considered critical path for the project is A, B, C, E, F, J, L, N with 44 weeks of duration. Total float value or variance for another critical path can be made 4 weeks despite of 0 weeks (Cynthia 2020). That path can be considered and 4 weeks or additional time can be taken by those activities, even then, the project will be completed in 44 weeks.

Thus, activities A, B, C, E, F, J, L, and N must not be delayed.
8.7 The Delay that can be Tolerated

9. References
Ba'Its, H.A., Puspita, I.A. and Bay, A.F., 2020. Combination of program evaluation and review technique (PERT) and critical path method (CPM) for project schedule development. International Journal of Integrated Engineering, 12(3), pp.68-75.

Barber, D.A., 2018. Rule of Logistics: Walmart and the Architecture of Fullfillment by Jesse LeCavalier. Technology and Culture, 59(4), pp.995-997.
Bodunwa, O.K. and Makinde, J.O., 2020. Application of Critical Path Method (CPM) and Project Evaluation Review Techniques (PERT) in Project Planning and Scheduling. J. Math. Stat. Sci, 6, pp.1-8.
Caraway, B., 2018. Collective action frames and the developing role of discursive practice in worker organisation: the case of OUR Walmart. Work organisation, labour and globalisation, 12(1), pp.7-24.
Chen, Y., Mehrotra, P., Samala, N.K.S., Ahmadi, K., Jivane, V., Pang, L., Shrivastav, M., Lyman, N. and Pleiman, S., 2021. A Multiobjective Optimization for Clearance in Walmart Brick-and-Mortar Stores. INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics, 51(1), pp.76-89.
Cynthia, O.U., 2020. Implementation of Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) and Critical Path Method (CPM): A Comparative Study. Int J Ind Operations Res, 3(004). Fawcett, S.E., Fawcett, A.M. and Brockhaus, S., 2020. Getting Over the Bar: A Training Guide for Winning Customer Gold. Supply Chain Management Review, pp.32-41. Hall, S.C., Hayes, S.K. and Swinney, L., 2020. Walmart Impact on the Finance and Insurance Industry. Mountain Plains Journal of Business and Technology, 21(2), p.5.

Islam, A.T., 2019. End of the day, who is benefited by Lean Manufacturing A dilemma of communication and pricing in buyer-supplier relationship. Manufacturing Letters, 21, pp.17-19. Kaplan, A., 2021. Artificial Intelligence, Marketing, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Criteria, Concerns, Cases. In Handbook of Research on Applied AI for International Business and Marketing Applications (pp. 1-13). IGI Global.

Matloob, A., 2019. Study on Success and Failure Depending on Organizational Behaviour. Nolegein-Journal of Organizational Behavior and Management, pp.27-30.
Mendly-Zambo, Z., Raphael, D. and Taman, A., 2021. Take the money and run: how food banks became complicit with Walmart Canada’s hunger producing employment practices. Operations management assignmentCritical Public Health, pp.1-12.
Muñoz, C.B., Kenny, B. and Stecher, A., 2021. Introduction. Situating Walmart in a Global Context: Workplace Cultures, Labor Organizing, and Supply Chains. In Walmart in the Global South (pp. 1-28). University of Texas Press. Neebe, K., 2020. Sustainability at Walmart: Success over the Long Haul. Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, 32(2), pp.64-71.
Niu, Y., 2020, October. Walmart Sales Forecasting using XGBoost algorithm and Feature engineering. In 2020 International Conference on Big Data & Artificial Intelligence & Software Engineering (ICBASE) (pp. 458-461). IEEE. Pandey, R., Dillip, D., Jayant, J., Vashishth, K., Nikhil, N., Qi, T.J., Kee, D.M.H., Mei, T.C., Xin, R.Y.K. and Qhi, L.Y., 2021. Factors Influencing Organization Success: A Case Study of Walmart. International journal of Tourism and hospitality in Asia Pasific (IJTHAP), 4(2), pp.112-123.
Saurabh, S. and Dey, K., 2021. Blockchain technology adoption, architecture, and sustainable agri-food supply chains. Journal of Cleaner Production, 284, p.124731.
Smith, J., 2019. Big Box Supermarkets (WalmartSupercenters). Increasing Access to Food: A Comprehensive Report on Food Supply Options, p.5.

Smith, N.C. and Crawford, R.J., 2019. Walmart: love, earth (A). In Managing sustainable business (pp. 243-267). Springer, Dordrecht. Tan, B., Yan, J., Chen, S. and Liu, X., 2018, December. The impact of blockchain on food supply chain: The case of walmart. In International Conference on Smart Blockchain (pp. 167-177). Springer, Cham. Tikhonova, M., 2021. Financial Analysis of Walmart and Costco in 2017-2018. SCIENTISTs, p.100.