Gartner : Announces Rankings of the 2019 Supply Chain Top 15 for Europe

Gartner, Inc. has released the results of its annual European Supply Chain Top 15, identifying supply chain leaders and highlighting their best practices. Analysts announced the results at the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference in Barcelona.

'Europe-based supply chain organizations continue to build on their strong performance in 2019, demonstrating exemplary demand-driven leadership and corporate social responsibility (CSR),' said Micheal Youssef, senior research director at Gartner. 'Beyond profit, leading companies focused on people and protecting the planet, with nine out of the 15 companies achieving a perfect 10 in the CSR category.'

Having attained top-five scores for seven successive years, Unilever became the first European-headquartered company to enter the 'Masters' category*, which Gartner introduced in 2015 to highlight the accomplishments and capabilities of long-term leaders over the last 10 years.

Unilever continues to lead by example, with strong digital supply chain processes and operations, including leveraging automation, data science and machine learning. Its leading position reflects a strong supply chain brand, solid financials and a perfect 10 on its CSR component score.

In the European Supply Chain list, Inditex scored the top spot (and No. 2 on the global list), followed by Nestlé, Schneider Electric, Diageo and L'Oréal (see Table 1.) There were two new entrants this year: Dutch chemical company AkzoNobel at No. 10 and Swiss life sciences company Roche at No. 14. Overall, eight companies improved their ranking and 12 European companies made it to the Gartner Global Supply Chain Top 25 in 2019, up from 11 in 2018 and 10 in 2017.

Table 1. The Gartner European Supply Chain Top 15 for 2019

2019 Europe Rank	2019 Overall Rank	Company	Peer Opinion(1) (162 voters) (25%)	Gartner Opinion(1) (38 voters) (25%)	Three-Year Weighted ROA(2) (20%)	Inventory Turns(3) (10%)	Three-Year Weighted Revenue Growth(4) (10%)	CSR Component Score(5) (10%)	Composite Score(6)
1	2	Inditex	1091	341	16.2%	3.8	6.5%	10.00	4.80
2	3	Nestlé	1262	374	6.9%	4.8	1.2%	10.00	4.27
3	11	Schneider Electric	677	404	5.4%	4.9	0.7%	10.00	3.71
4	12	Diageo	625	252	9.8%	0.9	4.3%	10.00	3.44
5	15	L'Oréal	858	229	9.9%	2.7	3.6%	8.00	3.38
6	16	H&M	582	155	13.7%	2.7	5.1%	10.00	3.35
7	18	Novo Nordisk	86	54	36.4%	1.1	0.8%	10.00	3.31
8	22	BASF	597	252	6.4%	3.9	-0.6%	8.00	2.89
9	23	Adidas	714	172	9.2%	3.2	7.9%	5.00	2.75
10	24	AkzoNobel	137	0	20.9%	4.6	-8.6%	8.00	2.61
11	25	BMW	733	131	3.8%	3.8	1.3%	10.00	2.57
12	26	British American Tobacco	171	28	12.6%	0.7	26.7%	7.00	2.48
13	29	Nokia	188	181	-1.9%	4.5	15.8%	10.00	2.24
14	31	Roche Holding	75	23	12.9%	2.4	6.0%	9.00	2.21
15	38	Danone	419	34	5.3%	7.0	3.2%	10.00	2.08

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

(2) ROA: ((2018 net income/2018 total assets)*50%) + ((2017 net income/2017 total assets)*30%) + ((2016 net income/2016 total assets)*20%).

(3) Inventory Turns: 2018 cost of goods sold/2018 quarterly average inventory.

(4) Revenue Growth: ((change in revenue 2018-2017)*50%) + ((change in revenue 2017-2016)*30%) + ((change in revenue 2016-2015)*20%).

(5) CSR Component Score: Index of third-party corporate social responsibility measures of commitment, transparency and performance.

(6) Composite Score: (Peer Opinion*25%) + (Gartner Research Opinion*25%) + (ROA*20%) + (Inventory Turns*10%) + (Revenue Growth*10%) + (CSR Component Score*10%).

Source: Gartner (June 2019)

The top three trends emerging across leading European supply chains that are accelerating supply chain capabilities are:

Personalization at Scale -In the last year, leaders have sharpened their focus on improving customer experience with personalization. 'Tailoring products and services to individual customer's needs is nothing new for supply chain,' said Mr. Youssef. 'However, personalization at scale is a key differentiator for more advanced companies, and requires a higher level of agility, supply chain flexibility and underlying technological capability in order to pull it off.'

Leveraging Ecosystems - Leaders of large corporate supply chains face new challenges, such as fostering local talent for advanced skills and minimizing plastic waste creation and ocean pollution.

They recognize problems of this scale can only be tackled by working in collaboration with an ecosystem of external partners. These partnerships will include groups that may involve traditional competitors, governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), academia, startups and solution providers.

Driving Business-Led DigitalStrategies - Companies at the top of the European Supply Chain are returning to business-led digital transformation. These companies are investing in digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics to elevate the operational and customer-facing function within their supply chains. They are also using digital twins and augmented reality (AR) to enable supply chain operators to run experiments on factory lines and explore solutions to equipment problems in a virtual setting before taking action in the physical world.

Gartner clients can read further analysis in the research note: '2019 Gartner Supply Chain Top 25: Europe´s Top 15.' More information on the future of supply chains can be found in the Gartner Trend Insight Report Converging the Physical and Digital Supply Chains. This research collection will help CSCOs and supply chain leaders understand the skills and competencies needed to thrive in the digital era.

Get information on how to innovate and scale the supply chain on the Gartner Chief Supply Chain Officer Insight Hub.

About Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference

Gartner analysts provided additional analysis and information on supply chain trends at the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference on June 17-19 in Barcelona. You can catch-up on news and updates from the event on Twitter using #GartnerSCC.