- As the supply chains at The Home Depot have evolved and transformed over time, what types of supply chain technology do you feel have been needed to facilitate these changes? A helpful way to respond to this question is to first identify examples of relevant supply chain technologies and then to comment on how they have impacted THDs supply chains. Also, please feel free to consider technologies in addition to those that may have been discussed in the readings for this lesson.
information on the product's landing page, including related products and/or parts of a collection, as well as various fulfillment options. We believe our focus on improving search capabilities, site functionality, category presentation, product content, speed to checkout, and enhanced fulfillment options has yielded higher traffic, better conversion and continued sales growth. Further, we do not view the interconnected shopping experience as a specific transaction; rather, we believe it encompasses an entire journey from inspiration and know-how, to purchase and fulfillment, to post-purchase care and support. Customers expect more personalized messaging, so we are continuing to focus on connecting marketing activities with the online and in-store experiences to create seamless engagement across channels. From the inspirational point of the purchase journey to providing product know-how, we continue to invest in the infrastructure and capabilities needed to deliver the most relevant marketing messages to our customers based upon what is important to them today. Store Experience Our stores remain the hub of our business, and we continue to invest to improve the customer shopping experience through easier navigation and increased convenience and speed of checkout. In fiscal 2022, we continued to leverage the investments made in our stores over the past several years to operate effectively and meet changing customer expectations. These investments include wayfinding signage and store refresh packages; self-service lockers, online order storage areas at front entrances and curbside pickup to provide convenient pickup options for online orders; electronic shelf label capabilities; and the re-design of front-end areas, including reconfigured service desks, improved layouts in checkout areas, and expanded and enhanced self-checkout options. To improve the customer's experience in our stores, we have also empowered our customers with additional self-help tools, including mobile app-enabled store navigation. Our app provides store-specific maps, which allow customers to pinpoint the exact location of an item on their mobile devices. We believe these investments are driving higher customer satisfaction scores, and we will continue to invest to improve the customer experience going forward. Investing in Associate Productivity. We continually strive to improve our store operations for our associates. Our goal is to remove complexity and inefficient processes from the stores to allow our associates to focus on our customers. To this end, we have continued to focus our efforts in such areas as optimizing product flow to decrease the amount of time a store associate spends locating product and to improve on-shelf product availability; creating a simpler order management system; expanding in-aisle, real-time mobile learning tools for our associates' own development and to assist with customer questions; and using labor model tools to better align associate activity with customer needs. For several years, our associates have used web-enabled handheld devices to help them more efficiently meet the needs of the business and serve customers. In fiscal 2022, we began rolling out the next generation of digital phones to our stores, which we call "bdPhones, so that each associate will have a digital device during their shift. The new devices offer enhanced functionality to allow associates to readily query inventory, access applications that support customer service, and drive on-shelf availability of product. Investing in Safety. We are committed to maintaining a safe shopping and working environment for our customers and associates. We empower trained EH\&S associates to evaluate, develop, implement and enforce policies, processes and programs on a Companywide basis. Our EH\&S policies are woven into our everyday operations and are part of The Home Depot culture. Common program elements include daily store inspection checklists (by department); routine follow-up audits from our store-based safety team members and regional, district and store operations field teams; equipment enhancements and preventative maintenance programs to promote physical safety; departmental merchandising safety standards; training and education programs for all associates, with varying degrees of training provided based on an associate's role and responsibilities; and awareness, communication and recognition programs designed to drive operational awareness and an understanding of EH\&S matters. OUR SUPPLY CHAIN We continue to focus on building best-in-class competitive advantages in our supply chain to be responsive to our customers' expectations for how, when and where they choose to receive our products and services. As part of enhancing the interconnected shopping experience, we continue to invest in expanding our supply chain network, with the goal of achieving the fastest, most efficient and most reliable delivery capabilities in home improvement. Our efforts are focused on ensuring product availability and increasing the speed and reliability of delivery for our customers while managing our costs. Our supply chain investments have helped us to operate effectively and meet our customers' needs throughout the challenging environment over the past few years. We centrally forecast and replenish the vast majority of our store products through sophisticated inventory management systems and utilize our network of distribution centers to serve both our stores' and customers' needs. Our supply chain includes multiple distribution center platforms in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico tailored to meet the needs of our stores and customers based on types of products, location, transportation, and delivery requirements. These platforms include rapid deployment centers, stocking distribution centers, bulk distribution centers, and direct fulfillment centers, among others. As part of the expansion of our supply chain, we have invested to further automate and mechanize our rapid deployment center network to drive efficiency and faster movement of product. We are also continuing to expand our fulfillment network, investing in a significant number of new fulfillment facilities to drive speed and reliability of delivery for our customers and to help us ultimately meet our goal of reaching 90% of the U.S. population with same or next day delivery for extended home improvement product offerings, including big and bulky products. These facilities include omni-channel fulfillment centers, which deliver product directly to customers, and market delivery operations, which function as local hubs to consolidate freight for dispatch to customers for the final mile of delivery, with a focus on appliances. In fiscal 2022, we realized our goal to control more of our appliance delivery end-to-end and began managing all of our appliance delivery volume through our market delivery operations. We have also added flatbed distribution centers, which handle large items like lumber and building materials that are transported on flatbed trucks. As of the end of fiscal 2022, we have opened a number of additional fulfillment facilities, and we vill continue to build out our fulfillment network to support our business. Our network is designed to create a competitive advantage with unique, industryleading capabilities for home improvement needs for both Pros and consumers. In addition to our distribution and fulfillment centers, we leverage our stores as a network of convenient customer pickup, return, and delivery fulfillment locations. Our premium real estate footprint provides a distinct structural and competitive advantage. For customers who shop online and wish to pick up or return merchandise at, or have merchandise delivered from, our stores, we have implemented four interconnected retail programs: BOSS, BOPIS, BODFS, and BORIS. We also provide curbside pickup to complement our BOPIS offerings, in addition to the self-service lockers at the front entrance of many of our stores. We also offer express car and van delivery service that covers over 80% of the U.S. population. For fiscal 2022 , approximately 50% of our U.S. online orders were fulfilled through a store. We also continue to focus on developing new capabilities to improve both efficiency and customer experience in our store delivery program. Our strategic intent is to have a portfolio of efficient, timely and reliable sources and methods of delivery to choose from, optimizing order fulfillment and delivery based on customer needs, inventory locations and available transportation options
