I am still trying to get my mind around the recent findings from the annual Trends and Issues in Logistics and Transportation report that show large companies are expanding their lead in terms of supply chain performance over medium and smaller firms. (See What Makes a Company a “Master of Logistics?”"

At the CSCMP conference where the report findings were first summarized, I ask for some clarification from the study's two primary authors, Dr. Karl Manrodt of Georgia Southern and Dr. Mary Holcomb of the University of Tennessee.

Two important points.

1. The findings were not, if you will, that being a larger company means you have a better supply chain, but rather that if you had a leading supply chain in terms of performance, based on measures such as inventory turns, customer service, etc., you were more likely to be a larger (> $3 billion) company than a small one. The leaders were mostly large companies.

2. The working theory is that larger firms invested more in technology, especially in the 2001-2003 period, than smaller ones did, and are now seeing the results; they also spend more money on supply chain integration.

They probably also have better people, on average. There is a natural migration from smaller to larger companies, especially if you are really good.

It's important to note this "large company trend" only started to re-appear in the past two years' results, after a decade of relative parity between large and medium. And in fairness, the performance deltas aren't huge.

I discussed this with my CSCMP partner in crime Gene Tyndall, where we wondered generally if larger companies aren't perceived to have better supply chains just because they get a lot more publicity. For whatever reason, it just isn't usually as interesting to hear what a $500 million company is doing than it is for a $10 billion one. Part of that is just that the problems and scale of the solutions almost be definition have to be greater at the larger companies. A novel instead of a short story.

And the report's conclusions were not based on perception but self-reported numbers relative to performance.

So I am going to ponder on this and do some research, but would welcome your thoughts. And if you are a medium size company with a great supply chain story, drop me a line at the feedback button below.

I’d love your thoughts on this.