Apples Quality Journey Improvement, Strategic Targets, Quality Philosophy - Case Study Example

Content Building Quality Organizations Application in Apple, Inc’s Quality Improvement By Name Presented to Instructor Course Institution, State Due Date Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………………… 3 Apple’s Quality Journey…………………………………………………………………. 3 Apple’s Strategic Targets…………………………………………………………………. 6 Quality Philosophies………………………………………………………………………. 8 Use of Quality Tools, Measurements or Benchmarks……………………………………. 9 Current Management System…………………………………………………………….. 11 Deficiencies in the Organization………………………………………………………….. 12 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………... 13 Introduction Emerging from an idea of just one man, Apple Inc. has exhibited tremendous growth and development to become one of the leading firms dealing in the design, manufacture, and marketing of mobile communication, personal computers, media devices, and portable digital music players. The firm also delivers related software, services, accessories, networking solutions, and third-party digital content and applications (Linden, Kraemer, & Dedrick, 2009, p.141).Presently, Apple primarily targets middle and upper class income consumers given that these particular demographics exhibit a tendency to willingly pay slightly more for products that guarantee a “better user experience” (West & Mace, 2007, p.19). This paper explores Apple’s quality journey improvement, strategic targets, quality philosophy, management system, and deficiencies within the organization. Apple’s Quality Journey Apple’s journey of quality improvement can be discussed from social, economic and environmental imperative perspectives. Apple has been important not only to the technology industry, but also to the economy at large. Looking at this economic imperative of Apple’s quality improvement journey, the focus is on what Apple has had and why the US and global economy at large need the firm to keep delivering what it produces. First, Apples is a significant driver of economic growth. One of the most interesting thing from an economic perspective occurred at the height of the recent economic crisis, whereby the fir posted quarter-after-quarter growth coupled with unprecedented revenue income despite the harsh conditions (Johnson, Li, Phan, Singer & Trinh, 2012, p.3). West and Mace opine that Apple has continually been a bright spot that has provided hope for many (2010, p.271). In fact, it was during the previous recessions that the company launched iPod and iPad, two distinct products that resulted from its investment in research and development. Similarly, the firm contributes significantly to the corporate earnings, which contributed immensely to the economic recovery. Also, it has basically revolutionized innovation in the software industry. Apple has been in the forefront in the creation of new software for iOS, Android and Windows Smartphones, besides other software innovations (West & Mace, 2010, p.270). Consequently, this reinvigoration of innovation in software development, which Apple is accounted for, has inevitably enhanced economic growth and creation of more jobs worldwide. Moreover, Apple creates a considerable number of job opportunities for the society. In 2012, the company created close to 514,000 jobs in the US, which justifies Apple’s huge commitment to the society. Considering Apple’s contribution to job creation, its iOS design and development has created about 210, 00 jobs in the U.S. alone (Jognson et al., 2012, p.12). Also, Apple has brought about is technological competitiveness. As important as the company has been to the global economy, the other most significant economic imperative of Apple is in terms of technological competitiveness. It has been incredibly important, particularly over the past one decade, to the worldwide economy’s competitiveness with regards to global technology leadership. Apple’s record innovations, such as iPod and iPad, kicked off this trend as more companies attempted to emulate its innovation by developing products to keep up with the pace. The iPad extremely altered the way people work, learn, play and use computers as it redefined mobile computing (Johnson et al., 2012, p.4). In communication industry, the revered technological innovation has helped Apple create competitive advantages. Almost all the products in this sector come about through technological innovation. To keep up with the pace and effectively compete with other market players, a firm in this industry has no option than continually introduce new products. Given the existence of many firms in the IT industry, Apple faces stiff competition from major rival companies such as Google, Microsoft, HP, Amazon and Lenovo (Laugesen, J. and Yuan, 2010, p.92). Despite its humble beginning, Apple has quickly become a legend. The primary factor underlying this state of affairs concerns its commitment to innovation as the source of survival and foundation of its business and incorporated this idea into its organization culture. Its innovation makes Apple distinct as the firm is synonymous with technological innovation in their clients’ mind. In the contemporary corporate world, recognition for responsible management and ethical performance constitute some of the major objectives of global firms. Consumers and the public at large seem to expect more from the private sector regarding their responsibility to the society. Globalization of information brought about by the rapid development of new modes of communication, enable to know rapidly and without geographical barriers. In this case, Apple’s achievement of a responsible management can better be viewed as a process than a result. Apple is one of the major multi-corporations, not only because of its