What Do The Pentagon And Wal-Mart Have In Common?

[nikhil08]

An essential ingredient in Wal-Mart’s success was its rapid adoption of the

latest technology. Almost from the beginning, Sam Walton recognized that the

key to keeping costs down and profits up was tight inventory control—ordering

just the right items in just the right amounts. Too much inventory meant undue

expense; too little meant lost sales. Finding a way to keep track of what was

selling, what was in the stores, what was on order and what was on backorder

became one of Walton’s obsessions. As a result, Wal-Mart was one of the

first major retail chains to install electronic scanners at cash registers linked

to a central inventory-control computer. Today, Wal-Mart’s computer database

is second only to the Pentagon’s in capacity.