Division of Labour in Apple

Homework: Refer to business of your choice, explain the division of labour within that business with visuals if possible. Explain the relevant advantages and disadvantages of specialization in the business to choose.

INTRODUCTION TO FOXCONN

All the Apple products, including Apple iPods, iPhones, and MacBook series are manufactured globally, but the biggest factory with which Apple contract to make products is Foxconn Technology Group in Shen Zhen, China. Foxconn Technology Group, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd is the world's biggest manufacturing conglomerate by market revenue. It has its walled factory city of 270,000 Foxconn employees in Shen Zhen, and in that factory city, there is virtually everything: a hospital, fire station, swimming pool, athletic field, a separate area for the basketball courts, and even a bookstore. The main clients of the Foxconn Company are Apple, Samsung, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, and Nintendo.

DIVISION OF LABOUR

iPhone Primary Contractors - partial list

Parts of iPhone

Business Name

Country of origin

Software and design

Apple

USA

Assembly

Foxconn

Taiwan

TFT-LCD Screen

Sanyo Epson, Sharp, TMD

Japan

Video processor chip

Samsung

Korea

Touch screen overlay

Balda

Germany

Bluetooth chip

Cambridge Silicon Radio

UK

Chip manufacture

TSMC, UMC

Taiwan

Baseband IC

Infineon Technology

Germany

WIFI Chip

Marvell

USA

Touch screen control chip

Broadcom

USA

CMOS chip

Micron

USA

NOR Flash ICs

Intel, SST

USA

Display Driver chip

National Semi, Novatek

US, TW

Case, Mechanical parts

Catcher, Foxconn Tech

Taiwan

Battery Charger

Delta Electronics

Taiwan

Timing Crystal

TXC

Taiwan

Passive components

Cyntec

Taiwan

Connector and cables

Cheng Uei, Entery

Taiwan

Camera Lens

Largan Precision

Taiwan

Camera Module

Altus-Tech, Primax, Lite on

Taiwan

As you may see from above, parts of Apple iPhone is made from companies all over the world, and so it is extremely hard to just localize the whole production in one country. However, we can see a distinct division of labour in the Foxconn assembly process.

ASSEMBLING PROCESS TAKING PLACE IN FOXCONN TECHNOLOGY GROUP (HON HAI PRECISION INDUSTRY)_ALL_PICTURES_FROM_GOOGLE

People who are managing that all the materials are prepared and assuring everyone else in the factory is well prepared for the manufacturing

[From google]]

People who do processes that are done by hands

[From google]]

Machineries who do processes that can be done by machines

[From google]]

People who manages the LCD Monitor of iPhone (Very important)

[From google]]

People who checks if each button of iPhone actually works

[From google]]

People who checks the quality of their products

[From google]]

One who gets the final product from the quality manager and put them in the package.

[From google]]

WHAT IS SPECIALISATION?

Economists and historians credit Adam Smith with first observing the usefulness of specialisation, also known as the division of labour. Smith considered the industrial task of making metal pins. He saw that a single worker struggled to go through the 18 steps necessary to produce a finished pin by the end of a shift. However, when Smith applied specialisation, training each worker to perform only one of the 18 tasks, he estimated that the team could produce thousands more pins in the same amount of time. That's when the specialisation started.

THE ADVANTAGES OF SPECIALIZATION IN THE BUSINESS, IN THIS CASE, APPLE

-Expertise

-Flexibility for employees

THE DISADVANTAGES OF SPECIALISATION IN THE BUSINESS, IN THIS CASE, APPLE

-workers never gain the full scale of the process

-workers put effort into making something but still have no idea how it actually works