An Inward Inventory

http://www.davidjeremiah.org/site/magazine/article.aspx?article_id=157

by Dr. David Jeremiah

Here is an excerpt from an article from Turning Points magazine.  Please click on the link above for the full article.

If we could play a video of our waking hours over a single day, how happy would we be with our personal inventory management?

A century ago, rural America shopped at crossroads grocery stores or small-town general stores. The shelves of those stores were not always full; you couldn’t depend on what you needed being in stock. Inventory was managed with paper and pencil. Orders to suppliers might be called in by telephone or given in person to a traveling sales representative who stopped by periodically.

And then a man named Sam Walton came along. He had some retail store experience working for J.C. Penney, but opened his own retail store in Bentonville, Arkansas, in 1950. Walton’s Five and Dime is the store that gave birth to Wal-Mart (now Walmart) in 1962.

Sam Walton revolutionized retailing with one primary innovation: inventory and supply-chain management. He implemented the world’s first retail satellite communication system which connected all his expanding stores by voice and video. His stores were the first to make company-wide use of Universal Product Codes on products.