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 Too often, Cannondale says, short term pressures lead manufacturers and retailers to focus on "the right now" instead of doing what is "right" for long-term business success.
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Who has the top consumer packaged goods and retail supply chains?
Each year, SCDigest reports on the annual survey results from Cannondale Associates, which ranks the top consumer packaged goods industry supply chains and the top retail supply chains in the primary store segments that sell those packaged goods products.
The full Cannondale survey and report, which it calls PowerRankings, was released in late 2009 and covers a number of company performance measures for both consumer goods manufacturers and retailers, including such areas as brand power, marketing programs, sales teams, overall business fundamentals, etc., as well as supply chain.
The rankings for this year, as always, were developed by asking retailers to rate manufacturers on each of these categories, and manufacturers to rank retailers on a similar set of attributes.
Both manufacturers and retailers are from the packaged goods, food and beverage areas, meaning the retailers rated are drawn exclusively from sectors such as mass merchandise, traditional grocery, warehouse clubs, and drug store chains.
The theme of this latest report is "The Cycle of Success," which the report says is more important than ever in this era of unprecedented market dynamics.
"The past 12 months have seen the emergence of changes at a rate that is unusual even for this industry," the report says. "Keeping up with this shifting landscape - let alone profiting from it - is a daunting task for manufacturers and retailers alike."
Too often, Cannondale says, these pressures lead manufacturers and retailers to focus on "the right now" instead of doing what is "right" for long-term business success.
As a result, Cannondale says manufacturers and retailers too often seem to be working at cross purposes. Instead, both sides need to pursue a more collaborative model that focuses on the five elements of the Cycle of Success:
1. Simplicity
2. Consistency
3. Follow Through
4. Creativity
5. Involvement
Top Manufacturer Supply Chains
We'll start with the top consumer packaged goods supply chains, as rated by their retail channel partners. The percentages in the chart below reflect the number of retailers respondents who said a given manufacturer's supply chain was in the top 3 in the industry. For a number of consecutive year's, Procter & Gamble has come out on top, though it took a bit of a hit, down almost 11 percentage points from its 2008 rankings, which were down 5% from 2007. The report says there was some feedback from retailers that P&G had become "less flexible" than in the past. However, it stills has a fairly sizable margin over second place Kraft.
Meanwhile, Nestle made a big move both positionally and percentage-wise, up 5 percentage points over last year's rankings. ConAgra and Campbell's cracked the top 10 this year, replacing Clorox and Coca-Cola on the Cannondale list.
One retailer, for example, said "ConAgra has really stepped up its game on supply chain. They went from a middle of the pack supplier to one of our best."
(Supply Chain Trends and Issues Article - Continued Below)
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Supply Chain Trends and Issues: Our Weekly Feature Article on Important Trends and Developments in Supply Chain Strategy, Research, Best Practices, Technology and Other Supply Chain and Logistics Issues 
