This week on the Be Epic podcast, Brent welcomes David Guggina, Executive Vice President of Supply Chain at Walmart. They delve into the transformative strategies and technological advancements reshaping Walmart's supply chain to better serve and meet the rapidly changing needs of customers globally. David shares insights from his extensive background in supply chain management, starting from his early days at Purdue University, through roles at General Motors, Anheuser Busch, and Amazon, before joining Walmart. He discusses the integration of e-commerce and physical store operations at Walmart, emphasizing the implementation of modern software and robotics to enhance efficiency and customer satisfaction. The conversation also covers Walmart's commitment to a people-led, tech-empowered approach that prioritizes both associates and customers in creating a seamless omnichannel retail experience.

Time and time again, I find that the best

performers aren't necessarily the people that come with the

skill set already intact. It's just the folks that are

dedicated to our purpose.

Welcome to the be epic podcast, brought to you

by the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of

Arkansas. I'm your host, Brent Williams. Together, we'll

explore the dynamic landscape of business, and uncover the

strategies, insights and stories that drive business today.

Today, I have with me, Dave Guggina, and Dave is Executive

Vice President of Supply Chain at Walmart. Dave, thanks for

being here today.

Brent I am excited to be here and look

forward to the conversation.

We're excited to have you on campus both for this

and interaction with our students. We appreciate your

time and that maybe before we dive in, because I want to, I

want us to talk about the supply chain transformation, that that

you are leading along with others at Walmart, but maybe

before that, for this audience, tell us a little bit about your

background and, and then also the scope of responsibilities

that you have at Walmart.

Absolutely. So I I reside in Northwest Arkansas.

I've been living here for about three and a half years. I've

been with Walmart for about six and a half years. Live with my

two girls, Colette and Eloise and my wife Danielle, and we

love this area, love spending time outdoors. Love walking this

campus. It's a beautiful area of the country. So like I said,

I've been working for Walmart for six and a half years I

started with Walmart, in the E commerce space. In a role we

call it operational excellence. But but essentially, my focus,

when I first came in was the software and the robotics that

we were looking to deploy in our e-commerce and our fulfillment

network. And then over time, we brought the e-commerce supply

chain teams and the the legacy or the store side supply chain

teams together. And then more recently, we've brought the

store operation teams and the supply chain teams even closer

together from an org structure standpoint, and formed a team

that we call end to end. And today I oversee central US

supply chain. So I've got a team that focuses on flow, end to end

flow from point of origin to point of sale. I've got a team

that focuses on end to end supply chain strategy. And then

there's all the assets that we manage, our ports, our inbound

consolidation centers, distribution centers, we have

both ambient distribution centers and temperature

controlled or perishable distribution centers and then

fulfillment centers across the country. So over 270 assets,

physical assets across the US today. Before Walmart, I started

my career in supply chain when I was in college at Purdue

University. I worked for General Motors. And then I spent a

couple of years with Anheuser Busch. My first job there was

logistics planning for the St. Louis brewery. So we didn't have

software doing load planning. So it was people like myself. So

routing and dispatch as well. And then I ran a canning line

for Anheuser Busch. And then, you know, they were acquired by

InBev. And during that time was like 2007. A company amazon.com

reached out to me. And I didn't know what amazon.com was, at the

time, they were pretty small. They had 10 fulfillment centers

in the US. So I, I went onto their website and started became

a seller just to test it out to see if I wanted to go work for

this company. It was pretty, pretty seamless experience to

become a seller and I thought they figured something out. So

went and worked there for about a decade in a bunch of different

roles, fulfillment roles, inbound, outbound, customer

returns, quality control, lead, my last role was leading a

virtual team. So a team that everyone worked from home, we're

in 11 different countries, we provided customer service, we

resided in within operations. And that was an interesting

experience as well. So then I had a mentor who had left Amazon

and took a short stint as the CEO of Restoration Hardware and

then went to Walmart and recruited me for about something

like six eight months and talked me into jumping over and at

Walmart, I've found that Walmart's purpose and reason for

being aligned really well with you know, how I live my life and

the values that myself and my family have and this is home for

me.

Yeah, wow. Home for me as well, I love it here.

And, you know, I thought I would ask you this question, you know,

you've had lots of different experiences in your background,

and in some ways, Walmart pulls all of that together, right, you

know, with the with the physical footprint, you know, the E

commerce explosion, you know, in the business that's happened

and, and everything else in between.

