Only About 25 Percent of the Fortune 125 have a Single, Integrated Global Supply Chain Structure under a Chief Supply Chain Officer

CSCO Insights Editorial Staff

How many companies have a tuly integrated supply chain organization?

CSCO Insight recently  reviewed the corporate web sites of the top 116 “product” companies from the Fortune 500 list, meaning that we excluded insurance companies, banks, software companies such as Microsoft, and other services-oriented firms, though included, of course, retail and wholesale as well as manufacturing companies.

We looked at the corporate officers and key executives on each company’s web site to see what supply chain related executives were listed among the company leaders, supplemented by other research. 

The analysis is interesting. While some titles and descriptions were open to interpretation, we believe that 29 of the 117 companies reviewed, or about 25%, have what appears to be an executive responsible for end to-end supply chain.

Two additional companies, such as Whirlpool, listed a single executive with full supply chain responsibility, but for North America only. Another 31 companies, or 26%, listed a supply chain or logistics executive of some kind among its leaders, but which did not appear to have full supply chain responsibility.

Ten companies (8.5%) listed only a manufacturing executive and another five (4%) had only a purchasing/procurement executive. A full 40 companies (34%) either did not list any supply chain-related executive, or had supply chain listed among many other responsibilities under the COO.

This data is summarized in the graphic below.

Our research squares with anecdotal evidence from Dave MacEachern, head of the supply chain practice at Spencer Stuart, one of the leading executive recruiters in this space.

“The number of fully integrated supply chain organizations is still surprisingly low but increasing,” MacEachen says. “If I were to guess, it is 25% of the time that we see true end-to-end supply chain requirements when companies are searching for a supply chain executive.”

For the Full CSCO Insights Report, go to: The Integrated Supply Chain Organization.