Why Apple Really Isn’t Cool
- February 15th, 2011
- Posted in Outsourcing . Shared Services . Systems Thinking and Technology
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Recently, I was reminded of the plight of the worker as America is saddled with high unemployment. As an American icon, Apple has become what is wrong with our labor picture. The innovation giant and its success has not had the trickle down affect of labor employment. They, like so many others, have shipped their labor overseas and the accompanying lack of manufacturing job creation leaves America both less wealthy and less innovative.
Without labor to make Apple products, we are missing future opportunities to innovate from knowledge gained from making the products. Maybe antenna-gate would never have happened. Labor is an integral part of the system as the Apple Genius Bar.
Our elitist mind-set has us believing that management, lean six sigma black belts and project managers are more important than those that do the work. Labor is treated as a commodity that should be negotiated for the lowest price.
And it isn’t just traditional labor that is getting the shaft. Contact centers, software developers, HR, finance and even research scientists are being outsourced, shared and marginalized. This leaves no labor that can actually create value in the eyes of the customer in manufacturing or service.
This is a disturbing trend and the root of some of the unrest we have seen in the Middle East. When jobs aren’t available, political upheaval is in the future. The problem is . . . the future is now.
Apple for all its success is a beacon for what is wrong with America. They return high profit with cheap labor and their success has created a whole new generation of misguided thinking. The economy of scale and mass production thinking blinds them to better ways to design and manage work.
It is American management that has marginalized the worker with poor work design and thinking. Apple, as the great innovator should have long come to understand and embrace this as fact.
This creates a paradox for Apple as their biggest customers are right here in America. With all their labor outsourced, who will be able to afford their products in the future?
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Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public). His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work. Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at [email protected]. Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.
Nice post.
I doubt that economy of scale and production thinking has overtaken the product designers at Apple. That type of thinking is better suited to the people who actually manufacture the products and is one burden less in the product innovation process.
As an engineer, I can only marvel at the elegance of the design in Apple’s products. But, as an engineer who comes from a long background in manufacturing, I can assure you that Apple’s sleek products would be far less sleek if the designers were constantly being given pushback from the IE’s of the world complaining that this, or that, just can’t be done.
Apple was quite smart to have it’s production far enough away to be able to demand that their high quality designs be carried out. In the end, the smart manufacturer in China, or wherever, will increase his own skills to meet the challenges presented.
If American manufacturers are being denied a place a Apple’s table of plenty, it may be partly their own fault. I can not imagine Apple Computer going straight to China without offering it’s top level fabricators and contract assemblers in the US the chance to build Powerbooks, Macbook Airs and iPods. But, I can also imagine the groaning and gnashing of teeth from assemblers about the incredibly tight tolerances being required and their unwillingness to invest in the equipment to produce Apple’s fare.
The manufacturing technology for the glass touch screens grew from small scale iPods to larger iPhones all the way to MacBook Pros and iPads- grew because the manufacturer poured millions into perfecting their processes and scaling up the processes. Did anyone see Corning coming forward to advance this technology from Apple? Probably not.
Jack Simplot was small scale Idaho potato farmer when McDonalds Corp. asked him to supply an unheard of amount of shoestring french fries. Simplot invested millions in building a plant and perfecting the methods for preparing and freezing the fries for deliver to each store- all without a written contract from McDonalds. As a payback, Simplot became incredibly wealthy and famous all because he took a specification and made it even better.
Apple’s venture overseas was probably driven as much by the need to find manufacturing capable of producing their high standard products at a unit price they could afford. Labor and benefits in the orient may not live up to American standards, but keep in mind that the Chinese purchase most of their fab and assembly equipment on the open market and pay the same prices the rest of the world pays leaving a field a bit more level than we like to think.
I reject the idea that Apple is denying America quick relief from manufacturing problems which are more deeply rooted than any of us care to admit.
Economy scale thinking is not just a manufacturing concept . . . it has penetrated the design of services too.
Unfortunately, you mat be right that our previous outsourcing has led to an inability to manufacture high-tech equipment. All management issues because they believe lost cost labor is the answer. It has long proven not to be the case.