Apple’s ability to turn over its inventory incredibly quickly is seen as one of the Cupertino company’s greatest strengths. But just how quickly does it sell its products? According to Gartner’s Supply Chain Top 25 league table, Apple clears its entire inventory every 4.9 days. That’s faster than Amazon, Coca-Cola, Dell, and Samsung. In fact, the only company that turns over its inventory quicker is McDonald’s.
Gartner’s Supply Chain Top 25 table rates companies on their return on assets, their inventory turn metric, revenue growth, and votes by analysts and peers. Overall, Apple sits right at the top of the table, with a composite score 40% higher than Amazon, which sits in second place.
McDonald’s is the only company in the world that turns over its inventory faster than Apple, and let’s face it, that’s largely because most of its stock doesn’t last five days. But its quite incredible when you consider how many countries Apple serves, and how many products it offers, that it doesn’t stockpile certain goods.
Gartner said Apple’s “highest voting scores point to its combination of operational and innovation excellence.” It also noted that the company has “a zealous focus on starting with the consumer experience and working back through the design of its supply network, and mastery in orchestrating its end-to-end value network.”
That operational excellence is largely attributed to Apple’s new CEO, Tim Cook, who streamlined the company’s supply chain and increased its efficiency and profit margins while he served as Chief Operating Officer between 1998 and 2011.
Dell and Samsung take second and third place when it comes to inventory turnover, taking 10 and 21 days respectively to clear their entire stock. Those figures are based on the report’s “Inventory Turn” metric, which estimates the number of times a company’s inventory is sold in a given time period.
Source: Gartner
Via: Macworld
