Importance of Process Design on Product: Apple

Question:

Critically evaluate methods of planning and organising efficient operations and networking, analyse the problems of controlling component activities and of controlling quality and critically discuss methods of project evaluation and of scheduling resources.

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Answer:

Introduction to the product

In this report the product/service of Apple company will designed or modified. Apple Company is an American multinational company of technology whose headquarter is situated in Cupertino, California. The Apple Company develops, design and sell computer software, consumer electronics and online services. The hardware product of Apple includes iPhone, Smartphone, android phone, the iPad tablet computer, iPod portable media player, Mac personal computer and Apple watch smart watch. The consumer software for Apple include iOS and OS X operating system, the safari web browser, the iTunes media player, iTunes media player, iWork and iLife creativity and productivity suites (Dahl, 2011). The online services include Mac App Store, iTunes Store, iCloud and iOS App Store.

Apple is the world’s largest company in information technology and the second’s largest in the mobile manufacturing in the world. The company was established in April 1976 Steve jobs, Ronald Wayne and Steve Wozniak for the selling of personal computer kit of Apple1. The first generation smart phone iPhone was launched in 2007 at a price of 499 dollars of 4 GB and 599 dollars of 8GB models. In addition to 4 and 8 GB models the 16 GB model was launched on 5 February 2008. It has many unique features such as 2.5 G quad band GSM with Apple’s Mac OS X application mail and safari, also have Dashboard and web based Google weather and map.  A second version was launched in July 2008 named as iPhone 3G with low price of 199 dollars of 8GB and 299 dollars of 16 GB (Dykstra-Erickson and Hoddie, 2000).  This version of iPhone support GPS navigation and 3G networking. A flat silver back and large curved antenna features are removed in this model to give it a glossy look.  Software capabilities are also enhanced by the releasing of App store to download relevant application. In July 2010, the Apple Company redesigned the iPhone and released the iPhone 4 (Brakta, Thakur and Handa, 2013). It redesigned features are 960×640 display, for enhanced gaming a gyroscope, Apple A4 processor, 5MP camera with LED flash, face timing video calling and  a VGA camera in front facing. After a short time of release it finds the reception issue due to stainless steel band at the edge of the phone which serves for Wi-Fi and phone cellular signals. After this, by the overtaking Nokia Company for becoming world’s largest smartphone maker, it launched iPhone 4S on 14 October 2011having feature of Siri voice assistant technology and Apple A5 processor. In September 2012 it launched iPhone 5 having a 4 inch display, Apple A6 upgraded chip, 4G LTE connectivity and several improved features. In September 2014 it launched the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus both having display sizes more than 4 inches. After the one year it has introduced a new version iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S plus acquiring 3D touch, rear camera 12MP and faces camera 5MP. In 2016 it launched the iPhone 6SE having same display size 4 inch, as 5S and all features of 6S only the removal of 3D touch (Ehrenberg, 2011).

Now the Apple Company is going to design the iPhone 7S having many improved features. This report will discuss the design process effect on iPhone 7S.

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Importance of process design on product

Process design is a very important task because it directly affects the quality of the product. This the place where quality, designs and manufacturing come together (Chen and Li, 2002). It was studied in researches that the 80% of quality issues occurs due to design process in the mass production of the product.

Design for manufacturing

 This is the set of tools or processes are used for designing of product aiming at the mass production. These tools are for optimization of mass production. In short design process is the process which relates to the adaptation and optimization of the design of the product to reduce cost, time and resources during mass production. This activity is done during the engineering phase after the achievement of base engineering. Some engineers state that it should be the earliest stage of engineering and there should not be waiting on the last stage of the design optimization (Gent, 2014).

Usefulness of design process

The goal of the design process is economical and easily manufacturing of the product. The importance of process design of the product is that the 70% of the manufacturing cost is determined by the design process and only 20% with production decision which include planning and machine tool for manufacturing (Robin and Girard, 2010).

Reduction in total number of parts

When the basic design of the product is manufactured by the engineer, then he starts thinking about the optimization of the manufacturing design without affecting the client requirement and product specifications. By the manufacturing process optimization, there should be reduced in total number of parts of manufacturing (Grinyer, 2011).

