“One of the things that most consumers do not know about Apple is their supply chain and manufacturing is one of the best in the world. Tim Cook, when he was in charge of the chain, created one of the most efficient supply and manufacturing systems in the market,” Tim Bajarin writes for Tech.pinions. “Cook managed this side of Apple’s business for over 10 years before he was elevated to the role of CEO.”
“Even today he has an eagle eye on this part of their business and understands the supply chain better than any other CEO in the tech world today,” Bajarin writes. “But what really makes Cook and Apple stand out is that, when they design hardware, they only marginally look at what type of equipment they will use to make this product. Creating a product that is great, easy to use, and extremely well designed is the first priority.”
“Once that is in place, they get serious about how they can manufacture the product in mass quantities and in the most cost-effective way,” Bajarin writes. “However, Apple stands above most in this area because, if they can’t find the right equipment to make a product, they actually invent and/or create the equipment, either with the help of a partner or they do it themselves.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: For just one example, Apple’s use of friction stir welding to deliver iMac’s seamless design.
Except when bad engineering leads to “touch disease”.
Yeah, twisting a thin iPhone by either sitting on it or testing it for “bend gate” might break internal joints to its electronics. Who wudda thought! Apple has since redesigned this weakness so, bend away with the 6S!
Supposedly, many Android smartphones higher much higher failure rates than iPhones, so I doubt any smartphone is totally safe from component failure. The solution for Apple would have been to replace the item and then there’d be less moaning and griping from consumers who feel they’ve been defrauded.
What are those companies who have products with higher failure rates doing for their customers? If you’re going to say something like if you pay more there should be less defects, it’s been shown that expensive sports cars can have as many defects as less expensive passenger cars. Quality control problems? Who knows?
What would you consider an acceptable failure rate for consumer products? Zero defects? Is a 1% failure rate considered poor engineering by your standards. By consumer industry standards, that’s not considered poor engineering.