apple

From Failure to Success Since its inception in 1976, Apple Inc. has been largely successful and has experienced incredible expansion. Technological innovation, appealing product lines, and a focus on superior customer service have all contributed significantly to the growth that Apple has enjoyed over the years. Even the strongest companies experience major missteps as seen by Apple’s Power Mac PC supply chain disaster of 1995. Despite the detrimental consequences at the time, this disaster led to an increased focus on supply chain management which has positively impacted Apple’s operations and has helped facilitate Apple’s subsequent successes. Two years prior to the launch of the Power Mac PC, Apple overestimated the demand for a similar product called the Power Book Laptop, leaving them with an inventory surplus. This overly optimistic demand forecast for the Power Book Laptop resulted in high product and inventory costs. For this reason, Apple decided to take a more conservative approach in forecasting the demand for the Power Mac PC. This proved to be costly when the popularity of the Power Mac PC shattered expectations. The demand during the Christmas season proved to be far too high to satisfy, forcing Apple to put customer orders on backlog. The value of the order backlog eventually reached over one billion dollars and customers reported wait times of up to two months. There were a number of errors in Apple’s supply chain and operations planning that contributed to this disaster. One of the first and most obvious errors was in Apple’s demand forecasting process. Basing production strategies primarily on the demand for a previous product was far too simplistic of an approach, despite any similarities of the two. To provide a more accurate understanding of potential demand, a firm must consider financial trends, an in-depth market analysis, the competitive environment, and product differentiation. Instead, Apple took a highly subjective and