What companies have the top top supply chains in the food and consumer packaged goods sector?

Well as usual, the analysts at Kantar Retail once again tried to answer that question at the end of 2012, picking up the work in the annual PoweRankings report that was started many years ago by Cannondale Associates, which Kantar acquired a few years ago.

The full report 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, and more. Supply chain management is one of those categories included in the survey.

The rankings for this year, as always, were developed through the interesting methodology of asking retailers to rate manufacturers on each of these categories, and manufacturers to rank retailers on a similar set of attributes. Most major CPG companies and retailers participate, with some 400 respondents in total across both groups.

Both manufacturers and retailers are from the consumer packaged goods, food and beverage areas. That means manufacturers in such categories as apparel/soft goods, electronics, hard goods, etc. are not included. Similarly, the participating retailers are drawn exclusively from sectors such as mass merchandise, traditional grocery, warehouse clubs, and drug store chains that focus on consumer packaged goods sales.

The scores represent the percentage of respondents that place a given manufacturer or retailer as having one of the top three supply chains in the industry.

This week, we will look at the consumer packaged goods results. Next week, we will publish the retail list.

For the umteenth year in a row, Procter & Gamble came out on top in consumer packaged goods - but its lead is slipping.

P&G was picked as having one of the top three supply chains by 28.4% of respondents - down a significant 6.9 percentage points from the 2011 results.

But last year's number 2, Kraft, also had a sharp tumble, falling 7 percentage points into the number 3 spot, at 26.8%.

General Mills rose a modest .8 points to 27.2%, but that was enough to move it into the number 2 spot for 2012.

As can be seen from the graphic below, there is then a fairly sharp drop from Kraft at number 3 at 26.8% to 21.4% for number 4 Nestle, which jumped an impressive 6.3 percentage points.

Top CPG Supply Chains for 2012

Source: Kantar Retail

Clorox and Kellogg move back into the top 10 this year, replacing Heinz and Colgate-Palmolive, which fell off.

Did the big costing cutting program at P&G and the distraction of Kraft getting ready to split itself into two companies have an impact on what is perceived as falling supply chain excellence? There is no way to know, but it is a reasonable question.

(Supply Chain Trends and Issues Article - Continued Below)