Service Process Design

Apple is Both a Goods and a Service.

You have the product in your hand and and use it but when you need help with something or it breaks the are customer service to help you with you Apple product.

Under the Service-Product Bundle I would put Apple under Physical (Facilitating) goods because you have a good that you can use.

Apple's Service Matrix would fall under the Semi-Standardized because when you need help the customer service is their for you but your question or problem has already been answered or seen before. All the service has to do is figure out what is wrong and fix the problem.

Apple's Customer Contact- You can contact Apple by e-mail or by phone but it's usually to set up an appointment to come into one of the Apple Stores to see what the problems to are having with one of your Apple products. Mainly Apple is a Face to Face but you do have the internet, phone contact, and mail contact as well. The only mail contact is if you are shipped a product via ordering one online, over the phone, or not in stock in the store.

Apple is all about the technology. What ever technology is coming out next apple puts it into their product and sells it. Just like the new iPad, its not much different from the laptop, iphone, and ipod. Its just like all three into one but their were thousands of people waiting for it when the iPad was released because people like new products that nobody has yet and that it why Apple is all about the newest technology

Apple's Service Quality

Apple wants to bring more repair in-house. the effort and expense necessary to keep hundreds of Apple dealers stocked with parts and reimbursed for warranty service is to costly. Plus, by bringing all repair work to a single location, Apple can more easily gather statistics on specific failures and figure out any commonalities in rare problems.

For Apple, there may be a downside to success. Sales are growing three times as fast as the overall PC market. Its iPod music player is burying the competition. And the stylish iPhone is setting the wireless industry on its head. But as Apple pulls in million more customers with different kids of products, it's getting harder to keep them all happy. "The customer base is now more diverse, including students and mainstream consumers, and it's harder to satisfy as a whole," Lopo L. Rego marketing Professor at the University of Iowa who studies customer satisfaction on financial performance.

Apple Inc. still tops all of the big measures of computer-customer service. But there are signs that it is vulnerable to the service struggle of other big companies. A widely watch study of customer satisfaction, Released in August, showed Apple slipping 4 points from last year's score, to 79 on a 100-point scale. That still leads the industry, but it's the company's first decline since 2001. Even though Apple sales are up the customer-service is becoming increasingly difficult because of the new customers Apple is attracting and with new customers its hard to please all of them.

Plus, not all those customers live close enough to get the vaunted high-touch service from an Apple store. For example. Michael Levin, a graduate student in Lubbock, Tex. bought a MacBook laptop. Several times it cracked on the area near its built-in mouse. but with no nearby Apple store, Levin had to make lengthy calls to Apple reps, who initially insisted he must have drooped the machine before they agreed to fix it.

Quality Decision- Quality Control and Improvement

Apple Inc designs and specs all their products and parts. All of the critical components are then supplied and manufactured by sole-sourced third-party vendors in the U.S., China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Singapore. Sole-sourced third-party vendors in China perform final assembly of substantially all of the Company’s portable products, including MacBook Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air, iPods, iPhone, and most of the Company’s iMacs.


The quality control process used by the third party suppliers are outlined by Apple Inc in their Supplier Responsibility agreement. Random testing is done at different stages of the assembly of the part. Before an item is launched it is then sent to an independent performance evaluator company to ensure the product falls within the Apple Inc’s guidelines

One important note about Apple Inc is the fact they have very few issues with their computers. Any after product sale issue is addressed in Software updates, a knowledge base page, or through Apple care.

Quality Decision- Managing Quality

Quality of Design- Apple directs the customer to what they want with the newest technology avaiable that people can't get anywhere else. The inside story of why Apple's industrial-design has been so successful because it has made an art of not talking about its products.

Quality of Conformance- Apple is Technology orientated and all the employees need to know the newest technology on the market

Availability- With personal experience the Availability with apple is very good. I have had my MacBook for three years now and my MacBook has only been down for three days. 365/365+3=.9918, which is 99.18%

Apple is very quick to get a response to you with great customer service

Apple's Process Selection

Apple is part Mass Customization with their main products. They are general but you can choose your memory size, color, and the product that fits your needs. They when you receive the product you customize the product to your particular needs. That is why I think Apple is a Mass Customization company.

a. Apple uses a continuous product flow

b. An Assemble to Order Customer Order.

c. Assembly line and ATO

d. The major factor influencing their process selection is technology. What ever the come out with next they put on the market and sell the product for an outrageous price because the product is brand and new and nobody has that product yet and people want to be the first with that product. Apple has great Customer Service but they don't want to hear what the customer wants they put out the newest products with technology that they can and it has been working for them.

e.I already think they are moving into mass customization with the methods they are using. With one product the offer a variety of ways in which you can buy that product and then once you purchase that product you can customize it which ever way that you want to. With Apple after you buy a product and the customer has it no product will ever be the same.

Physical Inventory

Apple stores use a bar code system for their physical inventory process. Either a handheld scanner unit or laptop equipped with a bar code scanner. The process is referred to as a point of sale system. This sytem helps an apple store maintain an accurate inventory without having to close down the business to do a physical inventory count.

Apple's Main Products

Apple's Main Products:

iPhone(phone)

iPod(mp3 player)

iTouch(mp3 player + touch)

iPad(cross from a MacBook + iTouch)

MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air (Labtops)

iMac (computer)

Apple inventory

According to Ed Sutherland,a veteran technology journalist Apple maintains an average five day inventory on products, with Cupertino outdistancing its PC rivals, an analyst said Thursday.

Financial analysis firm UBS said Dell was the closest PC maker, keeping inventory in stock for just a week, according to checks during the December quarter.

While China’s Lenovo maintained a 15-day inventory average, top PC maker HP had stock sitting an average of 32 days, according to UBS. Chip-making giant Intel turned-over inventory in 89 days. The record went to D-Link with 131 days of inventory.

The speed of product turnover can indicate how well a company is able to gauge consumer demand. Too much inventory can leave firms floating in excess products, while under-estimating demand can leave a manufacturer flat-footed.

Apple’s tight inventory may have been the result of the company clearing shelves of older Mac products to make way for refreshed iMacs and Mac minis unveiled earlier this week.

What is Apple?

Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and manufactures consumer electronics and computer software products. The company's best-known hardware products include Macintosh computers, the iPod, the iPhone, and now the iPad. Apple software includes the Mac OS X operating system and the iTunes media browser. As of january 2010 the company operates 284 retail stores in ten countries and an online store where hardware and software products are sold. One major reason why I like Apple Inc. products is because their is no know virus that effects the apple products. You don't have to waste your money on virus scan and other programs to keep your computer clean. With Apple that protection is built into the product.

Established in Cupertino, California on April 1, 1976 the company was first called Apple Computer, Inc. for its first 30 years of business but dropped the word "Computer" on January 9, 2007 to reflect the company's ongoing expansion into the consumer electronics market. Apple has about 35,000 employees worldwide and had annual sales of $42.91 billion dollars in its fiscal year ending in Sept. 2009. Apple has established a unique reputation in the consumer electronics industry. This includes a customer base that is devoted to the company and its brand, especially in the United States. Fortune magazine named Apple the most admired company in the United State in 2008 and in the world in 2009.