Operations Management In Apple Inc.

1. Understand the nature and importance of operations management

1. Understand the nature and importance of operations management

Apple Inc. is a multi-national organization that operates all over the world. Having its bases in United States, however the production industry is in China (Frost, & Burnett, 2007, pp. 103-113). Operational management in Apple Inc. in most cases has associated with the manufacturing sector, that is to say there is the conversion of physical goods from one state to a final product output. For an effective operational management there has to be efficient and effective management of the carried out operations for the best outcome of finished goods both in quality and quantity desired (Dediu, 2012, pp. 8-11.). The company engages in production of iPhones, laptops, desktops and iPods.  Operation management in Apple Inc. has a number of importance roles in ensuring the viability of the carried out project (Etherington, 2012).

1.1 Explain why operations management is important for organizations

1. Operation management ensures that the fundamental elements of management such as planning, directing, monitoring, staffing, organizing and motivating are done at every stage of the production process. This ensures that the day-to-day running of a project is closely monitored and the operation is flowing smoothly to achieve the set goals of quality, quantity and timely delivery of the end product at the set time and date. To achieve this, an organization employs operational management in combining and running all the factors of production such as capital, human resource, land and entrepreneurship (Chase, Aquilano, & Jacobs, 2001 321-323).
2. Operation management helps boast the overall productivity. Operation management has been used in the analysis of inputs injected into the production process and the output that the organization gunner from it. This helps in determining the profits margins and identifying new ways in which an organization should be operated in order to increase efficiency and thus achieving better returns thus boasting the overall productivity of the set project.

• Operation management has helped organization to adjusting parameters in their production lines to suit consumers’ needs, tastes and preferences. Through conduction of market analysis, operation management adjusts elements in the production process, focusing on the consumer needs to come up with a product that fully satisfies their tastes and preferences ensuring that their will maximum purchase of their finished products thus clearing their production lines for more to be produced (Krajewski, & Ritzman, 2001, pp.56-61).

1. Operation management ensures optimal utilization of the elements of production. Since there is a close monitoring of the day-to-day operations in the production process, the human resource is closely monitored on how they use the various raw materials in the production process. This ensures optimal utilization of factors of production and a timely delivery of the finished goods, which are of high quality (Leenders, Fearon, Flynn, & Johnson, 2001, pp. 187-183).

• Analyze the operations functions of Apple Inc.

Apple Inc. does employ ten decisions in their operation management to ensure that they always stay ahead of their competitors by having a lion’s share of the consumer market. These ten practices adopted by Apple Inc. has ensures a smooth internal operations through a careful implementation and coordination of both the management and the human resource efforts, the sales and marketing department and the supply chains that has put the organization ahead of their competition for almost a decade now (Bergvall-Kåreborn, & Howcroft, 2013, pp. 280-289). The ten decision employed in their operation management are:

1. Exceptionally designing their goods and services

Not only are their product wonderfully designed by the company’s engineers, but the design process has to be given a go ahead by the company’s officials. Taking Macs for example. They are designed by the company’s hardware engineers, however, a senior vice president from the organization has to access the design, give his feedback before the product is released to the final consumers.

1. Quality management

In this branch of operation management in the Apple Inc. emphasize is maintained on the standards of quality of products produced and their control measures. The organization’s senior vice president for operations within the organization does refer with other officials to ensure that the products produced are of high quality standards and ready to be sold to the final consumers. It is for this reason that Apple has won the hearts of many consumers for their high end quality products in terms of their designs, reliability, functionality, and durability. This has expanded the business even further to cut off cases of counterfeit products by engaging in their own marketing exercise, online sales and retailing as a means of operation management control.

• Process and capacity control

2. Evaluate the link between operations management and strategic planning

Through proper operation management employed at Apple Inc. the organization has been able to maximize support given to the human resource so as to increase their work outputs for their products designs and development. Their operational management process has also incorporated the suppliers so that to ensure the organization is always operating at adequate capacities with no lags.  The organization has also natured an innovation centre within the organization where the human resource can optimize their processes and find new production methods that could improve efficiency in their production processes.

1. Location strategy

To maximize their number of sales, the operation management has so carefully located Apple stores in major urban centres since it’s in this regions with highest foot traffic thus promoting their brand image through exposure. The company has also formed partnership with authorized seller to help distribute their products in areas where the organization hasn’t ventured yet. It is through this strategy that apple won the highest revenue per square foot in their retail space in the States.

