Application of Emerging Technologies in Supply Chain Management

Introduction

Technology has proven to be a hit and an important tool in this and future businesses. It has not only revolutionized how business is done, but it has changed how people and companies operate in general. It is not just the best thing; it is the only thing. Business performances are highly pegged to their supply chain management. Emerging technology is changing how supply chain management works and tilting the playing field that might somewhat have been level. But for companies such as Apple, this is not something new, and this only adds to what they already had that was one of the best in the world. This paper will critically review and look at Apple company application of emerging technologies to the supply chain and the benefits it has brought about to the company. Apple is considered to be among the top business, not just locally but internationally due to the success that it has experienced from the time it was started. It is a multinational company that focuses on dealing and manufacturing electronic equipment. The company came about as a collaboration of two men Wozniak and Jobs that put their efforts together and started it in 1976. Steve Jobs was in charge of the marketing strategies deployed by the company, while Wozniak was the brains behind the technological bit. The company deals in several products ranging from mobile phones, multimedia devices, desktops, and laptops. Through the years that it has been in existence, it has proved to be extremely innovative in the multimedia section gaining recognition through products like iPod, iPad, iPhone, and Macintosh. The industry technologies that this paper will focus on are the Internet of Things and Big Data. The paper will offer an introduction, literature review, analysis, and discussion of Apple and a conclusion that will offer a view of the discussion in the body of the paper.

Supply Chain

According to Lambert, the supply chain can be described as the coming together of processes or businesses that offer goods or services to consumers. He described it as a process that is made up of various entities in a business that ensures goods reach the consumer. Some of these entities are storage spaces; transport means; those who withhold the goods before they are dispatched to the market, among others. The process that the goods of business go through before they reach the consumer is what makes up the supply chain (Lambert et al., 1998).

Another definition that came about in the year 2007 looked into the entities that took part either primarily or as a secondary participant in making sure that the customers’ requests are met. It highlighted that the processes that are taken from the time a request is put forward by a consumer to the time it is acted upon are what makes up the supply chain. It mentioned the processes like operations, marketing, finance, development, and distribution (Chopra & Meindl, 2007).

Procurement, Production, Distribution are the three traditional processes that made up the supply chain with a possibility of the processes being made up of different facilities located in alternate places around the globe (Thomas & Griffin, 1996).

Definitions of Supply Chain Management

In the early years, sources point out that supply chain management was defined to be a process that involved strategizing, following up on the strategies, and executing them in a supply chain set up to meet all the desires of consumers effectively. It involves transportation and storage of raw materials, working on the raw materials to come up with finished goods and then getting the finished goods to the market (Oliver & Webber, 1982)

Since the first definition, several other authors have tried to expand on the topic and come up with their definitions of what supply chain management is and the combinations that make it up. Supply chain management has also been defined as business aligning its processes to improve how fluent its operations run. This then can boost the influence of business on the market. A supply chain strategy is then developed to manage the processes that take place in the various areas involved in supply chain management. (Browersox et al., 2002).

The third definition of supply chain management is it is the step by step careful management of what are considered to be traditional functions of a business to ensure the processes are running smoothly within the organization or also with partnering organizations. This is done to better the performance levels of business and the functionality of the supply chain in general (Sweeney, 2007).

The last way that I will define supply chain management is in how it brings together various associated business partners and processes. It is the incorporation of crucial procedures of a business and the partners it deals with from the point that a product is being made to the point it is delivered to the consumer (Wisner et al., 2012).

Looking at all of the above definitions, various approaches were taken in defining and explaining what supply chain management is. If we keenly look into all the definitions, there are several key elements contained in all of them. Coming up with a more acceptable definition, the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals outlined supply chain management as a practice that is made up of scheduling and managing the processes that take place in procurement.

Emerging technologies

There are two ways in which emerging technologies are defined. The first way in which authors approach this is by defining it due to how they can have an impact on the economy. The other group defines this with emphasis on the improvement it offers to businesses (Porter et al., 2002). However, understanding this concept is also dependent on how one analyzes this term. Whether it is a new thing that brings a shift to the social and economic lives or just an improvement of what is there and it will not have a huge impact socially or economically. The lack of clear specification as to where emerging technology can be placed as a term in business also makes it harder to clearly define it (Lehmacher & Springer International Publishing AG, 2017). This term is used to refer generally to technologies that are being created or are expected to be created in the future that will have a significant impact on the social and economic lives. These technologies are considered to have never existed before. The terminology can also be used to refer to improvements made to the technology that is in existence. There are different definitions concerning the area in which the terminology used.

In this paper, we focus on the supply chain, and the emerging technologies to be discussed big data analysis and the Internet of Things. There have been disadvantages and advantages that are associated with emerging new technologies while they have generated new opportunities they have also come with new legal issues that are related particularly to licensing, copyright, trademarks, royalties, and patents (Lehmacher & Springer International Publishing AG, 2017).

