Analysis Of Apple's Supply Chain

The Greatest Supply Chain Assembled On many occasions, Apple Inc. has been voted to boast the most efficient supply chain in the world. By leveraging wealth and pure business strength, Apple has been able to construct a supply chain that is both efficient and highly profitable. While much of this supply chain construction has come from great investing and business decisions by Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, it has come at the cost of many factory workers’ well being overseas. Overall, the construction of the highly organized supply chain has given Apple a competitive advantage over the rest of the market. Apple has garnered a competitive advantage through all aspects of the supply chain. On the production front, Apple has made many high-priced

The Apple Store is in a league of it’s own. By having the Apple Store, Apple is able to track the demand of products and adjust production forecasts by the hour. This instant diagnosis of Apple products allows Apple to find defects within hours of being sold. Competitors are fixed selling products in Best Buy and through other retailers, and while Apple sells through other retailers as well, the Apple Store is advantageous in relaying product feedback straight to Apple headquarters. Through a program named early field failure analysis, or EFFA, Apple can quickly and efficiently diagnosis problems with Apple products. Satariano explains that the EFFA came through in 2007 with the discovery that sweat from a person’s face could get into the earpiece of the phone and short the screen. Using serial numbers, Apple was able to see the origin of the phone and instruct the manufacturers to plug the leaky phones with glue. The EFFA is a program overseen by AppleCare. Typically viewed as the warranty center for Apple, AppleCare also assess the most common consumer complaints on a week-to-week basis and relays the data to Apple executives. Although these specific problems were quickly diagnosed and may seem minor to the common eye, the change the manufacturing companies must make to fix the problem can be a massive undertaking. Since Apple is such a large company, they possess

After Apple released the details of the new iPhone 5 on September 12, 2012, the world learned that the phone would be available just nine days later. Apple had only created a relatively few amount of iPhone 5 before the unveiling on September 12. Pressure on suppliers, such as Flextronics, caused an immediate need for manpower. Through respectable hiring agencies, Flextronics was able to hire new employees, but it was not enough. This led to hiring agencies contracting out to sub agencies, which led to bonded labor. The sub agencies would reach deep into the continent to find able bodies. The demand for the job was so high amongst the indigenous, impoverished people that the subagents placed a price on the jobs. These prices left Flextronics employees owing money to creditors even after the jobs were terminated months later. Although Apple claims they had no direct connection to this bonded labor, they eventually paid close to $16 million to reimburse the excessive labor