It does, you know, we've been using the term

saying where people and tech empowered omni channel retailer

that exists to serve, and save people money so that they can

live a better life. And that couldn't be more, more true, I'm

not sure that the term omnichannel will stand the test

of time, but I do know that the people led, tech empowered will,

that's how we think about it. And, you know, we start with the

people on our teams, the associates, working in our

stores, the communities that we serve, and, and, you know,

we're, we all are working together, so that we can bring

the best experience possible for the customers that we serve

them, hundreds of millions of folks across this country and

I think that's the thing that's hard to get my

the globe.

head around sometimes with Walmart is just how many people

across the globe that you're touching on a daily or hourly

basis? Well, you know, I know that just in getting to know,

you know, the last couple of years, and then, you know,

observing Walmart, you all have been going through quite the

transformation in supply chain. And would, that's where I'd

really like us to spend the majority of our time and like

what's, you know, maybe at a high level, describe that supply

chain transformation for us. And, but then also like, what

precipitated the, the need, and the, you know, and, and the

urgency in this.

When I think about the need, I think about

something that our US CEO, John Furner, says quite a bit, and

that is that in retail loyalty exists in the absence of a

better alternative. And retail's constantly changing, because our

customer's needs and wants are constantly changing. Mr. Sam

would say customers vote with their, their wallet, right. And

they're voting, you know, every single day in our business. So

the supply chain is critical to the customer value proposition

that we ultimately put put in front of the folks that we

serve. And we have to be able to keep up with the pace of work,

which customers needs and wants are changing, and they're

changing more rapidly today than I think they have in a long,

long time. And I think that's partially due to the fact that

technology is changing. It's not on a linear trajectory, it's on

an exponential trajectory. I'd say, you know, I say all that to

say in the simplest terms, we, we looked at our supply chain,

and wanted to change because we want to serve. We exist to serve

the customers. And, you know, outside of our values and our

principles, change is the one thing that's constant at

Walmart. So if I think about the, the transformation itself,

I guess I would, I'd start with, you know, talking about the

evolution of our supply chain. So Mr. Sam realized early on in

Walmart's storied past, that owning the supply chain

controlling the supply chain was, was a competitive advantage

from the standpoint of providing everyday low costs, which allow

you to provide everyday low prices. So he stood up the

Ambien distribution network, that was where we started. And

I've been in some of the facilities that are the first

distribution centers that we we we kicked off over 40 years ago,

and then they're running today. And then, you know, customers

really enjoyed those everyday low prices. And they also they

liked shopping for general merchandise with Walmart. They

also wanted that experience with with consumables with fresh

goods food. So then we we stood up a perishable supply chain.

And then customers again, changed and wanted to have goods

delivered to their doorstep. And we stood up a fulfillment

network. And then more recently, you know, customers again are

changing. They Want this omnified experience of not only

being able to shop off a shelf, but having been able to pick up

goods from their local neighborhood market and also

have goods delivered to their doorstep, or even inside their

refrigerators or their pantry, so we're changing yet again. But

this time, we're not standing up another network, we're

integrating the networks in a more connected and flexible way.

And we're doing that with modern software capabilities, as well

as robotics or hardware capabilities. And we're rolling

those capabilities across the entirety of our supply chain,

software can move at a much faster pace, because it doesn't

require you to pour concrete for example. So we're moving rapidly

with, you know, improved transportation management

systems, yard management systems, warehouse control

systems, warehouse management systems, modernizing those

connecting those, but then we're also bringing in modernized

robotics, I think, you know, if you look at our major

investments, one common thread is automated storage and

retrieval systems, which allow us to densify storage and a

particular centroid or node where an asset is, so that we

can improve our cube utilization for those nodes. But then it

also removes a lot of the manual redundant work and helps us

become more accurate. As well as increases our throughput

capacity and, and our productivity, quite frankly.

Yeah. So which, really, ultimately, as the, as

the customer that ultimately serves what I want, right, which

is really what I want is the item that I want, or the items

that I want, when and how I want it. You know, the the focus on

automation, and robotics, has probably been some of the most

well documented, you know, of the work that that you've done.

What's the change management process been like inside Walmart

to or, you know, for, for adopting not only, I guess, the

technology, but also the integration of, of legacy lines

of the supply chain, that can't be easy work.