Reduction in the total number of parts is the best way to reduce the manufacturing cost of the design process. Less part will lead to less cost by reducing the cost of purchases, time, inventory, processing time, handling, engineering time, development time, equipment, service inspection and testing.

The product development process of Apple Company is the best design process ever implemented. Apple Company, the world’s first 1 trillion dollar business organization is the ideal in designing process and the designers can learn a lot from their learning process. It is not surprising that the business market advantage of Apple Company is its design process (Dahl, 2011).

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Aim and objective of product using product design

The design or modification of the product should be such that it can achieve the aim and objectives of the designing process.  The Design objective is accessible, cost effective, functional/operational, aesthetics, productive, secure, historic preservation and sustainable and interrelationship between all must be evaluated, understood and applied appropriately. These objectives are explained below.

Accessible: design process will help to consider the requirement and the wants of disabled people.

Cost effective: With the help of the design process the effective cost of manufacturing can be minimized according to the budget

Aesthetics: The design process will fulfill the aim of the better physical appearance and building block images of product.

Functional/Operational: spatial needs and requirements and system performance and durability and maintenance of building elements of product can be achieved by the product design.

Historic preservation: The aim of the enhancement of the features and the features which are working very better and are helpful should be present in the version can also be achieved by the design process (Syberfeldt and Gustavsson, 2014).

Secure/Safe: the objective that the product should be safe and secure for human use.

Productive: the product feature which will help the human being a number of their works.

Sustainable: Building elements and strategies that will increase the environmental performance of the product.

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 Stages of Apple’s product designing process

At the Apple Company designers have served as royal members where the product design or modification conforms to the newer version. In spite of giving the design to manufacturing or finance department this all conform to the want of designing team controlled by Jony Lve. At Apple, designers have no contact with the finance department and in the terms of cost and manufacturing material they have unlimited budget. The studio of industrial designing at Apple is the womb of the apple products. It is the first place where they are manufactured firstly and only members of company support Jony Lve in designing process (Ujiie and Matsuoka, 2009).

New product team

Once it was decided that a new product will be launched a separate team is selected and organized. This team is segregated from the rest of the Company by secrecy agreement and building section is locked to make space or room for the designing of new sensitive product. This will create a new startup in the company and freeing them from the reporting to the higher members of the Apple Company (Ingram, 1998).

 New product process in Apple

Once, the design process of the company starts, the apple new product, process put into the action. ANPP is the document which includes the steps involved in development of designing process in detail. ANPP is not the original concept of the company, but was used in the manufacturing of Macintosh (Isaacs, Ray and Smith, 2009). It tells about the stages of development and responsible for the completion of the manufacturing process. It decides who will work for the designing and when it will be completed.

Reviewing the product on every Monday

The executive team meets every Monday to the designing team to go over every new product which is in designing process. Apple has very low new product which is developed at a particular time, so the executive team is able to complete it on every Monday. If it happened then it will be reviewed on next Monday. So this is impossible that any new product should be reviewed after two weeks.

 The EPM mafia

Once the production starts, than two responsible persons are appointed to bring them into fruition that is the global supply manager and the engineering program manager. The latter has absolute control of the production process. So he is known as EPM mafia (Löfqvist, 2010). These positions are helped with the executive teams and they spend most of their time in inspecting the production process. The program manager and supply manager cooperate with them, but they are not tension free. They always make the decision what is best for the production procedure.

Once the production completed, it is again designed and tested

There are leaks that there is a display version of the iPhone that’s ever been released. In turns, Apple if one built a product redesign it and sends it to production procedure again. This process takes about 4-6 weeks to gather the workers of Apple which are responsible for leakage. The EPM, then send back the beta device to Cupertino for testing and comments hopes that the iteration of new product. So many versions of a given product are completed. This is a very expensive way of designing a product, but in Apple it is a standard (Lofstrand, Andrews and Karlberg, 2011).

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These are the stages of production of Apple to illustrate the process design.

