2015 Supply Chain Top 25: The Art and Science of Supply Chain

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the September-October 2015 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

September-October 2015

It’s September, which means the kids are going back to school, and soon, you’ll spend the evenings helping them with their lessons. September is also the month that we publish Gartner’s annual look at the Top 25 supply chains. While the Top 25 is a celebration of great supply chains, the leaders also offer lessons for the rest of us who aspire to the top. It’s news you can use right now in your planning. And, we’ll have you home for dinner on Tuesday. We hope you’ll join us for this inaugural event.

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In May of this year, Gartner published its 11th annual Supply Chain Top 25, a ranking of the world’s leading supply chains. As always, a primary goal of the Top 25 is to foster the celebration and sharing of best practices as a way to raise the bar of performance for everyone. Another objective of the Supply Chain Top 25 is to shine a light on the importance of the function and profession—within our community certainly, but also for corporate executives outside of supply chain and the investment community at large.

The ranking is focused on identifying supply chain leadership, which includes operational and innovation excellence, but also other behaviors such as corporate social responsibility and a desire to improve the broader practice of supply chain management. While the list changes from year to year, there are some common characteristics that separate the best from the rest. This article discusses the insights and trends we’ve seen this year from the leaders.

What is the Definition of Excellence?
Gartner defines excellence as demonstrating leadership toward a demand-driven ideal. Our Demand Driven Value Network (DDVN) model has seven dimensions with interrelated areas of capability in supply, demand, and product lifecycle management, all enabled by robust strategy and governance. The maturity model follows five stages of progressive maturity along each dimension and tracks corporate supply chains through a journey from reactively operating in silos to eventually orchestrating for value across both internal and partner networks.

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