1. Apple’s Layout Design

The organization has adopted a layout design that promotes the expectations of the customer. The company has spacious store all decorated with apple products form Macs to iPhones that ensures focus on their products and nothing else (Goggin, 2009, pp. 231-244). The operation management has also set the work areas in a form of an innovation facilities so as to tap of their human resource creativity and innovations to improve efficiency in workflow and productivity (Lin, & Chen, 2000, pp. 55-57).

1. The human resources and job designs

The operation management has tailed their human resource and job designs specific to the Apple Inc. trends. Basing the job designs on Steve Job’s emphasis on excellence, the management make the human resource work towards achieve these once area of specification (Mossberg, 2004). Additionally, the company management has ensure that its human resource work under optimal employee morale to continue building the company image and the good name that the company has defended ever since it was founded by Steve Jobs (Hawn, 2004).

• The supply chain management

The organization’s operational management has ensures that it has the best, most streamlined supply chain in the world. The management has adopted the automation of all their operations regarding supply, ensuring that there is a close monitoring of the current raw material used in production process and closely monitoring the suppliers. They monitor the supplier to evaluate their productivity and overall capacity ensuring that they comply with the company’s code of conduct.

• Inventory management

3. Assess how to organise a typical production process

The operation management at Apple Inc. uses a number of inventory management technique so as to effectively track and control Apple products. To ensure continuous manufacturing in their production line Apple uses first in, fist out method. This is so because the company ensures that older models of a products are sold first before newer ones are sold.

1. Scheduling

Through the combination of both the manual and automated processes of operation management, Apple Inc. ensures that the scheduled activities are carried out on the specified date, at the specified location and with the specified resources. The company has applied the scheduling process not only in the production process, but also in the supply chain> manual scheduling has been used by the company in individual apple stores for record keeping before they are keyed in for automation processing. The company carries out both the manual and automated scheduling with a key goal of maximizing the capacity utilization of human resource, equipment and facilities.

1. Maintenance

Through the use of dedicated maintenance team, Apple Inc. has been able to fully service the needs of the consumers in cases of breakages and replacements. By distributing their maintenance teams in different Apple stores, the company has ensured that their consumers maintenance need are fully met. The company has also employed an information technology team that maintain their servers ensuring that there is no network delay in the transmission of information to and from the organization.

• Evaluate the operations management process of a selected organization using relevant models.

Apple Inc. used a number of operation management models to ensure their continued dominance in the market. To do this Apple had to analyze what they were dealing with, that is desktops, laptops, iPod and software. Apple then adopted the following operation management models:

1. Demand forecasting

Apple adopted this operational model so that it can help them fully satisfy both the loyal and new consumers of their products. To do so, they had to analyze each year’s sales, and determines the number of sales of each of their products with their categories. They then analyze the market grown and forecast the following year’s market demand. This always gives the company an edge on what types of products they should produce in huge numbers and what not to, for example, the sale of IPhone has been growing over the years especially after the Chinese market demand for iPhone rose, the company had to increase of the production units for iPhones over the last few years (Grossman, 2007).

1. Inventory Management model

4. Be able to apply relevant techniques to the production of an operational plan for an organisation.

For an efficient operation within the Apple Inc. the company had to adopt the inventory management model as part of their operation management. Inventory management model kept a record with the supplier, determining their current production stock and making purchases before they are fully depleted. They also kept an inventory with their distribution channels and Apple store to analyze what type of their products are fast moving in which store so that they can keep they fully stocked at all time.

• Capacity management model

Apple Inc. has always used capacity management model of operational management for optimal operation within the organization and even out in the consumer market. Through analyzing their production capacities the organization has adopted more efficient method of production through innovative ideas coming from their human resource. They have also used this model to analyze the consumer market capacity and produced products that fully satisfy their needs and no losses realized from overproduction or underproduction (Jacobs, Chase, & Lummus, 2014, pp. 533-535).

1. Competitive advantage model

Apple has extensively used competitive advantage model to stage ahead of their competitors at every turn. Since the company has created is image with reputation from their quality products such as their premium quality, their reliability, their functionality and their durability the company has continued to use this key competitive advantages to stay ahead of their android and windows competitors.

1. Evaluate the link between operations management and strategic planning

The following are links between operational management and strategic planning:

1. Budget

A budget estimate is provided through strategic planning on the basis of the project revenue. A more accurate number is provided by the operational management that is used to measure the success of strategic planning.

1. Resource allocation

The operation management is directly involved in job description, job determination and the use of company resources. Strategic plan only outlines the needed resources to achieve the set goals.

