The Progress of the Continuous Improvement at Apple Inc (Coursework Sample)

The Progress of the Continuous Improvement at Apple Inc Name: Institution:  The Progress of the Continuous Improvement at Apple Inc Introduction Currently, business organizations have had to uphold continuous improvement of their practices and processes in order to remain relevant to their industry through satisfying the needs and wants of their target markets. Apple Inc. has grabbed a huge market share of the electronic goods and appliances due to its efforts in enhancing the innovation of their processes, which in turn boosts the quality of their products. This paper reanalyzes the continuous improvement of innovation at the Apple Inc. in regards to the two salient elements of continuous improvement in organizations. Application of Elements of Continuous Improvement of Innovation at Apple Inc The growth and pace of innovation at Apple Inc. has largely benefited from the knowledge on semiconductors as proposed by Moore’s Law, which predicted the growth of transistors to double in every two years (Jinjin, 2013). Apple Inc. has, therefore, used this knowledge to vary the size, hardware performance, and the energy consumption of their products. The iPod is an example of the Apple product that benefitted from this knowledge. With innovation and trendiness forming the hallmark of Apple, its lack of interest in the significance of music in the lives of the users of personal computers was uncalled for. Their subsequent innovation of iPod made it become a great product that surpassed the competing MP3 players that were being offered by the competition (Johnson et al., 2012). There are various elements of continuous improvement that came into play in this gradual innovation of the iPod. One of these elements is the empowerment of the employees in the organization. According to David et al. (2015), continuous improvement consists of involving the people on a project in the improvement process. Organizations use teams in the continuous improvement programs to find and solve solutions to problems. McGuigan et al. (2014) argue that in more specific terms, the work teams are more effective mechanisms for involving the employees. The workers are pulled together based on their area of specialization and assigned a particular project to complete. The innovations on iPod were spearheaded by a team that was headed Tony Fadell, who had enormous experience on gadget development as working for Philips and General Magic. Fadell is credited to have helped develop the innovations spanning from FireWire to iTunes, alongside the hardware that was required for iPod (Johnson et al., 2012). Fadell and his team essentially pulled together a system that would entail the iTunes Music Store; the iTunes and the software that was required for the iPod. The system development also involved the input of engineers such as Michael Dhuey, whose major role was in designing the hardware of the various generations of the iPods (Jinjin, 2013). The organization culture is another critical element that determined the continuous improvement initiatives. According to David et al. (2015), for continuous improvement to succeed in an organization, its work culture needs to conform to the norms that enhance creativity and change. McGuigan et al. (2014) further note that the culture of an organization that is continuously improving is a process culture rather than just a result-oriented culture. This, however, does not mean that specific objectives and accomplishments are not essential for the organization; the continuous improvement culture rather frames the accomplishment of these objectives as being provisional and also subject to any further improvements deemed necessary. The Apple Inc is renowned for the innovative culture that has enabled it to provide its market some of the most esteemed technologies of the present times. The engineers at the company are rewarded for their inventiveness and imagination rather than the difficult tasks that come with developing the actual products (Johnson et al., 2012). The company’s leaders do not interfere with the innovation works of a particular team; rather, the teams are granted authority to take liberties in their product development processes. This innovative culture at Apple came in handy as the various generations of iPods were innovated to address the fast changing needs of their target market. These continuous improvements on the innovation of the iPod product also faced various challenges. For one, when iPod was introduced in the market in late 2001, it weighed approximately 6.5 ounces and had a hard drive of about 5 gigabytes. This generation of iPod could contain about 1300 track or rather 66 hours of music (Johnson et al., 2012). At the same time, the iTunes could also be accessed through transferring CD tracks from the Macintosh but not from a personal computer. This is because the legality of such music transfers was still not resolved. Besides, the record labels and their artists who held the intellectual property of the music were reluctant to allow their recorded music to become more portable. They had at that time a very tight control of the channels of music distribution (Jinjin, 2013). This was a major obstacle since market studies that Apple Inc had undertaken had demonstrated that customers were reluctant to buy an iPod if it had no music to listen to. This invariably limited the potential marker for the product and Apple was aware that they needed to change this through developing a strategy that would win over the intellectual property owners. This triggered deliberations between Apple and the record labels such as Warner Music, which ended up in a deal that unveiled the iTune Store (Jinjin, 2013). This deal was essential content licensing agreement that sold tracks for 99 cents to attract customers, out of which Apple earned 22 cents. Subsequently, both Universal and Sony record labels bought i...