Top 25 Supply Chain Companies of 2019: Gartner

Gartner has released the results of its annual Supply Chain Top 25, identifying supply chain leaders and highlighting their best practices. Analysts announced the results at the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference, which is being held this week at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort and Spa in Phoenix, Ariz.

"2019 is the 15th consecutive year we are publishing the Supply Chain Top 25 ranking," said Mike Griswold, vice president, analyst at Gartner. "The ranking consists of an impressive group of leaders, including two new entrants, one from retail and one from the chemical sectors.

Colgate-Palmolive scored the top spot in the ranking for the first time, followed by Inditex, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Cisco (see Table 1). Chinese e-commerce company, Alibaba, and Dutch chemical company, Akzo Nobel, joined the Supply Chain Top 25 for the first time.

"Colgate-Palmolive’s strong financial performance, combined with its focus on an aligned organization and impressive work in corporate social responsibility, helped drive the move up from the fourth position in 2018 to the top spot in 2019,” said Mr. Griswold. “The company is focused on building a business-first mindset enabled by new technologies, enhanced decision-making and leadership capabilities."

After seven consecutive years of scoring in the top five of the Supply Chain Top 25, Unilever joined Apple, P&G, Amazon and McDonald’s in the "Masters" category, which Gartner introduced in 2015 to recognize sustained leadership over the last 10 years.

"Unilever continues to lead the way with solid digital supply chain processes and operations, including leveraging automation, data science and machine learning,” said Mr. Griswold. “The company also recognizes the importance of improving digital-enabled manufacturing initiatives by using emerging technologies for maintenance and process control.”

Along with the “Masters” category, the Supply Chain Top 25 continues to offer a platform for insights, learning, debate and contributions to the rising influence of supply chain practices on the global economy.

Table 1. The Gartner Supply Chain Top 25 for 2019

Source: Gartner (May 2019)

Three key trends stand out this year for supply chain leaders that are accelerating their capabilities, separating them further from the rest of the pack.

Personalization at Scale

Improving customer experience, with a sharpened focus on personalization, is a top priority for every company. Personalization at scale, however, is a key differentiator for more advanced companies.

“Personalization at scale requires a level of agility, supply chain flexibility and underlying technological capability in order to pull it off,” said Mr. Griswold. “Leading companies in the Supply Chain Top 25 have found the right balance. Where personalization is valued, they digitally capture customer requirements, flexibly convert designs to physical products and packages, and quickly get them into customers’ hands. Where standard product portfolio variety is good enough, they are ruthless about only keeping the best performers in the mix.”

Leveraging Ecosystems

As supply chain leaders face new challenges, such as fostering local talent for advanced skills and minimizing plastic waste creation and ocean pollution, they will need to focus on cooperation with an ecosystem of external partners will be the key to tackling problems of this scale. This change in perspective and approach is part of leading companies’ broader shift to run more purpose-driven supply chain organizations.

Driving Business-Led Digital Strategies

A wave of automation and augmentation has sped through corporate supply chains over the last five years and companies that grace the top of the Supply Chain Top 25 tend to be early adopters of new business concepts and technologies. For those furthest along in their digital supply chain journey, a return to the fundamental concept of business-led digital transformation is taking place.

“These leading supply chains are focusing on initiatives that understand and elevate the customer needs and the operational performance points needed to support them and work backward from those requirements to the process and technological transformations that will enable them,” said Mr. Griswold. “But keep in mind that transformational innovations don’t always convert to timely return on investment (ROI) right away. Often, optimization tends to deliver more immediate ROI.”