1. Performance management

Operation management rely on management numbers to clarify their needs whereas strategic planning only set the management numbers by company projections.

• Appraise the importance of the ‘Three Es’ to organizations

1. Efficiency,

Efficiency, a measure of outs puts generates from given inputs, is used by their organization to determine if they are operating a optimal capacity. Efficiency is used by organization to device the best way of operation of using the given inputs to come up with the highest possible yields or outputs from a production process.

1. Economy

Economy in the production process can be seen as the costs of factors of production used and the tatal cost of finished products produced. Economy is used to come up with the most economic factors of production needed to produce quality products that would attract high volume of sales from the same.

1. Effectiveness

In the production process, effectiveness is used to describe what the production line has achieved. Effectiveness is used to describe a situation for determining whether the set goals of a production lie has been fulfilled or achieved.

The Importance of the 3E’s in an organization are:

1. The 3E’s helps boost inventiveness and innovation by the human resource by coming up with new production ideas that they incorporate in to the production line. This ideas lowers the cost of production as they increase efficiency (Hayes, 2006, pp. 20-22).
2. The 3E’s has led to the production of high quality products and in huge quantities thus increasing the profits margin through massive sales of the products.

• The 3E’s has helped businesses eradicate overhead costs of production through innovative and inventive ideas on better and more efficient methods of production that saves of both the effort and input capital required in the production process.

1. The 3E’s has helped in the fight against environmental degradation. Since we are using new and innovative method of production, there is the use of small amount of energy, and in most cases renewable energy sources like hydroelectric power, and getting rid of coal as a means of producing electricity to run the company (Slack, Chambers, & Johnston, 2010).
   • Assess the impact of the tension between cost minimization and quality maximization in organization

Cost minimization is a technique used to get the most effective means of product production within the required quality levels. On the other hand quality maximization selects the best outcome of finished goods or services with no concern of the input costs. Apple Inc. understands the use of poor quality products in their production line with an aim of minimizing cost will lead to the production of sub-quality products and this may affect their image. Apple thus uses high quality input products, to produce high end products that may be a little bit pricy than competitors but due to their premium quality, their reliability, functionality and durability customers do prefer Apple products than their competitors (Cusumano, 2010, pp. 22-24).

• Evaluate the significance of the five performance objectives that underpin operations management to organization.

1. Reliability: Apple products have been known to be the most reliable when it comes to electronics. Taking for example, the iPhones, made by high end and reliable electronic components have been proven to be the most reliable smartphone one can buy (Kahney, 2002, pp. 103-127).
2. Functionality: for example the iPhone, Other than the normal calls and messaging that other phones can do, the iPhones can do much more like photography, I messaging, accessing the internet, apple pay, 4K video recording, video conferencing and much more (Saponas, Lester, Froehlich, Fogarty, & Landay, 2008, pp. 357-388).
3. Premium build: no one can deny that the iPhone X series (X, XS, XR, XS max) are among the most beautiful smartphones in the planet than one can buy.
4. Durability: The Apple laptops are considered among the most durable laptops on the planet. This is so primarily because of the high end build that enables the Mac to stay much long than other brand laptops build with cheap electronic components (Thomke, & Feinberg, 2012, pp. 68-71).
5. Taking iPhone XS max for example with A12 bionic chip, the fastest phone processor in the market. It’s so fast that it easily crushes its snapdragon 845 high end android competitors.
6. Assess how to organize a typical production process

The main aim of production is to minimize the cost of production and to maximize output to achieve this, the entrepreneur has to come up with quality raw materials at reasonable prices, inject them into a production line, then maximize output by using efficient mean of production (Kleindorfer, Singhal, & Van Wassenhove, 2005, pp. 482-492).

3.1 Assess how linear programming adds value to a given production process.

Linear programming, is a mathematical model used by operations management as a quantitative tool to obtain the best solution for a given problem (Stevenson, Hojati, & Cao, 2007, pp 109-115).  Linear programming encompasses budgeting, labour, machinery, constraints and materials. The use of linear programming in the production process identifies the set goals for the allocated problem. Through the use of mathematical objectives, the linear programming come up with a set of techniques on how the solution could be solved optimally.

• Evaluate critical path analysis and network planning.

