Wage Theft: SelectRemedy Warehouse Workers
The Big Blue from Bentonville relies on its supply chain for its enormous profitability. The company constructs enormous regional distribution centers and automate their inventory system (in part using RFID technology) to load trucks with exactly the products that a store is selling, and their trucks are dispatched at regular times on regular routes, replenishing supplies steadily and precisely, allowing the individual stores to eliminate storage space in favor of floor space. It’s an impressive system, designed by Chief Information Officer Linda Dillman, the unheralded genius behind the company’s ridiculous profits.
The other, more important element behind the Bentonville Monster’s profitability is their ability to maintain a razor thin margin across a huge breadth of volume. The profit per unit sold is small–but the amount sold is enormous. Obviously, having an innovative supply chain is a critical part of this. The other part is pulling out all stops to keep labor costs down.