relative size, but also particularly due to its impact on the establishment of a whole new industry delivering new products and services to enhance the society’s experience and quality of life. Innovation is the greatest asset the firm holds and offers to the society (West & Mace, 2010, p. 275). Besides that, the firm has in place a CSR strategy grounded in well-defined virtues, including integrity, empathy, and zeal, among others. Particularly, zeal is perhaps the virtue most incorporated in the firms core and is depicted in its rapid innovation on the bases of products and customer experience. By stressing CSR, the management brings forth the well known Apple zeal to social issues. In relation to supply chain, the company has most of details well articulated. Its policies regarding ethical performance within its supply chain are well explained. It has policies and understanding about its impact on the society. From Porter’s perspective, the firm features a “responsive CSR”, that is, it operates as a good corporate citizen, attuned to changing social challenges and addressing current or anticipated negative consequences due to its operations. From an environmental imperative perspective, the firm undertakes the measurement, effective management, and disclosure of its risk on the environment (Johnson et al., 2012, p.21). Apple uses carbon footprint as management tool of establishing the roots of carbon risks related to its products’ life cycle and employ innovative strategies to improve efficiency, lower cost and mitigate the adverse effects of its carbon footprint. Furthermore, due to intensive research in design and innovation, its products are designed in a manner to minimize their effect on nature, which include low energy consumption, small packages, and recycling. Apple’s Strategic Targets As depicted in Apple’s vision, mission and core values, the firm has clearly defined strategic goals. The firm defined the following goals in its annual report (Johnson et al., 2012. P.4). First, the firm is committed to bringing the best user experience to its clients via innovative hardware, software, components and services. Its operations strategy leverages its distinct potential to design and build its own operating systems, and other hardware and peripheral components to offer consumers new brand products and solutions to their unique concerns, with enhanced ease-of-use, great experience, seamless integration, as well as innovative design. It is not just enough for an organization to be innovative; rather it is critical to be innovative all the time (Amit & Zot, 2012, p. 41). The primary solution to help an organization continually fulfill this purpose and meet their clientele’s needs is creating a viable and sustainable corporate world that is based on one practice: “innovation”. Another strategy the firm has put in place to ensure best user experience is continual investment in research and development coupled with robust marketing and promotion are essential to the creation and sale of innovative technological products. To realize this goal, Apple is committed to enlarging its spectrum of innovation and production of third-party digital content and applications via online retail store, iTunes (Laugesen & Yuan, 2010. P.93). Creation of a sustainable brand may constitute one of the major challenges for corporate enterprises - to begin from scratch and create a product or service that attract millions of consumers to it. This tremendous success calls for implementation of excellent marketing tactics, which Apple has certainly shown it has. Through its App Store and iBook store, clients have a great opportunity not only to discover, but also download a large variety of products, such as computer applications, music and videos, using a Mac or Window-based iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. For instance, Apple launched the Mac App store in 2011 which facilitates quick discovery, download and installation of computer/mobile applications for their Macs. Another strategy of the firm is to support a community for the innovation and creation of third-party software and hardware and digital content, which are in tandem with Apple’s offerings. Additionally, the company aims at expanding its distribution chain to reach an increased number of consumers and deliver high-quality sales and post-sales support to them. While other brands compete for traditional strategies like shelf space, positioning, product promotion, among others, Apple spends good fortune in its excellent retail strategy. The company runs 325 stores across 11 nations (Linden, Kraemer & Dedrick, 2009, p.146). The company understands that it is critically important to interact with its customers a strategy it uses to comprehend their unique needs. While other industry players rival for differentiation and rely on software providers to add value on their products, Apple enjoys a competitive advantage primarily because it does not depend a great deal on suppliers for components as it manufactures its own software and hardware (Jonson et al., p.12). Effective administration plays an important role in achievement of these strategic goals. Leadership involves influence and inspiration - setting direction for a team to follow; it concerns creating value in the organization and leading people to accomplish a certain goal (Dye & Garman, 2015). It has a vertically integrated approach is instrumental to innovation, development and marketing of its products. Quality Philosophies In a discussion of the philosophical frameworks from which Apple operates, a number of management thinkers and theorists come in mind, including Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, and Philip Crosby. Deming observe that by practicing particular principles of management, institutions can improve the quality of their products and services and as a consequent, reduce costs. From Deming perspective, reduction of costs encompasses reduction of waste production, employee attrition and litigation and at the same time scaling up customer loyalty. The key, in Deming’s view, was commitment to continued improvement and to perceive manufacturing as a seamless as a whole, as opposed to system comprising incongruent parts. Deming’s philosophy can be depicted in Apple’s huge investment in research and development with the primary view of making great innovations to improve the quality of their products and services (Zairi, 2013, p.662). Furthermore, Juran’s philosophy, particularly his quality trilogy is also evident in the company’s operations. Juran’s quality trilogy involves quality planning, quality control and quality improvement. Apple attempts to incorporate a great deal of these elements. For instance, Apple conducts quality planning as it understands the need to improve the quality of its products, and established defined goals and strategies for attaining these goals. This is grounded in Apple’s pursue of planned change that calls for trained and qualified employees. Also, the company incorporates Juran’s thoughts regarding quality improvement as it committed to delivering greater user experience (Zairi, 2013, p.664. Improvement of its products through continued innovation is core strategy to improve the quality of its product and customers’ experience. Additionally, Crosby’s conceptualization of quality can help illustrate incorporation of his thoughts in Apple’s operations. Crosby defined quality as “full and perfect conformance” to the particular needs of customers (Zairi, 2013, p.667). Besides these three management theorists’ thoughts, the company is also committed to treating individuals the same and with due dignity, as it believes all people deserve an even level of human rights irrespective of their individual differences, such as race, gender, age, religion, and sexual orientation. Nonetheless, it is imperative to note that the common and central process underlying all these philosophies is quality improvement. Apple has a competitive advantage in the IT industry because it cares a quality customer experience with every brand it delivers to the market. The company has created an extremely excellent business model grounded in understanding and striving to meet customers’ requirements. From its corporate leadership, its vision to effectively customized retail outlets showcasing product designs void of defects, Apple is committed to offering amazing user-experience to their clients (Zairi, 2013, p.660). In a nutshell, Apple strive to create fun, but functional quality products that, in Crosby’s terms conforms to customers’ requirements and exhibit zero defects (Zairi, 2012, p.661). Use of Quality Tools, Measurements or Benchmarks To achieve its strategic goals, Apple employs a blend of tools, measurements, and benchmarks. For instance, on Apple’s “Swift blog” features a total of 75 benchmarks associated with most utilized Swift workloads, coupled with libraries for diverse benchmarking services, a driver for operating the benchmarks and a utility for making comparison of various metrics across a number of Swift versions (West & Mace, 2010, p.281). As an open source asset, the company allows developers to make relevant improvements, for example, new benchmarks focusing on performance essential workloads and general system improvements. Benchmarking helps Apple to become a more quality organization. As a firm involved with a considerable number of logistics, Apple also utilizes the six sigma tool as an advisory liaison. For example, it applied the six sigma by slashing the number of Apple’s suppliers from a hundred down to 24, and asked them to present better business deals to continue operations, encouraged many to locate next to its plants, and shut down tens of Apple’s 19 warehouses. Cook reduced the number of Apple’s key suppliers from a hundred to 24, forced them to cut better deals to keep the business, convinced many to locate next to Apple’s plants, and closed tens of the company’s 19 warehouses. The effectiveness of applying this tool was realized in the great monetary savings and enabled each brand computer to feature the very latest components (West & Mace, 2007, p.18). To enhance the quality of its products, the company also operates house of quality, which helps it convert qualitative user requirements to quantitative variables in order to deploy the functions forming quality as well as strategies for attaining its design quality into systems and component parts, and finally to particular sections of the manufacturing process. Apple also applies statistical process control to monitor and control several processes, such as manufacturing, supply chain management, and marketing. Also, the company makes use of valuable takeaways from Malcolm Baldrige National Awards. For instance, it derives insights from this process and instruct its management and staff on various elements, including; (i) how the top management leads the company; (ii) how the firm creates and sustains strong, lasting relations with customers; (iii) how the company creates and enforces strategic directions; (iv) how it utilizes data to support core processes; and (v) how it motivates its workforce. Current Management System Apple features a vertically integrated organization structure which is key to its success. Under its CEO, the structure has several departmental executives managing their respective units and work without any matrix relationship. This structure facilitated centralized decision making. Strategic alliance is an effective management tool at the company. Strategic alliance refers to partnerships where two or more firms seek to corporate to achieve mutual goals. Strategic alliances may be in the form of sharing resources, information, and risks to realize the mutual benefits. Compared to acquisition, strategic alliances are cost-effective as one firm obtains another’s innovation advantage without necessarily investing in new research and development (West & Mace, 2007, p.20). In light of this strategy, Apple has established several strategic alliances with several firms, including Sony, Motorola, and Philips, among others. Also, Apple has strategically aligned with Clearwell with the goal of collectively creating the latter’s E-Discovery platform for the former’s iPad. Moreover, Apple has strategically partnered with IBM, in which the two share the vision of delivering the critical elements of enterprise mobile solutions. Furthermore, the management system is committed to quality assurance by spending heavily in research and development to create products that are not only quality, but perform flawlessly as well. For instance, they outsource their LCD panel suppliers from Korea, which is heightens quality control and assurance. Also, the system excels in supplier management. In 2010, ARM reported Apple as the leader in supply chain management (Johnson et al., 2012, p.24). Apple owes its outstanding performance to operational and innovation excellence. To realize this, the company establishes contracts with numerous suppliers. On top of that, the company acquires qualified personnel and further revamps their skills and competencies through training and research, which translates to skilled based quality management. Equally, the current management system focuses on total quality management (TQM) that creates teamwork and collaboration. The management’s movements’ tight reins on its innovation framework and user skill to deliver utmost superiority for the clients’ experience. All these features make the management system have improved customer focus, amplified customer devotion, and enhanced innovation procedures, job security and employee confidence. Deficiencies in the Organization Despite its unprecedented growth and performance, there exist several loopholes in Apple. First, working conditions draw back Apple’s ability to be a quality industry. Firms are increasingly available for prospective employees and new clients (Johnson et al., 2012, p.8). How an organization treats its employees impacts its capability to outsource and maintain a competitive workforce. Creating a satisfactory work environment coupled with better employee relations may make not only workers, but also clients develop a positive perception towards it. Additionally, Apple has poor relationship with its suppliers (Johnson et al., 2012, p.8). The company faces a serious shortage in its supply chain that makes it challenging to meet anticipated sales targets. Also, its suppliers lack the capacity produce adequate parts (such as chips and LCD panels) to meet the current high demand of its products. To address the issue of poor working conditions, the company should attach value on their staff by putting their health and wellness first. The firm might seek to improve their workforce by offering competitive packs, diverse opportunities to facilitate staff professional development, recognition and empowerment of employees. By acknowledging individual employee or team’s behavior, effort, and accomplishments that support the company’s goal and values will support the management in getting personal with employees, putting them first, and finding a clear purpose (Dye & Garman, 2015). By providing opportunities for growth and development, their workforces will equipped with skills to perform tasks better, meet clients’ needs and boost Apple’s competitive advantage. Besides that, Apple needs to take appropriate measures to ensure a steady supply of parts. This may involve making strategic partnership with companies manufacturing its core parts to ensure an efficient supply chain. Conclusion Starring from a one man’s idea, Apple Inc. has exhibited unprecedented growth to become one of the leading firms in the IT industry. Its commitment to continued investment in research and development, and innovation has made the company create and deliver relatively quality products and services, which make it a quality organization. Also, its excellent leadership has played a major role in its success. However, the firm has to improve working conditions of its staff, especially in its supply chain, and address the poor relationship with its employee to ensure its continued growth and quality improvement. References Amit, R., & Zott, C. (2012). Creating value through business model innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review, 53(3), 41. Dye, C, F, & Garman, A., N. (2015). Exceptional leadership: 16 critical competencies for healthcare executives Johnson, K., Li, Y., Phan, H., Singer, J. and Trinh, H., 2012. The Innovative Success that is Apple, Inc. Laugesen, J. and Yuan, Y., 2010, June. What factors contributed to the success of Apple's iPhone?. In Mobile Business and 2010 Ninth Global Mobility Roundtable (ICMB-GMR), 2010 Ninth International Conference on (pp. 91-99). IEEE. Linden, G., Kraemer, K.L. and Dedrick, J., 2009. Who captures value in a global innovation network?: the case of Apple's iPod. Communications of the ACM, 52(3), pp.140-144. West, J. and Mace, M., 2007, February. Entering a mature industry through innovation: Apple's iPhone strategy. In DRUID Summer Conference (pp. 18-20). West, J. and Mace, M., 2010. Browsing as the killer app: Explaining the rapid success of Apple's iPhone. Telecommunications Policy, 34(5), pp.270-286. Zairi, M., 2013. The TQM legacy–Gurus’ contributions and theoretical impact. The TQM Journal, 25(6), pp.659-676. Read More