Gartner Announces Rankings of Its 2013 Supply Chain Top 25

Gartner, Inc. has released the findings from its ninth annual Supply Chain Top 25. The goal of the Supply Chain Top 25 research initiative is to raise awareness of the supply chain discipline and how it impacts the business.

Analysts announced the findings from this year's research at the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference, which is being held here at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort and Spa through today.

"At the heart of the Supply Chain Top 25 is the notion of demand-driven leadership," said Debra Hofman, managing vice president at Gartner. "We've been researching and writing about demand-driven practices since 2003, highlighting the journey companies are taking: from the old 'push' model of supply chain to one that integrates demand, supply and product into a value network that orchestrates a profitable response to ever-shifting changes in demand."

Alongside some perennial leaders with new lessons to share, Gartner's 2013 Supply Chain Top 25 offers three new companies, a growing group of industrials from which to learn, and two newcomers to the Top 5.  The Top 5 includes three from last year  —  Apple, McDonald's and Amazon — and two that are new to the Top 5 but have been rising steadily — Intel and Unilever — while the three new companies joining the top 25 this year are Ford, Lenovo and Qualcomm.

Apple tops Gartner's ranking for a record-breaking sixth year in a row, continuing to outpace everyone else by a wide margin on all five measures used (see Table 1). Apple was ranked No. 1 again by the peer voters, capturing 75 percent of the highest possible points a company can get across the voting pool. Nos. 2 and 3 switched places this year, with McDonald's capturing the No. 2 slot and Amazon coming in at No. 3.  This, however, was not reflected in the peer voters' opinion. Amazon ranked a very close second behind Apple in the peer vote, almost completely closing the opinion gap from previous years and fast gaining on Apple's voting position.

Table 1:  The Gartner Supply Chain Top 25 for 2013
	Rank	Company	Peer Opinion (1)  (172 voters)  (25%)	Gartner Opinion (1)  (33 voters)  (25%)	3-year weighted ROA (2) (25%)	Inventory Turns (3) (15%)	3-year weighted Revenue Growth (4) (10%)	Composite Score (5)
	1	Apple	3203	470	22.3%	82.7	52.5%	9.51
	2	McDonald's	1197	353	15.8%	147.5	5.9%	5.87
	3	Amazon.com	3115	475	1.9%	9.3	33.6%	5.86
	4	Unilever	1469	522	10.5%	6.5	9.0%	5.04
	5	Intel	756	515	15.6%	4.2	11.4%	4.97
	6	P&G	1901	493	8.6%	5.8	3.6%	4.91
	7	Cisco Systems	1167	517	8.5%	11.2	7.8%	4.67
	8	Samsung Electronics	1264	298	11.6%	18.5	15.7%	4.35
	9	Coca Cola Company	1779	278	11.7%	5.5	14.0%	4.33
	10	Colgate-Palmolive	794	324	18.9%	5.2	3.6%	4.27
	11	Dell	1409	342	6.2%	30.7	-0.6%	4.05
	12	Inditex	745	221	18.0%	4.2	13.4%	3.85
	13	Wal-Mart Stores	1629	282	8.8%	8.1	4.9%	3.79
	14	Nike	955	236	14.1%	4.2	10.6%	3.62
	15	Starbucks	808	159	16.5%	4.8	11.5%	3.41
	16	PepsiCo	810	314	8.6%	7.8	10.5%	3.41
	17	H&M	399	41	28.2%	3.7	6.7%	3.22
	18	Caterpillar	714	247	5.8%	2.8	23.4%	2.91
	19	3M	999	105	13.3%	4.2	6.9%	2.87
	20	Lenovo Group	397	211	2.5%	22.2	29.8%	2.75
	21	Nestlé	679	112	13.3%	5.1	-0.6%	2.51
	22	Ford Motor	552	231	5.7%	15.1	3.1%	2.51
	23	Cummins	74	139	13.3%	5.3	13.5%	2.48
	24	Qualcomm	122	45	12.7%	8.5	25.9%	2.37
	25	Johnson & Johnson	730	144	9.6%	2.9	3.3%	2.35

Notes

1 Gartner Opinion and Peer Opinion based on each panel's forced-rank ordering against the definition of "DDVN Orchestrator"

2 ROA:  ((2012 net income/2012 total assets)*50%) +  ((2011 net income/2011 total assets)*30%) +  ((2010 net income /2010 total assets)*20%)

3 Inventory Turns:  2012 cost of goods sold /2012 quarterly average inventory

4 Revenue Growth:  ((change in revenue 2012-2011) *50%) +  ((change in revenue 2011-2010) *30%) + ((change in revenue 2010-2009) *20%)

5 Composite Score:  (Peer Opinion*25%) + (Gartner Research Opinion*25%) + (ROA*25%) + (Inventory Turns*15%) + (Revenue Growth*10%)


2012 data used where available. Where unavailable, latest available full-year data used. All raw data normalized to a 10-point scale prior to composite calculation.  "Ranks" for tied composite scores are determined using next decimal point comparison.
Source Gartner (May 2013)

Gartner analysts highlighted three standout trends for supply chain leaders this year:

A New Frontier of Performance
Many companies are working on building out the foundational components of an end-to-end supply chain across disparate businesses, focusing on improving core supply chain functions, and creating more common processes and systems across them. More-advanced companies describe a wide ran