Apple turns over its entire inventory once every 5 days Apple s supply chain is ranked best in the world. Apple s supply chain is ranked best in the world by the technology research firm Gartner.  According to a new report by Gartner. part of the reason is Apple turns over its inventory once every five days.  If you think about that s pretty amazing.  Apple ells hundreds of millions of hardware gadgets all over the world and yet it doesn t actually need to stockpile its goods. The only company on Gartner s list of 25 companies that turns over its product faster is McDonald s, which is not exactly in the electronics business. Dell and Samsung rank two and three in Apple s category, turning over their inventory roughly once every 10 and 21 days respectively. We calculated these times from the report s Inventory Turn€ metric, which estimates the number of times a company s inventory is sold in a given time period. Apple s number is 74, according to Gartner (or 76, according to Forbes). From there, it s a common practice to divide by 365 to estimate the number of days [of] sales sitting in inventory.€ Fascinatingly, if you read about that inventory turn metric, you will find things like this: Although results vary by industry, typical manufacturing companies may have 6-8 inventory turns per year. High volume/low margin companies (like grocery stores) may have 12 or more inventory turns per year or more.€ So a typical company in manufacturing might do 8 inventory turns. Samsung does 17. Dell, which practically invented hardcore electronics supply chain management, does 36. Apple is doing 74! Photo credit:  Business Insider Via The Atlantic Share ThisSubscribedel.icio.usFacebookRedditStumbleUponTechnorati