This is also referred to as network planning. This is a tool that is used by the management mostly in manufacturing, construction or production, in the planning process. Critical path analysis breaks jobs down in sections so that the dependency ca be determined. The critical path analysis follows the following steps:

1. Determine the activities of every human resource in the project
2. Determine the order in which the events will follow each other

• Display activities that has just commenced after completing a previous one

1. Leads to be followed so that the whole activity can take a lesser time
   • Analyze the need for operational planning and control in a selected production process.

Operation planning and control helps ensure that the project is done under the specified time limit. Operation planning and control is also useful in making sure that the company resources are used efficiently. This is achieved by ensuring that there is a minimization of wastes during the carrying out of the project. Operational planning and control also identifies areas with floats and distributes workers to other assignment where they could help. It also help to bring projects on track, especially where there was a delay.

1. Be able to apply relevant techniques to the production of an operational plan for an organization.

Operation management is used by different organizations to achieve top efficiency and effectiveness in the process of converting inputs or raw materials into finished products with an aim of maximizing the organization’s profits. Apple Inc. has been involved in operation planning, in that they set strategic goals and objectives to which they should meet. They do so through the following techniques:

1. Planning and control: Apple Inc. management always come up with a viable plan that keep the operation of the organization going. This is specifically addressed to their human resource so that they can meet their huge market demand. Since the human resource has been directed on producing what the market demand is, the Company focuses on operating smoothly with the suppliers for maximum efficiency and effective delivery of their products to their customers. To achieve this Apple develops both the long term, medium term and short term plans (Uurman, 2002, pp 57-63).
2. Project management: This refers to the knowledge, skills and technique that are required to carry out a project as efficiently and effectively as possible. For Apple Inc. this acts as a core strategic approach in ensuring that excellent results come out of their projects based on the goals and the objectives they made at the beginning of the project (Kraemer, Linden, G., & Dedrick, 2011, pp. 103-108).
3. Quality control: the process whereby the conformance of quality factors are reviewed in the manufacturing process. Emphasis are put on the quality of the end products and their input requirements. Quality control takes note of criteria, recording, integrity and performance (Voss, 2010, pp. 176-209).

4.1 Produce a set of clearly defined operational outcomes for a selected organization

The performance of Apple Inc. can be defined by a set of parameters such as then inputs, the raw materials, the production process, the finished goods, the outcomes and the overall impact to the organization.

1. Inputs: Apple Inc., gets almost all its raw material from making purchases from other companies such as Samsung and google. These raw materials include electronic parts, screens, processor, metals and plastics.
2. The production process: Apple Inc. tales part in a number of production activities to develop its finished goods. Take iPhone for example, it has to participate in the cutting of steel to act as sache, assemble the individual parts such as the A12 bionic chip, the screen, the motherboard among other parts.

• Outputs: Apple Inc. finished products such as IPod, iPhones and Macs from the product lines are immediately shipped to the consumer market for purchasing (Dedrick, Kraemer, & Linden, 2010, pp. 103-108).

1. Outcomes: the company the is faced with short term, medium term and long term impact either positive or negative depending on how well their products sell in the market (Wingfield, 2011).
2. Impact: the overall impact that Apple Inc. bring into the consumer market is what effect their products have to the final consumer. The quality, the service, the reliability and the functionality are some of the impact they bring.
   • Produce a network plan indicating the resultant critical path.

Apple Inc. has for long been listening to people’s need and preferences through listening to their contributions, the company has been making improvements on their products such that the  final produced products will satisfy the demands of many. However, to ensure privacy, apple requires its consumers to follow a series of steps to enable the company keep their devices safes for them. For example for iPhone X, these steps are:

1. The consumer turning on their iPhone X
2. Perform Initial setting up of the device

• Activate the iPhone X

1. The consumer should then set up the fingerprint ID
2. The consumer should the set a password
3. The consumer should then enter his or her Apple ID to sign in

• The lastly is to set up the Apple assistant, Siri

4.3 Assess how quality management techniques are applied to improve operations in a selected organization

To maintain their reputation Apple Inc., has always been very strict when it comes to quality control. Since the company’s products are well known for their functionality, reliability, durability, and beauty the company thrives to improve the customer experience with every new release. The company uses premium raw material component such as the Samsung screens on their iPhone X display that makes whoever is looking at it or watching a movies feels a theatre environment around him. Purchasing the camera components from google to ensure that the phone captures supreme images turning the device into a Steller shooter. The Apple Inc. has also use stainless steel which is a more durable metal on the sides of the phone to reduce sides’ impacts in case of drops. For the front and back, iPhone has been equipped with the hardest glass currently in production, corning glass, to minimize cases of screen cracks from drops.

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