It's not, it's not easy work at all right. But

I would say it's, it's incredibly valuable, right? The

fact is that we have these nodes that exist across the US that

are the right locations, right, and being able to reshape those

nodes with the most modern software and hardware without

having to put a new dot on the map is incredibly valuable. So

it is important for us to manage through the change and be able

to come up with solutions that truly change our processes,

processes at the root at their core and create something

totally new and different from a process standpoint, that gives

you capabilities that we just flat out cannot couldn't even

imagine with with the more manual processes that we've

historically utilized. So so it is it is very valuable. What I

would say is how we think about it. When we're implementing new

technology into the supply chain. From a change management

standpoint, we start with proof of technology, we cast a really

broad net at Walmart, both internally and externally to try

to find the best ideas, capabilities, tools to solve

problems that help us serve customers better. So we cast

that broad net, we call it pot proof of technology. And often

that work is done in one of our labs or or at one of our

partners, labs, or one of their centers. And once we found that

a technology is something that we think can really help us move

forward towards delivering outcomes that matter to

customers quickly. Then we move to proof of concept. And that

just basically brings that capability in house at a really

small scale. And if that proof of concept is successful, so

we'll define KPIs key performance indicators that that

let us know, hey, this is bearing fruit, then we'll move

from a proof of concept to a pilot and pilot is just broader

scale. And we, you know, we use math to tell us, hey, what is

the scale that we need to prove this capability out at so that

we are confident that it can be rolled out across the network,

and then we move to roll the rollout phase? And depending on

the capability and how disruptive it is. We have teams

that handle rolling these these initiatives out out. Some are

relatively simple and easy, like a software update. You know, and

it's more of an informed the site through one of our

communication mechanisms. Others, like we've shared our

ambient automation program where we're partnered with a company

called symbiotic. That's pretty disruptive. So we have teams

that focus on training, focus on prepping the site focus on, you

know, ensuring that our associates have the right skills

and tools so that when that change occurs on site, we can

that lead time to proficiency is shrunk. And the great news is,

we're getting better and better at handling this kind of change.

And I see it in the data with how quickly we go from launch to

fully proficient.

Interesting.

So, but it is, we're learning new new things on

a, on a daily, weekly basis. And how to do better.

Hourly, yeah. You know, we've talked about the

customer as a key stakeholder, of course, in the supply chain

transformation. associates are another really key stakeholder

in in this transformation. And I'm not asking you about both

well, one, I had the opportunity along with you with your team to

be in one of the the new fulfill fulfillment centers. And I got

the opportunity to talk with a woman that like she was elated,

you know, I felt like in her role in the way that it has

changed interacting with the technology, but like inside the

fulfillment centers, that part of the network? How How are you

equipping associates? And what's what's their reaction to these

change?

So let me let me back up, and then I'll answer

that question more directly. How I think about this is I and I

think you and I've talked about this before, briefly, but you

know, I'm excited about the capabilities. I'm excited about

what it means for our customers. But I would say I'm most

excited, or I get my cup gets filled up the most when I spend

time with our associates in the impact that this reshaping of

our supply chain is going to have and is having on them. What

we're doing is we're bringing together robotics software and

people said differently, we're bringing together machines and

humans. And machines are really good at ingesting large

quantities of data and processing them at high speeds.

They're also good at executing repetitive tasks with a subset

of rules at high speed. With high levels of accuracy and

quality. Humans are really great at problem solving. Humans are

great at utilizing their creativity, utilizing empathy

for one another, and upstream and downstream. Participants in

the supply chain and or ultimately, the customer in our

programs, in my opinion, are really focused on allowing

machines to do what they do best, and allowing humans to do

what they do best. And how does that ultimately show up? And how

are our associates responding? You know, I think of a

conversation I have with a gentleman named David shares my

name at our Brooksville, Florida site, which is we're putting in

the the ambient automation. And we were having this conversation

and he almost got emotional, just saying, you know, when I

asked him has it changed your life, he's like, I'm building a

pole barn. At first, I was like, what, that's how it's changed

your life. And he went on to explain how, you know, when he

was driving eight to 10 miles a day lifting hundreds of items,

cases every hour. He he went home and just didn't have the

energy to do during the week things that you know, that he

wanted to do with his friends with his family. In this case,

he wanted to build a pole barn and he walked me through how he

had recently completed his pole barn and how the automation

allowed him to do that. So what I have found is we go through

our change management process, POT proof of technology, proof

of concept, pilot, and those associates that experience that

change originally they are our champions. And if you can get

them to interact with the rest of the population. It's it's

this self perpetuating model that we don't need to sell this,

we don't need to convince people that it's the right thing. They

do it themselves and we see it in the data, our jobs, we are we

today we provide good jobs that lead to great careers. And I

think we're doing that. At an at another level, right, the

ceiling is becoming the floor. And this reshaping of our

network and the capabilities is helping us do exactly that. So

our associates are excited about the change. And then I think you

also mentioned how do we equip them, you know, we are we have

learning teams that train our, our associates, and give them

put the tools in their toolkit that allow them to take on these

new roles. And some of those we've talked about pretty

publicly An example would be like the associate to driver

program. Some that we'll talk about more in the near future

are associate to technician programs, which are incredible.

