Capstone Week 6
Process Improvement Plan: Apple
Marvin Ross
Excelsior
1 Oct 17
Process improvement can be referred to as a series of continuous processes that a company can deploy to improve its products or services using. Process improvement involves the evaluation of processes and resources to identify areas where efficiency, effectiveness and flexibility can be improved or upgraded. Better still, this process is undertaken to ensure that it provides that much needed competitive edge to the company while also aiding in the decision-making. Other than price, throughput, quality, and responsiveness are the major processes that lead to inefficiency . These are peripheral designs as they can decrease costs and improve the process if efficient. In addition, these processes will aid in identifying gaps in the contemporary activities. This is achieved by providing a clear vision to managers on the redundancies and inefficiencies within the organization. Improved business processes equate to better customer service, according to Nebraska & Nebraska (2013) better customer service will result in profit growth. For every company to remain competitive in the market, it has to ensure that customer satisfaction is paramount. Healthy processes will enable the company to realize the room for improvement (Nebraska & Nebraska, 2013). This paper seeks to elucidate and provide rationale for the use of resources such as software, hardware, real estate, training, employee payment for training and human capital.
The first resource is the software. This is a significant tool for the improvement process as the world is turning into a global village, therefore, the use of software is imperative to realize process improvement. Software can be used in contexts such as e-commerce, online bookings and other technological advancements that are commonplace in the business environment. They enable the business to truly be international, again, increasing customer satisfaction as they can use software from home thereby increasing effectiveness (Nebraska & Nebraska, 2013).
The hardware involves creating goods that are appealing to the customer, this should be in line with the customer requests. This will ensure the tastes and preferences of the customers are met at Apple. For real estate, the company can and should invest in real estate as it is currently one of the most profitable sectors globally. The profit realized in this area can be used to expand into other markets and research. Training and its materials are significant tools for the employees, there are numerous training materials available to further upgrade the knowledge base of Apple’s employees that include; instructor guides, job aids, PowerPoint slides, icebreakers, activities and exercise books, post assignment and promotional advertorials (Popham, 2011). Advertorials can be designed to help improve the quality of the tasks performed, particurly they can be used to ensure that the new employees grasp the culture, methods and relationships at Apple. Training funding must become a significant budget item as it shows the employees how much Apple is investing in them. Also, when companies pay for employees training, they ensure that employees are keen and grasp the content exclusively (Popham, 2011).
The major issue with human capital is how it is managed, to ensure that there is adequate control of human capital the management team should incorporate measures such as team management and provisions for incentives. These incentives shold be the rewards paid after achieving predetermined milestones recognized by the trainers, management, and the employees. Everybody should have a target goal in every sector of the company to ensure that the process implementation is easily integrated (The United States, Hanford Site (Wash, United States, DESAI, & PHMC (US), 2009).
The improvement process is vital in any business. However, to ensure that process improvements are well integrated, diverse resources must be used to guarantee the success. The major reasons why numerous resources must be used are as follows. One, there is increased revenue when numerous resources are incorporated, and used to the maximum. This is facilitated through the interrelation in the usage of the resources which will increase profits. Money, time and people are factors of production therefore, they should increase the inventory delivery. Similarly, using these tools in combination will reduce administration costs as there will be fewer errors within the company (The United States, Hanford Site (Wash, United States, DESAI, & PHMC (US), 2009).
We intend to use to four to six months to ensure that the process is fully integrated, all employees are trained and update all the documents to reflect the changes. This time will be used to ensure that all the drawbacks that come up with the new system are well mitigated. Again, before fully integrating the process, we will have to ensure that it is introduced gradually before do away with the old process; this will help the organization to realize the problems with the new system. Better still, training the employees on how to cope with the new system will take some time because some employees are quick to adapt to the new changes compared to others who will shift gradually. Also, updating the documents will take some time because the process will be totally different from the old one (The United States, Hanford Site (Wash, United States, DESAI, & PHMC (US), 2009).
We need resources to ensure that all the processes that we wish to implement are well funded as they require a lot of resources. They require time to be accomplished, time is a significant factor as the processes will be integrated gradually to enable the researchesr to realize their drawbacks. At the same time, money is required for training and the new systems that will be used by the new processes. Lastly, the people are vital as they will be involved in the implementation of the process (Popham, 2011).
Financially, Apple has enough funds to support all these endeavors, Apple is one of most profitable companies in the world. Below is the profit margins realized by Apple in recent years.
This is the profit margins of all products produced by Apple. This demonstrates that Apple can fund all company’s endeavors (Popham, 2011).
References
Nebraska, & Nebraska. (2013). Strategic plan, 2013-2016.
Popham, W. J. (2011). Transformative assessment in action: An inside look at applying the process. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
The United States, Hanford Site (Wash, United States, DESAI, S. P., & PHMC (US). (2009). SNF project engineering process improvement plan. Washington, DC: United States. Dept. of Energy. Office of Environmental Management.