Capstone Week 6

Identifying Apple’s Struggle

Marvin Ross

Excelsior

3 Sep 17

Apple is an organization that it has its headquarters in California, United States. The company deals manufacturers different products like mobile phones, computers, software, and accessories for both mobile phones and computers. The man behind the successful company is the late Steve Jobs. Though the company has its headquarters in California, it has branches all over the world. However, as far as the production of its products is concerned, the company opened its manufacturing plant in China.

Shipping and imbalanced manufacturing of goods are the two major issues that the company is dealing with. Apple iPhone 7 is one of the recent brands of the company. However, despite the high anticipation by the customers, the product did not reach a big number of customers as it was intended (Thao, & Tsanthaiwo, 2017). The problem that has been associated with that is the shipping process. In any given organization, there must be a mechanism in place which helps an organization to make sure that customers get the organization’s product at the right time and in the right quantity. However, apple still lags behind when it comes to meeting the demand of the customers on the ground.

One of the reasons why apple is still struggling with the shipping problem is because of the shipping organizations and suppliers. In 2015, apple delayed shipping its smart watches after the supplier supplied the company with faulty parts. Lack of a competitive shipping company is also an issue when it comes to the issue of shipping at Apple.

The sales of Mac PC have declined over the past few years. Apple is making more profits in a month on iPhones than what it makes on Mac PC in one year. The strategic team seems to have focused its attention more on iPhones thus ignoring the Mac PC. According to research, soon apple might not have its market share on Mac PC since other organizations are capitalization on Apple's failure. The inefficiency by apple is not due to lack of resources by is a management issue; the management has neglected the upgrade of its Mac PC.

Overreliance on specific shipping companies can be termed as one of the factors contributing to Apple's shipping problem. The factor has led to apple compromising on its shipping process (Thao, & Tsanthaiwo, 2017). The factor is related to policies and procedures because the company can choose to amend the policies and only offer contracts to companies that are dependable rather than waiting for companies which end up disappointing. There are no defined rules when it comes to the prioritization of products, and that is why the company is regretting the manufacturing of Mac PC and paying much attention to the product of iPhones.

Everything happening in an organization must be approved by management. When the CEO of apple was asked about the problems, he did not deny but promised that he was going to do all he could control the situation (Walonick, 1993). The admission by the CEO is an indication that the issue was related to the management. At the same time, the management has been given the power to make decisions concerning all processes and therefore liable for any process failure.

The ethical issue evident in this case lies with the supplier. For example, there was a time when a delay was caused because the supplier provided faulty products (Brown et al. 2013). Therefore, such an issue will be a concern in implementing the improvement plan. On matters of social and legal conflicts, there are none thus making it easy for the implementation of the plan to take effect from the perspective.

References

Brown, S., Blackmon, K., Cousins, P., & Maylor, H. (2013). Operations management: policy, practice and performance improvement. Routledge.

Thao, T., & Tsanthaiwo, S. (2017). Apple Inc. In the Years to Come.

Walonick, D. (1993). Organizational Theory and Behavior.