Question

Explain Demand Forecasting and

Material Requirments planning and ERP  Based on Apple Inc operation

# The answer should focus on Apple Inc

Answer 1

One among the largest technology companies in the world Apple Inc develops the consumer electronic smartphone & gadgets for the world starting from desktop, iPods to tablets & so on, the company was incorporated in 1976 by Steve Jobs with an intention/goal to make the computers as the first instance but later the focus was reshifted to product the consumer electronic products at large scale. After the death of Steve Jobs, the company faced a big blow where they had to undergo the research search to find ways to maintain its market competitive dominance to capture the global emerging markets. This gave addition to Apple forecasts on demand & management of inventory levels of Apple Inc with extensive research in the process.

Demand forecasting of Apple products is one of the key strategic indicators where the firm undertakes to integrate every level of the operation at the firm as starting from supplier, produce & retailer to conduct the analysis the demand to forecast to maintain the quantities that are produced by the company Apple Inc.

- Following are the key approaches the company Apple Inc uses to manage demand forecasting:

• As the basic operation of the company here is to forecast the demand which is the key aspect to control the inventory levels at global space, to gain such a high-level development & growth the firm has embarked on the key demand forecasting & inventory management measures. The forecasting of demand done by Apple Inc is based on various approaches as- Judgmental approaches which are an important strategy that is used by the company to forecast the subject by assuming the consumers are aware of high quality the firm's goods & thereby recommend the others to buy the same.
• While using the above approach the firm gathers the various opinions & knowledge from the persons to which the position where they want to create an accurate demand for their products. Using this strategy the Apple Inc has tremendously grown its annual revenue of $65 billion in 2010 & thereby increased to $156 billion globally.
• The major chunk of apple Inc growth of its iPod Touch, Ipad & iPhone products has come up with the order of forecasting the demand the firm makes on the product through judgmental approaches as by firm carries various surveys to justify it as bottom-up approach whereby everyone contributes one or the other opinion that makes the final forecast on its products. Using this strategy the firm has leveraged to introduce innovative products & thereby increase the demand at large.
• The company also uses consensus methods adding into judgmental approaches to forecast the demand for their products, which few people make the general forecasts. To illustrate there are a group of firms top managers would meet to generate the demand forecast through series on discussion & debates on their products & business at large. The firm also encourages every individual to provide the insights/understanding based on their view on market, competitions & product at large.
• Adding to the above the firm uses the test-marketing technique to forecast the demand for its potential future products, this strategy enables the firm to embrace all national introduction of a new version of product globally, which also help in fine-tuning the overall common marketing program at all levels & ensure that there are no potential or problems that are missed in forecasting at large the demand for products.

-Following are the key Material Requirement planning & ERP Apple Inc uses in operation:

• From beginning the Apple Inc blazed in own path of designing, developing & producing their operating system with various application & hardware that manages the key material requirement planning & ERP, which is very unique strategy than the others as Microsoft who focused on Operating system first, which built an application business noted to be their productivity solutions with MS Office Suite.
• Apple Inc's strategy was about on belief that owning the technology stack that allows them to control their destiny by designing various solutions measures that are compatible with their Operating system, application & hardware layers that ensure the quality of product producing & leverage the brand globally.
• Apple Inc technology on Material Requirement planning & ERP measures not only owns one technology stacks but there are multiple layers attached which comprises the user end experience from the feel of the iPhone to design the icons on screens that complements the Apple Inc devices to manage & integrate thereby update the path with the proper interface of their own ERP based Interface application solutions.
• One of the key aspects on Apple Inc ERP lesson is ERP vendors are from acquiring packages to strategy on owning the entire technology stack either by developing organically or acquisition on different technologies on the board, which creates an important factor to adopt ERP system that is flexible in near future with an embedded database that allows managing the material requirement planning, allowing consumers to incorporate the virtually connected unique business requirement that matches the system to lock into single version system.