And, you know, time and time again, I find that the best

performers aren't necessarily the people that come with the

skill set already intact. It's just the folks that are

dedicated to our purpose, and have been with us for a long,

long time. And it's just us investing in them and giving

them the new set of capabilities they require to do the jobs of

the future, so.

Well and it's that point that I was just

Good time of the year right now.

thinking about, as I was listening to you thinking like

those associates that are committed to the purpose have

been with you. And then the investment in them that is, in

some ways future proofs them in their career is, is quite a

meaningful thing. You know, you mentioned David building a pole

playing time of the year volleyball, and a car

barn, I was actually last night, I was with my family on the

front porch. And it was a beautiful night in Northwest

Arkansas. My kids were my girls were

pulls up to our house and didn't know who it was. And long story

short, gentleman starts unloading groceries and other

items from Walmart. And my wife and I were both sitting there.

And after he left, you know, I told her like, well, I will

thank Dave, for the fact that you can sit here beside and

enjoy this night instead of shopping.

It's not me,

You and your team,

There are many so many folks involved in that

space. Even beyond the supply chain team, it's just

unbelievable to see how the end to end operations, the stores,

the supply chain, our delivery partners, Spark drivers, are all

coming together to create these pretty incredible experiences.

You know, so fundamentally, right, you had

heard a story of how you've impacted one of your associates

lives hears, you know, at least a firsthand customer story.

That's quite purposeful. So how is that purpose helping you

attract the talent? I guess it's that purpose. It's helping you

attract the talent from, you know, folks in fulfillment

centers, but also, you know, the engineers and the expertise that

you're bringing across the team, it just seems like as I interact

with more and more of your teams, I'm blown away with their

capabilities.

Yeah, great question. I would say. I often

answer things in a roundabout way. So I'll get there. But

where I'm going to start is, I think for a long time in supply

chain and just industry in general, even manufacturing. You

know, I think it started probably in the industrial age,

we had this model of there's leaders and there's followers.

And there's top down directive. I think we're exiting that age

and in, in most cases, at least with Walmart, we've already

moved far beyond that. And we're moving into a world where there

are leaders of leaders, where we are focused on empowering

individuals. And I think we do that through communicating to

the leaders within our organization, and even folks

that are interested in potentially joining us the

purpose of why we exist, right? And companies that have strong

purpose, I think have an incredible competitive

advantage. In today's day and age, with this model, people

don't just go to do a job get directed from the top down and,

you know, connect two widgets together. They want to

understand why they're doing something. And at Walmart, where

we're very, very clear on we exist as a company to serve. Our

purpose is to save people money so that they can live a better

life. And that's not just in the US that's across the globe.

We're dedicated to the communities in which we reside.

We want to make those communities better places. So I

couldn't ask for a better tool to help us bring talent into the

organization, whether it's bringing it up through the

organization, from someone who started loading trucks for us,

or whether it's attracting undergraduates, graduate

students, subject matter experts in different fields. So all that

we do kind of starts there. And then how we conduct work to

deliver on that that purpose, like I mentioned earlier, is

constantly changing. So we're introducing new capabilities

that require us to get expertise in areas that are new and

different for for the company. But again, that strong Purpose

allows us to do that more seamlessly.

You know, Dave, another stakeholder in the

transformation, I assume is your partner's you mentioned, there's

been, you know, that, that you guys have been public about your

partnership with synbiotics, as an example, has this

transformation required you Walmart to work differently with

those partners in some ways?

Yeah.

I would say is we, you know, in different

And we partner like here locally, we partner

companies take different approaches, a lot of companies

will just do the vast majority of their development in house.

And don't get me wrong, we are we're builders. And if you look

with plug and play, I think, I think you and I've been at

at the our tech organization, our software engineering

organization, it's incredible what they're building, we're

building capabilities in house that are helping us do things in

new and different ways that are pretty, pretty unbelievable. But

at the same time, we don't sit back and think that we have all

events,

We have yeah,

the answers or all the best ideas. So I mentioned earlier

that we cast a broad net.

Plug and play, you know, and they're bringing

in companies and different stages, early stages of

development, and introducing them to folks like ourselves,

and others within the area. You know, and I, I love having the

opportunity to work with these different organizations in

different phases of their development and maturity.

Because the ideas that are coming about are just

unbelievable. So like I said, we're not, we're not so proud to

think that we're the only ones with with all the great ideas.

