Apple Corporation Operations Review

Apple Research The author of this report has been asked to conduct some web-based research about a company of the author's choosing. Things that will be answered to in this report will include the name of the company, the goods and services it deals in, where it is located, their internet address and why the author chose the company in question. The author of this report will also a few other questions relating to operations management and how Apple conducts it.

While some are critical of the way Apple does business, their methods and procedures have paid dividends for them over the years and there is little doubt that this will continue to at least some degree for the foreseeable future. Analysis The name of the company in question for this report is Apple Corporation. Apple is located in Cupertino, California. This would be in the heart of what is known as Silicon Valley. They are a combination of an online retailer and a maker of consumer electronics.

Their online venture is known as iTunes and this is where they sell or otherwise distribute things like podcasts, television show episodes, movies and so forth. In the consumer electronics sphere, they sell MP3 players, laptops, tablets and smartphones. Their internet address is easy enough to remember because it is http://www.apple.com. They can also be reached via their iTunes website as well as the download page for QuickTime, among other places (Apple, 2015). When it comes to social responsibility, Apple has decidedly had a mixed bag.

One could speak about their outsourcing at the same time as the corporate social responsibility because they two are very much linked. Indeed, one of the factories in China that Apple was outsourcing to ended up having very unsafe conditions (Tibken, 2015). It is not entirely clearly whether Apple knew this or not but it is clear to many others that Apple should have been more careful and analytical about the factories they use (or used) and how safe the conditions are at those factories.

Even if the factories do not belong to Apple (they do not), Apple is perceived to have a burden to know that for certain and stop using the factory if workers are being mistreated or left to work in dangerous situations (Apple, 2015). With that being said, it is clear that Apple makes a vast majority of their physical consumer electronic goods overseas and then they import them into the United States or wherever they are being sold.

There has been a slight departure from this in that Apple has started to have some of their goods made in the United States including the Mac Pro (Burrows, 2015). However, the manufacture of their goods in China has been and will continue to be the norm. Apple has tried to mitigate that fact, which is looked upon poorly by many and for more than one reason, by stating and showing commitment to more than one sustainability initiative such as recycling, contributions to renewable energy technologies and so forth.

As one example, they assert on their website that one hundred percent of their United States operations run on renewable energies, one hundred percent of their data centers run on renewable energies and that eighty-seven percent of their global operations run on renewable energy (Apple, 2015). Conclusion Apple has certainly faced some challenges as of late. The public relations black eye with the factory and the loss of their inspirational leader Steve Jobs have.