APPLE'S SUPPLY CHAIN

Apple's Supply Chain

Abstract

The report is based on the six components of Supply Chain of Apple Inc. The topic of Supply Chain is very vast and it has got a lot of value. In the current scenario of the business world, the importance of Supply Chain has increased further. Apple Inc is one of the largest IT based companies in the world and they are having various operations in many parts of the world. This is the reason why the company needs to keep its Supply Chain operations efficient and must ensure the proper functioning of its components. The global environment is very tough and competitors are even a big threat for Apple Inc. Companies need to maintain consistent performance to perform well in the market and also needs constant improvement in their Supply Chain operations in order to achieve their objective. Therefore, Apple Inc will need to analyse their entire six components of Supply Chain to bring improvement in these areas for better performance.

Apple's Supply Chain

Body

Apple or "the company" is engaged in the design, development and marketing of personal computers, media devices, and portable digital music players. The company also sells a variety of related software, services, peripherals, networking solutions, and third-party digital content and applications. The company's portfolio of offerings comprises Macintosh (Mac) computing systems, iPods line of portable digital music and video players, iPhone handsets and iPad portable multimedia and computing devices. The company primarily operates in the US. It is headquartered in Cupertino, California and employs 46,600 employees. The company recorded revenues of $65,225 million during the financial year ended September 2010 (FY2010), an increase of 52% over 2009. The increase in revenues was mainly due to 93% growth in sales of iPhone and robust sales of the iPad. The operating profit of the company was $18,385 million in FY2010, an increase of 56.6% over 2009. Its net profit was $14,013 million in FY2010, an increase of 70.2% over 2009. (Boulton, 2009, pp. 41-75)

Supply chain configuration of Apple

The goal of configuration of Apple's supply chain is to establish a support tool for decision-making, which product managers at the company can utilize during the process of development of a product in the case, when they have decided upon the design of the product and have to make decision regarding vendors. (Chen, 2005, pp. 467-482)

Supply Chain Management at IBM

The supply chain of Apple links companies participating in different stages of the process together. In Apple, supply chain is a process of managing the production of different components of the products of Apple. In a research conducted by AMR Research in the 2010 by the name of “Supply Chain Top 25", they ranked the supply chain of Apple as the best among multinational giants in the whole world. They declared that the supply chain of Apple was an inebriating combination of magnificent pattern, inspirational software interfaces, and expendable commodities, which were digital. This superb design of supply chain has allowed Apple to produce the ...