–
A Second Thought on Apple’s 2012
Supplier Progress Report
In
this week’s article, “Outcome Driven Supply Chains”, we discussed six supply
chain outcomes that a successful supply chain manager need to take into
consideration. They are: “Cost, Innovation, Sustainability, Responsiveness,
Security, and Resilience”. The issue of sustainability caught my eye and
reminded me some related problems in those global popular manufacture origins. For
instance, maintaining sustainable development is always a hot slogan in China;
however, the actually implementation is still taking a slow step.
Later
in the weekend, I read a piece of recently released news about Apple’s 2012
Supplier Progress Report. It is said that Apple had conducted an internal audit
on working conditions within all its alignments on how well its contractors
were treating workers that making iPhones and iPads. Below is a chart showing
the percentages of suppliers which passed or failed the audits across a number
of labor related standards. (You
could find this news by:
Source: Apple
Supplier Progress Report 2012
Despite
the justice and reliability for the results of this reports, or the uncertain
scope of sampling population, the passing rate of 74% shows that Apple along
with its parterres seems to maintain a good job. Also in this report, Apple claims
that it is committed to driving the highest standards for social responsibility
throughout their supply base, and it requires all its suppliers to “provide
safe working conditions, treat workers with dignity and respect, and use
environmentally responsible manufacturing processes wherever Apple products are
made."
However, in practice, Apple still need to
spend more effort to improve their Labor right (especially its working
conditions) as well as their sustainability strategies in the developing countries like China, given the bad news in recent
years. For example, Chinese environmental groups accused Apple Inc of turning a
blind eye as its suppliers pollute the country in 2011. Not mention the famous worker
suicides in 2010 that put Apple’s name at risk – as many as 18 employers killed
themselves at an Apple assembly plant in China run by contract manufacturing
giant Foxconn, leading people to question about how employees were being
treated there.
As
we all know, many of the world’s famous manufactures are distributing their
plants and networks in different countries and multiple cities. Building
manufacture centers and assembling plants in developing counties like China, Vietnam
and Korea is a common practice in supply chain management. It is a good
strategy to take the advantage of the cheap and massive labor productivity,
large land, benefit policies for foreign companies and even sometimes, the weak
guidance and non-strict laws.
Standing
at the management side, it is true that as the plants spread all over the world
and different parties involved, a company will find it harder and harder to
guard and maintain its high standards and rules. For one thing, you can’t
monitor what happens on the other side of the world. While on the other hand,
it would be better to let the domestic management group keep an eye and make
strategies considering the differences in culture and market needs.
However,
should that be a strong excuse for a global manufacturer to have double standards?
How should the supply chain manager balance the three A’s (Agility, Adaptability,
and Alignment) principles? What strong measures could be used to avoid such
messy problems both internal and external? Certainly, a research or an internal audit report is a good
start, but far from enough.
Can
you think of any successful examples or excellent strategies in existing
companies? As the supply chain management is shifting to cross-enterprise in a global scope, I really hope we could
discuss some good solutions and practical tactics in class.
Reference for
news of Apple:
For
the full version of Apple Supplier
Progress Report 2012, please follow:
