Gartner Unveils 20th Edition of Global Supply Chain Top 25

May 23, 2024

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Schneider Electric tops Gartner's Global Supply Chain Top 25. Picture: Schneider Electric

Schneider Electric, Cisco, Colgate-Palmolive, Microsoft and J&J lead the way in the latest edition of Gartner’s prestigious Global Supply Chain Top 25

Gartner has revealed the 20th edition of its annual Global Supply Chain Top 25, a prestigious list recognising leading supply chain organisations and identifying the underlying trends driving their performance.

Schneider Electric retains top spot in this year’s ranking, seeing off competition from technology giant Cisco Systems.

Colgate-Palmolive, Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson complete the top five.

Microsoft is fourth in Gartner's latest Global Supply Chain Top 25. Picture: Gartner

New to this year’s list is NVIDIA, which has surged into the Top 25 to take seventh place off the back of strong financial performance.

"The supply chain organisations in this year’s Top 25 were notable for better protecting growth rates in a challenging operating environment, while at the same time delivering more sustainable operations," comments Simon Bailey, VP Analyst with the Gartner Supply Chain practice.

“The best supply chains now have ESG criteria firmly embedded in their operations, while delivering higher-than-average growth rates, better returns on physical assets (ROPA) and stronger margins.”

NVIDIA has surged into Gartner's Top 25. Picture: NVIDIA

Schneider Electric reaps benefits of transformation

Gartner’s Global Supply Chain Top 25 comprises two main components: business performance and community opinion.

Business performance in the form of public financial and ESG data provides a view into how companies have performed over the past three years, while the community opinion component gives a peer and Gartner expert view into companies’ future potential and reflects leadership in the supply chain community.

These two components are combined into a total composite score.

Gartner derives an initial list of companies from a combination of the Fortune Global 500 and Forbes Global 2000. An annual revenue threshold of US$15bn is set and companies without physical supply chains are excluded.

Praising this year’s table-topper, Bailey adds: "Schneider Electric again performed strongly across every component of the methodology, including securing the highest number of Gartner expert votes.

“The company is reaping the benefits of a three-year transformation initiative that has strengthened customer and supplier relationships, while improving the resilience of their operations.”

Gartner also continues to recognise sustained supply chain excellence via the ‘Masters’ category, introduced in 2015. To be considered Masters, companies must have attained top-five composite scores for at least seven out of the last 10 years.

This year, Amazon, Apple, P&G and Unilever all retained their Masters category status.

Amazon has retained its 'Masters' status. Picture: Amazon

Trends driving the Top 25’s performance

Highlighting the underlying trends driving the performance of the Top 25 and Masters companies, Gartner points to three main standouts:

Attracting and engaging talent

CSCOs know that redefining the skills, roles, relationships and structures within their organisations is critical to driving high performance, but supply chain employee engagement continues to underperform other parts of the business.

Gartner says that, in contrast, the Top 25 leaders are more consistently funding people-centric strategies to drive higher engagement from their workforce. This includes using AI to redesign and automate processes to reduce work friction and investing in knowledge management and L&D systems.

“Efforts to improve people strategies will only be effective if the companies are meeting basic employee needs, such as respect, recognition, autonomy and flexibility,” says Bailey.

“The Top 25 leaders are accelerating cultural transformation and innovation through redefining the employee experience, utilizing connected worker and human-centric work design with a continued focus on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.”

AI-driven advances

Supply chain organisations are actively assessing Gen AI potential, especially in customer service, planning and manufacturing, but many are struggling to find clear use cases.

Gartner contends that the most advanced supply chains have been built on solid foundations in data and digital capabilities. They evaluate both traditional AI techniques and Gen AI to build practical use cases that benefit most from AI-driven advances.

Crucially, Gartner says the success of supply chain AI strategies will depend heavily on the success of attracting and engaging talent.

AI will undoubtedly have a dramatic impact on talent – the key is for CSCOs to prepare their workforce by considering future demand for both skills and people based on how the enterprise will apply the technology.

The consulting giant adds that AI can also be an enabler of antifragile supply chains, which stand to benefit from ongoing uncertainty.

Gartner says CSCOs must evolve toward an antifragile supply chain

Antifragile supply chains

Across various industries, leading supply chain organisations have been dealing with a complex, volatile and uncertain environment.

The solution, Gartner notes, is for CSCOs and their teams to embrace uncertainty, learn from it and evolve toward an antifragile supply chain.

Moving a supply chain into an antifragile state requires multiple shifts that influence how decision-making processes, technology, network design and many other elements of strategy are conceived and used.

“The antifragile state helps a complex global supply chain understand how it can achieve – and better achieve – its enterprise objectives, despite disruption and uncertainty,” reads Gartner’s report.

“Antifragility illuminates the key linkages between risks, disruptions and performance. This enables more uncertainty-informed decisions about resource use and investments.”