Wal-Mart 1945 was born in America. At the beginning of its establishment, because it is located in a remote town, almost no dealers are willing to deliver the goods, so they can only order from the manufacturers themselves and then contact the trucks for delivery, which is very inefficient. In this case, sam walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, decided to set up his own distribution organization. 1970, Wal-Mart's first distribution center was established in Bentonville, Arkansas, USA. The distribution center supplies 32 shopping centers in four States and handles 40% of the products sold by the company. The operation process of the Wal-Mart distribution center is as follows: the supplier pastes the price tag and UPC barcode of the goods and transports them to the Wal-Mart distribution center; According to the needs of each store, the distribution center screens the goods on the spot, repackages them and transports them from the "distribution area" to the "distribution area". Because Wal-Mart has many stores, each store has different needs. This store may need some kinds of goods, and that store may need other kinds of goods. Wal-Mart's distribution center classifies products into different boxes according to the needs of stores. In this way, employees can get the goods needed by the store they are responsible for on the conveyor belt. So how do they know which box to take when transmitting? There are some signal lights on the conveyor belt, including red, green and yellow. Employees can determine which store to send the box to according to the signal light. In this way, all shops can get the goods they need in their own boxes. In the distribution center, boxes of goods are sent to the laser-guided conveyor belt. During transmission, the laser scans the bar code on the container. When running at full speed, only cartons and wooden cases are flying on the conveyor belt, and red lasers are shining everywhere to send the goods to the right truck. The conveyor belt can handle 0.2 million/200 thousand boxes of goods every day, and the delivery accuracy is over 99%. In the early 1980s, the electronic data exchange system of Wal-Mart distribution center has gradually matured. In the early 1990s, it bought a dedicated satellite to transmit the company's data and information. The distribution center of this data exchange system based on satellite technology effectively connects itself with suppliers and stores. Wal-Mart headquarters and distribution center can always know how much inventory each store has, how much goods are being transported and how much goods are stored in the distribution center. At the same time, we can know how much a product sold last week and last year, and we can predict how much it will sell in the future. Wal-Mart suppliers can also directly know their sales yesterday, today, last week, last month and last year through this system, and arrange production according to this information to ensure the market supply of products and minimize inventory. Because Wal-Mart has adopted this advanced technology, the distribution cost only accounts for 3% of its sales, while the distribution cost of competitors accounts for 5% of its sales. This alone, Wal-Mart can save nearly $800 million in commodity distribution costs every year compared with its competitors. In the late 1980s, it took 30 days for Wal-Mart to place an order and the goods arrived at various stores. Now, due to the adoption of this advanced technology, it only takes 2-3 days, greatly improving the speed and efficiency of logistics. From the design of distribution centers, each distribution center of Wal-Mart is very large, with an average area of about 1 10000 m2, which is equivalent to 23 football fields. A distribution center is responsible for the distribution of multiple shopping malls in a certain area, and the distance from the distribution center to each shopping mall generally does not exceed a big trip to ensure the timeliness of distribution. Distribution centers are generally not located in urban areas, but in suburbs, which is conducive to reducing the cost of land use. Although Wal-Mart's distribution center has a large area, it has only one floor. The reason for this design is mainly to consider the smooth circulation of goods. Through this design, Wal-Mart can let products enter through one door and exit through another. If the products are not on the same floor, there will be many obstacles, such as elevators or other objects, and the products will not circulate smoothly. At one end of the Wal-Mart Distribution Center, there is a loading platform for 30 trucks to load at the same time, and at the other end, there is a unloading platform for 135 trucks to park at the same time. Each distribution center has 600 ~ 800 employees working 24 hours a day; Every day, 160 trucks come to unload, and 150 trucks load and leave. In Wal-Mart's distribution center, most goods will not stay for more than 48 hours, but some goods also have a certain inventory, including cosmetics, soft drinks, diapers and other daily necessities, and the distribution center will automatically replenish according to the inventory of these goods. Up to now, Wal-Mart has more than 30 distribution centers in the United States, supplying more than 3,000 shopping malls in 18 states. Wal-Mart suppliers can send their products directly to many stores or to distribution centers. Compared with them, centralized distribution to the distribution center can obviously save a lot of money for suppliers. Therefore, about 87% of the goods sold by Wal-Mart pass through the distribution center, while the competition of Wal-Mart can only reach 50%. Because the distribution center can reduce the logistics cost by about 50%, Wal-Mart can provide customers with cheaper goods than other retailers, which is the key to Wal-Mart's rapid growth.