Analysis Of Apple 's Supply Chain

Apple business environment is competitive and fast-paced. Apple suppliers must understand this dynamic and be agile and flexible in responding to changing business conditions. All over the world, people are building Apple products and Apple has a responsibility to make sure that each person is treated with dignity and respect. It’s a massive challenge where Apple work is never done, but each year they implement meaningful, lasting changes across their supply chain. Because of this around the globe, Apple employees are united in bringing equality, human rights, and respect for the environment to the deepest layers of their supply chain. Apple goes deep into their supply chain to enforce their social and environmental standards by empowering workers through education, demanding that suppliers treat workers fairly and ethically at all times, having safe and healthy facilities, and hold their products and processes to the highest

Apple Inc. is one of the largest technology companies in the world. The company develops consumer electronic gadgets such as smartphones, computers, desktops, laptops, iPods and tablets. The company was formed in 1976 by Steve Jobs with an intention of making computers but later it changed its focus to include the manufacturing of consumer electronics. However, the company was dealt a big blow when its chief executive officer and founder Steve Jobs died. The company will therefore have to search for ways in which it will maintain its market dominance as well as capture new and emerging markets. This research therefore seeks to establish how Apple forecasts demand and manages its inventory (Apple Computer Inc., 2006).

When Tim Cook was appointed to be in charge with Apple’s supply chain, Apple became one of the leading companies. In 2012, Apple was said to turn inventory every 5 days and that was part of the reason the research firm, Gartner,

Amazon.com, Peapod, Dell, and many furniture manufacturers use push-pull supply chain strategies. Describe how each of these companies takes advantage of the risk-pooling concept.

The seed of McDonald 's success was sown in 1990 - six years before it started its actual operations. Sanjeev Bhar traces its supply chain management that played a vital role in its growth.

Apple Inc. is a company which designs, manufactures and sells PCs, digital music players, smartphones and other related products. The company was established in 1977 in California, US (Apple, 2014). According to Apple’s global supply network structure, the raw materials are mainly from US, Europe, China and other Asian countries. Next, all these materials will be sent to an assembly centre in China. After that, there will be two moving directions of these products. One way is to direct deliver products to customers who have already ordered products online through UPS or FedEx; the other rest products will be arranged in Apple’s warehouse in California. Once Apple stores and other retailers need

On April 1, 1976 Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne joined together to form Apple Computer Incorporated. The concept behind their company was the creation of an inexpensive, simple to use personal computer kit. Working out of Jobs’ garage in Cupertino, California the trio designed and manufactured their first product in three months. They named this product the Apple I and it went on sale in July 1976 for $666.66. Six months after the release of the Apple I, Ronald Wayne opted to sell his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for a meager $800. Soon thereafter multimillionaire Mike Markkula joined Apple and on January 3, 1977 the company was incorporated. Apple continued to gain

Despite all the efforts made by the company in the last decade, Apple has continued to face issues in this matter. In 2010 one of Apple’s largest supplier in charge of the production of iPhones iPods, and iPads, experienced a series of employee suicides due to the stressful and exhausting working conditions. In response to these actions,

Apple Inc. is an American multinational company which designs and sells consumer electronics and computers. The company has its headquarters at Cupertino, California. Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1976 to develop and sell personal computers.

The mechanical and financial benefits of this approach include extremely high inventory turns, minimal material or capacity limitations to growth, and excellent margins.” Intoxicating and transcendent – not words you see in most research reports. But it wasn’t always that way. Even AMR notes that historically, Apple had a poor reputation for supply chain performance – but the arrival of the iPhone in 2007 changed all that. “With the introduction of the iPhone, Apple could have stumbled at meeting demand or failed on quality. It did neither. Behind-the-scenes moves such as tying up essential components well in advance and upgrading basic information systems have enabled Apple to handle the demands of its rabid fan base without having to fall back on their forgiveness for mistakes.” A number of analysts make the point that Apple’s supply chain is in key respects different from those of most companies, in that it comprises physical and digital components in a way unseen before, with the company’s revenue and growth coming increasingly from the digital side. The changing nature of this two-sided supply system has led some to suggest that Apple’s supply chain is a new type of beast entirely. That’s not without its problems. When Apple rolled out the 3G version of the iPhone in 2008, there was no shortage of

Apple is known all over the world to provide excellence, when it comes to provision of its quality services and products with effectiveness in the implementation and design of their merchandise with products of high quality such as Mobile phones, Computers and Music softwares (Apple, 2015). The core business function of the company is to manufacture quality products since it is mainly a consumer company as most of its profits are derived from the sale of its hardware products. Their sales are generally from all over the world as the company is global and their products are considered to be in the high end of the market thus, high consumer product prices due to the excellent quality. Many of the manufacturing of Apple’s products is done overseas with over 600 locations in Asia handling the manufacturing of these products, and from these numbers, those found in Mainland China are about 331 locations (Supplier List 2013, 2013). Since most of the manufacturing is outsourced, this means that Apple is able to lower their costs of production significantly by reducing costs of labor as labor in China is quite cheap. From a report survey given by the University of Manchester which estimated that cost of assembling iPhones was quite low in China which led to a significant reduction of the price to about 47% for each iPhone as compared to the relative cost of assembly in the United States. With this key strategic move of lowering costs of

• Knowing it could not be the best at making chips, boxes, monitors, cables, keyboards, and the like for its explosively successful Apple II, Apple Computer outsourced 70 percent of its manufacturing costs and components. Instead of building internal bureaucracies where it had no unique skills, Apple outsourced critical items like design (to Frogdesign), printers (to Tokyo Electric), and even key elements of marketing (to Regis McKenna, which achieved a “$100 million image” for Apple when it had only a few employees and about $1 million to spend).

Apple’s supply chain is a huge reason for its success. However, just because they’re prospering now, it doesn’t mean that they can just sit back and rest on their laurels. There may be certain competitors or market forces that come into play in the future which will force Apple to either adapt their ways of doing business or get left behind.

Time describes the portion at which goods are created and revenue generated. Time decides how long resources are tied up in processes and unavailable for other uses. Time to develop new goods may important. The better time a company can control the associations that it has with its consumers, the more successful it will become.

Reliable distribution channels- Apple works with multiple distributors including retail stores, third party network carriers, online stores to distribute their products