Analysis of the impact of performance objectives of the product design

Competing the global environment is only possible with the product design. Product design leads to the organizational success because it directly or indirectly estimates the all critical impact of success.  Variance in Customer demand leads to produce a variety of products, shift quickly to new full-featured and innovative product. In current time, the purchase decision making by the customers depends upon the growing factor list of newer products. The Customer’s purchase decision is based on price and quality of product. These dimensions are important, but newer dimension is also added to the customer decision making process, these are product safety, order to delivery time, customizability and cost and ease of maintenance. The environmental concerns exceed to impact during the product operating time and the product’s lifetime.  The Customer also demands the protection from the defective pieces that lead to decrease in product liability loss. Product design helps to succeed in all these impacts of performance objectives and hence fulfil the customer satisfaction by evaluating the best design of the product that have lower chances of defect, lower cost, higher quality, improved features, product safety, quicker production and increased life of the product (Luangjinda et al., 2011). The companies are now using technology for rapid prototyping, for the functioning of the product computer aided product design, how much the cost of production and how the product impact on the environment. They evaluate the legal and ethical issues regarding the product and also the impact on the environment.

This report concludes that process designing has greater impact on the Apple Company. That’s why it is the largest company of information technology in the world. In this report, it was concluded that a better process designing of newer product can support the lower cost management by reducing the total number of parts and increase the performance objective of the product by supporting the customer satisfaction. In this report, it was concluded that the product designing process of Apple Company is very powerful and effective. The designer of other companies should follow the designing process followed by the Apple Company (Moon, Park and Simpson, 2013)

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References

Brakta, A., Thakur, P. and Handa, A. (2013). First Report of Apple Top Working Disease Caused by Viruses ( Apple stem grooving virus , Apple chlorotic leaf spot virus , and Apple stem pitting virus ) in Apple in India. Plant Disease, 97(7), pp.1001-1001.

Chen, L. and Li, S. (2002). A computerized team approach for concurrent product and process design optimization. Computer-Aided Design, 34(1), pp.57-69.

Dahl, D. (2011). Clarity in Defining Product Design: Inspiring Research Opportunities for the Design Process*. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 28(3), pp.425-427.

Dykstra-Erickson, E. and Hoddie, P. (2000). Design briefs: Apple. interactions, 7(2), pp.11-15.

Ehrenberg, R. (2011). Science & society: Meeting notes: Apple product fever. Sci News, 180(1), pp.9-9.

Gent, E. (2014). News: Apple iPhone6 and Apple Watch finally unveiled. Engineering & Technology, 9(9), pp.12-12.

Grinyer, C. (2011). New Challenges for Product Design: The Product of Design. Design Management Review, 22(4), pp.14-21.

Ingram, J. (1998). Apple Design: Thework of the Apple Industrial Design Group: Paul Kunkel. The Design Journal, 1(1), pp.62-62.

Isaacs, A., Ray, T. and Smith, W. (2009). Multi-objective design optimisation using multiple adaptive spatially distributed surrogates. IJPD, 9(1/2/3), p.188.

Löfqvist, L. (2010). Product and Process Novelty in Small Companies’ Design Processes. Creativity and Innovation Management, 19(4), pp.405-416.

Lofstrand, M., Andrews, J. and Karlberg, M. (2011). Functional product system availability: simulation-driven design and operation through coupled multi-objective optimisation. IJPD, 13(2), p.119.

Luangjinda, C., Yamamoto, K., Fukuda, T. and Kushi, K. (2011). Using QFD for eco-design guidelines for product design. IJPD, 13(3), p.262.

Moon, S., Park, K. and Simpson, T. (2013). Platform design variable identification for a product family using multi-objective particle swarm optimization. Res Eng Design, 25(2), pp.95-108.

Robin, V. and Girard, P. (2010). An integrated product-process-organisation model to manage design systems. IJPD, 10(4), p.318.

Syberfeldt, A. and Gustavsson, P. (2014). Increased Robustness of Product Sequencing Using Multi-objective Optimization. Procedia CIRP, 17, pp.434-439.

Ujiie, Y. and Matsuoka, Y. (2009). A product design method using macroscopic shape feature ‘complexity’. IJPD, 7(1/2), p.99.