In an article found posted on the Wall Street Journal website, it describes the recent news that facebook is preparing to release its initial public offering and is expected to raise as much as $10 billion and value the company between $75 to 100 billion. This would be one of the largest IPO’s ever for a U.S. company. They deliver a social media service that has attracted more than 800 million members since they were formed eight years ago. People not only use it to communicate, but also as a source of entertainment through their games which are very popular. Morgan Stanley is supposed to be a leader in this deal and they could also benefit very heavily from this deal due to banker fees that could net them millions of dollars and also boost their image which could result in more clients.

Mark Zuckelberg, facebook’s CEO, is becoming of the great internet pioneers of his time and has positioned himself as a leading executive. He is the face of Facebook and has propelled it into an upper echelon company that has millions of users. In an internet age where social media sites are big, he has managed to penetrate the sector and position the company at the top. People used to use MySpace, but now they have clearly switched over to Facebook. It seems like it will be around for a while, but probably will decline eventually.

They have clearly gone through the introduction stage of the product life cycle and seem now to be going through the growth stage. Good companies that are innovative, have a good operations strategy, and a good leader tend to last long. Facebook is no Apple or Microsoft, but they still keep their position as a top company for a good amount of time. They are very innovative in their field and that is key in any sector of the internet. When do you think that they will experience their decline, if at all, and do you think that they will be able to recover and come back strong? The link of the article is found below.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204573704577187062821038498.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

Globalization and forecasting are part of every business. In this modern day and age, more corporations are looking to increase profits and reduce costs by going global and outsourcing a lot of their manufacturing.  In a recent article from the Wall Street Journal, titled Apple navigates China maze, Apple details the trouble it is having in china and the opportunity for growth they see in the Chinese market.  Apple globalized its market to china in order to reduce costs and it also understood the market there. In the article, it says that China was Apple’s fastest growing market with $13 billion in sales. Due to high demand, nearly 40,000 people were visiting Apple stores in China daily. From an operations management perspective, they see this as a chance to rapidly expand their company and capitalize on the expanding market for their products.

The report that was released also detailed bad working conditions and the company was surprised and disgusted by these findings. There were under aged workers and violation of employee pay and benefits standards.  This also deals with the operations management decision of supply chain management. Apple has to deal with its suppliers that are violating company standards. These suppliers can hurt their profits by ruining their company image.

Thus is not surprising though because mostly every company or corporation is profit driven. Especially when a company outsources its operations to another country, it is doing this mostly in order to reduce costs, attract and retain a global talent, and to understand different markets so they know if they can thrive there or in any other country that is similar, just to name a few. I think that this is hard to control. It is hard to manage these types of operations due to the fact that most of them are so far away from where the main headquarters are located. To be able to manage these oversees operations effectively, a corporation should have someone there during all times when the factories are open so they can ensure quality control and make sure that the workers are being treated fairly.

If a company or corporation were to have someone there or a better presence in the area where a supplier is manufacturing their product, it would make it more expensive and cut into their profits and it would make it less worth it for them due to the extra incurred costs.

Does anybody have any ideas on how Apple can improve their global operations so they can reduce these types of exploitations in factories and still retain the global market and profit margin in these countries?

 

The link for the article is

http://online.wsj.com/article /SB10001424052970204409004577158764211274708.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection.