Global Supply & Demand Chain Management Doc

Running head: GLOBAL SUPPLY & DEMAND CHAIN MANAGEMENT
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GLOBAL SUPPLY & DEMAND CHAIN MANAGEMENT
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Global Supply & Demand Chain Management
Overview of the Apple Inc. Company
The Apple Inc. is a global American technology company whose head offices are
found in Cupertino, California. The company is involved in the designing, developing and selling
computers software, consumer electronics and various international online services. The
company's computer hardware consists of the Mac personal computer, the iPhone smartphone,
tablet computer, the HomePod smart speaker, the iPod portable media player, the iPad, the Apple
TV digital, and the Apple Watch smart watch (Renz, & Herman, 2016). The software products
offered by the company include the famous iOS and macOS operating systems, the Safari web
browser, the Xcode, iTunes media player, and iWork and iLife productivity and creativity suits
such as the Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro. The online services offered by the company include
the iOS App Store, iTunes Store, iCloud, Apple Music and Mac App Store.
Steve Jobs, Ronald Wayne and Steve Wozniak are the individuals who founded the
Apple Inc. company in the month of April in 1976 with the initial aim of selling the Wozniak's
Apple I personal computer. In January 1977 the company was incorporated as Apple Computer,
Inc. and the sales of the company's computers, the Apple II included, had a significant revenue
growth and momentum. A few years later the company hired several computer designers and

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they established a production line with the staff they had. The company became more public in
1980 and gained instant financial success. The company has been involved in the design and
production of computers with innovative and creative user interfaces for so long up to date.
However, the company has experienced some problems that are caused by the limited software
titles and the high price tag charged for it services and products. The power struggle between the
executives of the company also became a challenge and led to the resignation of Jobs who went
and started his company named neXT. In I997, Gil Amelio who was the company CEO bought
neXT and Job came back to Apple and served as the CEO and initiated so many developments
including the opening of retail stores for the company in 2011. Currently, the company is ranked
as the largest information technology company globally and the second largest manufacturer of
mobile phones following Samsung. The company has around 499 retail stores and 123,000 full-
time employees operating across 22 countries.
The company faces competition from various large international organizations such as
the Microsoft Windows which offers similar products and services in the market. The Microsoft
Windows Company, for instance, offers low-priced products in the computer market and this led
to the decrease in the sales of Apple's personal computers. For the 2017 fiscal year, the Apple
Inc. company recorded worldwide annual revenue of $229 billion. The Apple Inc company
enjoys a level of brand loyalty and for several years it has been ranked as the most valuable
brand in the world.
Supply and Demand Chain Management of Apple Inc
There has always been a discussion on the macroeconomic dynamics and how that affects
the success of the Apple Inc. company. The Apple Supply chain management (SCM) practice
has raised so many conflicting views concerning the success of the company (Dellana & West,

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2016). Many people believe that the secret weapons that make the company be at the top of the
world's leaderboard include the sophisticated software systems, the extraordinary inventory
control as well as the company's supply chain model.
The company has been criticized by the American public since it has not located is
operation activities in America and also about the working conditions of the Apple employees
working abroad. The issues of concerns that have been brought out on the working conditions
include the low pay, the 12-hour shifts for 6 days per week and the life in dormitories. The fact
that the company has changed the world using its innovative consumer electronics is not just
enough; Apple has to also reconstruct the American manufacturing especially to comply with the
culture of having a norm of high wages and reasonable working hours. The company has been
ranked to be having the best supply chain system for several years as shown in the table below.
Apple provides a perfect avenue and a framework for us to discuss the significant change
occurring across the global economy in the past few years and they affect the operations of
global business organizations. Several questions have been asked concerning why the