Apple turns its product inventory over every five days. According to a report from Gartner Research, the iPhone and Mac maker ranks behind only McDonald’s for the fastest inventory turnaround time.
Apple’s inventory doesn’t sit on shelves for long
Gartner looks at product supply chains and buying patterns to estimate how quickly companies burn through their available inventory. In Apple’s case, that works out to once every five days.
The research firm said, “Maintaining its record in the Number one slot was Apple, delivering total solutions to its customers through tightly integrated design of hardware components, firmware, a proprietary operating system and an ecosystem of applications that run on top of that platform. Stellar financials, which further improved this year, supported by the highest voting scores point to its combination of operational and innovation excellence, 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.”
Gartner assigns a number to each company it follows for the study, and this year Apple earned a 74. By dividing that number into 365, the firm determines how many days worth of inventory each company maintains.
The Observer: “Other tech companies didn’t fare as well with Dell earning a 36, and Samsung a 17. That means Dell it takes ten days for Dell to turn over its inventory, and 21 days for Samsung — and McDonald’s burns through its full inventory every 2.5 days.”
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. As mentioned above, the only company that turns over its inventory quicker is McDonald’s.
It is amazing to think that McDonald’s is the only company that turns its inventory over faster than Apple. McDonald’s has to turn it’s inventory over that fast, most of what it sells is perishable.
Apple’s operational excellence is largely thanks to Apple’s new CEO, Tim Cook, who streamlined the company’s supply chain and increased its efficiency and margins while Chief Operating Officer between 1998 and 2011.
