Upstream Decisions, Downstream Composure: Mercadona’s Total Quality as Grocery Infrastructure
Mon Feb 02 2026
What does a grocery retail chain look like when supply chain management is the infrastructure?
In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, we go to Valencia, Spain!🇪🇸
When we look closely at Mercadona, we'll see restraint with reliability as a mature way to coordinate. Mercadona rebuilt grocery retail in Spain around routine, comprehension, and learning by considering supply chain design as infrastructure.
I talk about how the company's use of Calidad Total (Total Quality Management) from 1993 to today changed the way they operated with suppliers, warehouses, associates, and consumers. I look at TQM as a frame for decisions like SKU reduction and routine pricing signals that are in fact intelligent and enduring.
This episode looks at legibility by Scott (the capacity of an organization to read itself) and temporal depth (advancing by staying deeply grounded) using ideas from political anthropology and infrastructure studies.
One important question this case poses though:
What if the best way to be responsible isn't to respond quickly, but to create a space where fewer responses are needed in the first place?
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What does a grocery retail chain look like when supply chain management is the infrastructure? In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, we go to Valencia, Spain!🇪🇸 When we look closely at Mercadona, we'll see restraint with reliability as a mature way to coordinate. Mercadona rebuilt grocery retail in Spain around routine, comprehension, and learning by considering supply chain design as infrastructure. I talk about how the company's use of Calidad Total (Total Quality Management) from 1993 to today changed the way they operated with suppliers, warehouses, associates, and consumers. I look at TQM as a frame for decisions like SKU reduction and routine pricing signals that are in fact intelligent and enduring. This episode looks at legibility by Scott (the capacity of an organization to read itself) and temporal depth (advancing by staying deeply grounded) using ideas from political anthropology and infrastructure studies. One important question this case poses though: What if the best way to be responsible isn't to respond quickly, but to create a space where fewer responses are needed in the first place?