Contents
This report is based on the following requirement - - Case study
- This assignment is based upon the iPhone 7. You will find relevant information relating to this product at https://www.apple.com/uk/iphone-7/. This page provides detail on the many features of this product, including:
- An overview of the product
- The iPhone 7 finishes
- Special editions
- The splash and water-resistant feature
- The new ‘home button’ feature
- The Touch ID
- Apple Pay
- The iPhone 7 camera
- The supercharge chip
- iPhone battery life
- Large capacity
- Faster 4G LTE
- Answering calls on apps like Facebook
- Assignment task(s)
- Effective strategic operations and quality management lies at the heart of Apple’s competitiveness. Investigate Apple’s iPhone 7 (using this web address as the starting point – https://www.apple.com/uk/iphone-7/) and produce a fully referenced report (using the Harvard Style), that addresses the tasks below.
- Your report should not be merely descriptive; it should analyse and synthesise the material to build arguments that produces a coherent document that demonstrates your learning, its application and your understanding. Your report should therefore, link relevant academic theory to your findings. Academic theory will derive from not only course models and concepts, but also research from a range of reputable sources, including academic journals, published conference papers and books.
- Task 1 – This task is weighted as 30% of the overall assignment
- Apple has the second largest number of smartphone sales worldwide. Discuss the order winning and qualifying features of their iPhone 7 model. Critically discuss how these impact and influence the Operational Management Strategy for their production
- Task 2 – This task is weighted as 30% of the overall assignment
- Apple continues to manufacture different models of its older iPhones alongside the latest. (At the time of writing these are its iPhone models 5, 6 and 7.) The Efficient Frontier model indicates that as variety increases, cost efficiency reduces. Draw and critically evaluate the Efficient Frontier diagram for these models. Critically discuss (with examples) how standardisation and modularisation address this issue.
- Task 3 – This task is weighted as 30% of the overall assignment
- Another way of addressing the variety/cost issue is for the production environment to employ a suitable process type and operational layout. Critically discuss the likely process type and operation layout utilised by the iPhone manufacturer to address this dilemma, indicating why other process types and layouts are inappropriate.
- Task 4 – This task is weighted as 10% of the overall assignment
- Write a short conclusion that summarises the key findings and provides operational management recommendations for Apple as a business.
Description
Operational management strategy is a process in which manager or producer of a company take an important decision related to the production of their products (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta, 2016). It includes taking decision related to the feature, capacity, uses, colour and quantity etc. related decision which is useful for the firm while launching the product into the market. This report presents a complete overview of iPhone 7. It describes it feature in task 1 and also analysis its impact on operational management strategy. Furthermore, it also presents the frontier diagram in which unit and cost effect is presents in the report. It also describes the type of process and operational layout which is useful for manufacturing the iPhone by Apple Company. At last, in task 4, describes the summary with conclusion for the apple company to adopt effective operational management strategy which makes positive impact on the growth of cited business.
