How Covid-19 Affected the Supply Chain Operations of Walmart

Walmart Response to COVID-19
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Walmart Response to COVID-19
Background of Walmart
According to the recent reports of the International Monetary Funds, the year 2020 witnessed an international growth of 4.9 percent, which reflects a decline of 1.9 percent. This decline resulted from massive lockdowns by several countries (Felix et al., 2020). Similar to other industries, the operations of the retail sector in the United States were adversely affected due to the lockdown measures. Along these lines, Walmart, one of the leading retail stores across the globe, was forced to shut many of its physical stores and shift its operations to online retailing. This assignment aims to analyze how COVID-19 affected the supply chain operations of Walmart. Besides, it discusses how Walmart responded to the impact and its financial costs due to the pandemic. Walmart is one of the leading retailers that operates discount stores, departments, hypermarkets, supermarkets, and grocery stores in different countries worldwide (Nilufer, 2020). It offers a wide variety of product lines, including apparel, office and entertainment, technology, health and wellness, grocery, and consumables. In addition, the retail organization offers various financial services such as check cashing, money transfers, wire transfers, prepaid cards, and gift cards. The figure below presents a synopsis of Walmart.
Figure 1: About Walmart (Nilufer, 2020)
Impact of COVID-19 on Walmart and the Response
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has had a noteworthy impact on Walmart’s supply chain operations. Along these lines, the supply chain starts from upstream to downstream, and even a slight disruption in the supply chain can impact all the elements. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused Walmart to face shortages of the goods required daily due to the disruption in supply chain operation (Felix et al., 2020). Walmart is struggling to offer consumers a complete range of products. During the pandemic crises, the demand for medical and food items has significantly escalated, and the sales of goods including hand sanitizer, face masks, toilet paper, and pasta. To this end, the volume and speed with which the demand increased have had a massive impact on Walmart’s operations. The panic purchasing of the shoppers for explicit products has disseminated shock waves across the whole supply chain (Nilufer, 2020). It is eminent to note here that the issue is not due to one specific point in the supply chain, such as imports, sourcing, or manufacturing; instead, the pandemic has stressed each point in the supply chain due to the ripple effect. According to Nilufer (2020), the present challenges are due to the confluence of the supply chain factors that encompass inventory control, transportation and trucking, equipment, labor, ingredients, materials, cost pressures, and climate-related aspects. The supply chain teams at Walmart have executed several procedures to ascertain the smooth flow of the goods across the supply chain. For instance, they had strived to pull forward inventory and at the same time ascertain that the right freight gets delivered at the right t...