Big Data

Generally, Big data is defined as a group of huge data sourced from various sources that help businesses in planning and projecting their functions after they are mined. The data is generally grouped into variety, velocity, and volume. Variety signifies the many sources that data is obtained from, velocity is how fast, meaningful data can be obtained from these unarranged, and unstructured sources and volume is the size of data generated that needs to be sorted out (Sanders, 2014). These features were first identified by Doug Laney, a specialist at Meta Group Inc. in a 2001 published report followed. Other Vs. have been included in recent definitions of big data that include variability, value, and veracity. Even though there is no specific volume of data that big data equates, its measurements are often in terabytes, petabytes, and in unique cases, exabytes of data collected over time (Sanders, 2014).

The Internet of Things

The Internet can be defined as a worldwide web that connects users from various sources and places to the web through their devices. It is a network that links millions of individuals worldwide through wireless and electronics technologies. The word internet of things was derived from the definition and use of the internet over the years. It is a new area that has been developed and focused on to shift how businesses operate especially in the supply chain sense. (Ashton, 2009).

The Internet of Things is a grey area, and therefore, it is difficult to come up with a universal definition that is agreed upon. Numerous researchers and developers that are looking and have looked into it offer their version of how it should be treated and defined (Madakam et al., 2015). However, all the definitions seem to lean towards explaining data as created by things and not people, as was defined by Kevin Ashton. The Internet of Things can best be described as a network of intelligent and inclusive objects which can automatically identify and share resources and data to meet situations that shift according to changes in the environment. This information is generated as projections to what is happening that might be useful to institutions and businesses (Ashton, 2009).

Analysis and Discussion of the Case Study Apple

Being able to get a hold and understand the supply chain and logistics is the easiest way to climb at the peak of the market. Apple Incorporation has taken advantage and continuously improved its supply chain and logistics to a level above its peers in the market. This has, in turn, been rewarded by the huge profit margins that they experience. The ability to cut costs without compromising quality through going for inefficient processes has given Apple a huge boost. However, supply chain management can be a complex process that can even frustrate the industries and businesses that have everything in place without making use of technology. This is why Apple has strived to incorporate technological advancements to its supply chain processes like Big Data analytics and the Internet of Things.

Apple has used Big Data analytics to determine the models that work best for them and which ones to get rid of from their operational model. The amount of data collected by Apple each year is rising, increasing the base from which to mine data and get the relevant basis for making decisions. An analysis shows six main areas that Apple is making use of big data analytics: Warehousing, sourcing, transportation, point-of-sale, consumers and production. This has significantly reduced the amount of time taken to find suppliers. Building data warehouses in the cloud are also helping Apple increase its productivity. These statistical models can precisely estimate the future. This has enabled the company to make much more confident decisions when planning for the future. Apple being in the technology industry, means that they can find data scientists who can dig up the right information to forecast and determine what the company`s clients want before they do. This means they can create and supply before time.

The Internet of Things promises far-reaching benefits for Apple, and it's business and end customers. These benefits run across the entire supply chain of the company, including last-mile delivery, warehousing operations, and freight transportation. Apple has been able to observe the status of individuals and assets in real-time throughout the entire supply chain. This has made it possible for Apple to measure how well its assets are performing and make the necessary adjustments to what they are doing that may not be working to the anticipated levels. The automation of business processes has enabled the company to lower costs incurred, do away with manual interventions, and improve quality and predictability. The Internet of things has enabled apple to maximize how assets, people, and systems work in collaboration and synchronize their activities. This has fastened their processes and reduced mistakes that might happen if there is no proper coordination of the three areas mentioned. Lastly, from the analysis conducted there has been an application of the Internet of Things analytics to the whole of Apple`s value chain to help in identifying areas for potential improvement and best practices. Apple has made the Internet of Things about sense-making and sense. It is sensing in the context that they can keep in touch with various assets that are in the supply chain through the technological advancements that they have made. Sensemaking is through the company dealing with huge amounts of data sets that it can mine and turning the information it gets to be able to get important information that offers new solutions (Moreira et al., 2018).

The internet offers a lot of opportunities and gains to Apple when it comes to its supply chain processes. However, despite these benefits, serious concerns are surrounding it that need to be addressed. These concerns range from the protection of the information that is generated from reaching unauthorized personnel and in what way the company will use it. These concerns are bound to arise whenever new technologies come up and how it is dealt with will determine how successful it will be. If the business can sort out these issues, then The Internet of Things will provide a more advanced, efficient, and productive supply chain.

Conclusion

Apple has proved in the above discussion that it is on the right path and even improving daily when it comes to how they are making use of emerging technologies to boost their supply chain management processes. Apple has one of the best, and some might even argue the greatest supply chain put together worldwide. They constantly have, over the years, improved on this supply chain with valuable additions to make it unbeatable from its competitors. This can be shown through the recent success that they have had in the technology world. The substantial profits gained are down to the proper and efficient management of its supply chain to provide useful results. Big Data analytics and the Internet of Things are the most significant additions to the supply chain processes of Apple in recent years. In the current business world, technology is revolutionizing how people do and deliver in businesses. Being in an industry that understands and drives some of these technological advancements has given Apple the upper hand in incorporating the new trends, some of which are the creators to help them improve on the supply chain processes. Being able to mine and use data appropriately is massive in pointing this company to the angle they should take in creating new designs of smartphones, tablets, computers, and other forms of technology that are ever-evolving. Technology does not seem to slow down and neither will it soon. This means there is always a gap in the market with each day that passes. The best way on how to know what to fill this gap is by having a fully functional supply chain model.

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