We do have incredible amounts of valuable data that can help us

develop solutions with others that deliver great results for

retail and great results for Walmart customers. And then,

specifically on have we had to partner with folks in different

ways. I guess what I would say is the scale of the change with

some of our key partners is so significant that absolutely

we've had to be there's been a level of depth in the

partnership. That's, that is different than what I've seen in

the past. It's one thing to deploy a capability, whether

it's a combination of software and hardware or one of the other

in a handful of sites. And then across the entire network.

Yeah.

And the closer that partnership is whether it's

managing a ramp, or the procurement of raw materials,

the closer that partnership is, the more efficient, you're going

to be in the delivery of the ultimate solution. So, yeah,

we've really had to lean into those relationships. And it's

helped us it's helped us move much, much quicker.

Yeah, I can only imagine that the partnership

piece of that is is critical. Just because of the scale. No

one else you know has the scale and that is going to be required

to deploy technology in hardware. Well, you know my

finish up with a couple of questions. Just as your as

you're looking out there maybe maybe zooming out a little bit

just as you're continuing to lead, of course, the supply

chain organization at Walmart and the continued

transformation, just what's what excites you, you know about the

future in supply chain? And, and you know, you'll be with a group

of our students and in just a few minutes, what what advice do

you have, you know, for Walton College students, as an example,

that are thinking about careers, not only in supply chain, but

more broadly, and many of them will be graduating in just a few

I think what excites me, we're fortunate to

weeks.

be, you know, alive in this this period of time. Specifically,

because of the advancements in technology, and I mentioned this

briefly earlier, but technology does not follow in an intuitive

like linear view, it's exponential. So the progress in

the 21st century isn't going to be 100 years of progress. If you

use the rate of change, you know, the last 100 years, it's

going to be the equivalent of 20,000 years or whatever that

whatever that would equate to, but it will be significant. And,

you know, when you think about supply chain, we want to know

what we own, where it is, in what quantity, in what condition

all in near real time. And folks have reached for that for a long

time. And it's just unbelievable to see the capabilities that we

have today that we're able to deploy that are allowing us to

achieve that vision. And the outcomes from that our folks

will talk about speed a lot. And speed is important. But think

about like the importance of being timed definite within a

supply chain. And all that you can do to optimize if you know

what you own in what quantity where it is all in near real

time, and when it's going to be where it is today. And when

it'll be to the next point. All the waste you can extract it's

it's an exciting time. And then when I think about advice that I

would give to new new graduates. So a couple things come to mind.

First, you know, we were talking you will have a supply chain

course for freshmen and sophomores I believe. You know,

it's not incredibly common to do that, that early in someone's

career. I think that's incredible. I think what what I

found when I was in school, and I think under students will find

is that they'll find that they're good at certain things.

Let's say you're taking a course in supply chain, and you're

doing your last mile delivery, catchment and batching design

with some kind of you're building a model based on a

subset of data that was given to you from your professor, you may

find that you enjoy that you may find that you're good at it. I

would say as you exit, school and move into the workforce, you

know, find something you're good at and become exceptional at it.

You know, so many folks think, oh, I need experience in a bunch

of different areas that'll come. But first, whatever you start

doing, if it's in supply chain, just find something you were

good at, then become incredible at it and become a subject

matter expert. And then others will come to you to learn. And

guess what happens when they do that they're going to teach you

something. And they're going to want to pull you into new and

different experiences within your career. So that'd be one

piece of advice. And then my, my second would be I think in

today's day and age, the ability to be present and listen to

someone else is so valuable. And if you give someone your your

full attention, it is an expression of respect, empathy,

care, and those individuals will will thank you for that. And

we'll treat you differently because you treated them that

way. And that'll help you build, build your network and build

relationships and in that leader of leaders model, it'll help you

get leaders to follow you and help you move towards whatever

outcomes you're trying to drive or whatever goals you're trying

to achieve. And then the last advice is, you probably want to

come work at Walmart in supply chain if you're graduating so

give us a call.

I love it. Uh, well, seriously, what great

advice, you know, work hard, become excellent at something,

and, and be a little patient. You know, that's what I talk to

our graduates about Be a little patient because you're exactly

right excellence. People want to be around people that that

operate and work with excellence and they want them on their

team. So those opportunities will come. But also want to, you

know, the the advice of be present and listen, you know, in

a world that's pretty noisy, right, and seems like it's

increasingly noisy is quite simple, but quite powerful. So,

Dave, thank you for being here today. Thanks for spending some

time with me and talking about the supply chain transformation.

And thanks for spending time and investing in our students. Some

of the some of the students that you're spending time with today

will hopefully be leaders of Walmart supply chain in the

future.

Hope so. Thank you, Brent. Appreciate your

time.

Thank you. On behalf of the Walton College

thank you for joining us for this captivating conversation.

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