SQEP is Walmart's Supplier Quality Excellence Program. It was designed to drive out unnecessary handling costs coming into the supply chain. The program ensures packaging, load quality, and purchase order (PO) information accuracy. This helps the product arrive, get processed, loaded on a trailer, and shipped to stores in a timely manner.
To launch the new SQEP initiative, Walmart is rolling out accountability standards in phases. While specifics may change over time (as with the On-Time In-Full Initiative), three rollout phases have been announced:
Suppliers that are not doing ASNs (Advance Ship Notices) currently should begin having conversations with their EDI providers. This is to ensure they are ASN compliant.
This phase covers the accuracy of shipping labels. Suppliers also need to verify that case labels are scannable and the information is correct.
In addition to basics like boxes, pallets, and load shifts, there may be Walmart.com shipment accountability during this phase.
As of 2021, the penalty is 200 dollars per PO and one dollar per case on the PO that’s impacted. Fines can add up quickly when you consider that some POs can have hundreds of cases on them. Now’s the time to work with your item file and confirm the accuracy of all the data being shipped through Walmart.