I did it anyway.

The M1 chip is the best chip we have created so far, which greatly increases the speed of Mac computers, provides longer battery life, and enables Mac to run more software. Cook introduced it confidently to the camera.

In the early morning of November 11th, Apple Inc held his third autumn press conference with the theme "One More Thing". This return press conference quickly gained a high degree of attention from the market and the industry. However, unlike usual, it is not the three new products that have aroused heated discussion-Apple Inc's first independent research and development of Apple M1 chip, as well as the relationship with the old supplier Intel Corp.

This means that Apple Inc and Intel Corp, who have worked closely together for 15 years, are about to go their separate ways. And this breakup, the outside world has long been predicted.

According to Apple Inc's list of suppliers in 2019, its supply chain involves at least 200 enterprises and more than 800 factories, including factories in hundreds of cities in 27 countries, and transnational management is involved in these enterprises. Under the interweaving of discourse power, cost control, product quality, production efficiency, business efficiency and other issues, we can imagine the complexity of Apple Inc's supply chain management.

However, he who has the supply chain wins the world. In order to cut costs and control the component supply chain, Nokia developed its own products and missed the inflection point of smartphones; later, Xiaomi Lei Jun personally managed the supply chain, and XIAOMI counterattacked.

Why did Apple Inc get rid of Intel Corp, a well-known international manufacturer for 15 years of cooperation? What kind of coordination does it rely on to manage the supply chain? What exactly is the manipulation of its supply chain?

Intended for Pei Gong

Without the lawsuit brought by Da Liguang against Yu Jingguang, the outside world's understanding of Apple Inc's supply chain would only stay in the stage of simple and beautiful imagination.

On June 4, 2013, Da Liguang, a supplier of Apple Inc's mobile phone lens, filed a patent lawsuit in California District Court. The defendant is Yu Jingguang, both a Taiwanese optical lens manufacturer and an Apple Inc supplier. The complaint is that Yujingguang lured Apple Inc to infringe five US patents and found that eight Yujingguang products infringed upon Dali patents.

Until 2016, the US court ruled that the trade secret of how Apple Inc managed the supply chain was gradually revealed. Found in the fileNominally, it is to sue peer Yu Jingguang, but in fact, Jian refers to Apple Inc.

In 2010, Yujingguang entered Apple Inc's supply chain. At the same time, an important supply contract (MSDA,Master Development and Supply Agreement) was signed with Apple Inc. )

The details of the agreement, abbreviated as MSDA, are the focus of litigation disputes.

According to a report by the Taiwan media Caixin WeeklyIn this agreement, Apple Inc only tells Yu Jingguang the model of each lens, the highest acceptable price and the lowest quantity to be supplied. He did not say at what price Apple Inc would buy jade lenses, nor did he say how many lenses or models he would like to buy.

However, in the agreement, Yu Jingguang did not supply the goods directly to Apple Inc, but signed a separate contract with the contract factory. After the lens was shipped, the contract factory also paid for it, and then the contract factory sold the products to Apple Inc through the supply chain system.

Therefore, in the court's judgment, it was pointed out that although Dali Liguang proved that Yujingguang and Apple Inc headquarters had reached a supply agreement, there was no actual price or quantity of delivery in these agreements, so it was not regarded as selling these products directly in the United States. The court held that the actual delivery, payment and contracting were carried out overseas and were transactions that took place overseas.

The United States cannot manage these overseas transactions, even if Yujingguang infringes upon the patent rights of the United States.

On December 1, 2016, Yu Jingguang announced that it and Da Liguang had reached a settlement in the patent lawsuit in 2013. The settlement of the case caused an uproar in the optoelectronic industry, and the industry speculated that Apple Inc's mediation promoted the reconciliation of Da Liguang and Yujingguang.

Da Liguang not only sued Yu Jingguang.

It sued Advanced Light in October 2013 and Samsung Electronics in November of the same year. From Jade Jingguang and Advanced Light to Samsung Electronics, Dali launched a patent war intended for Pei Gong.

Since Yujingguang entered the Apple Inc supply, together with Da Liguang to supply the front camera and rear camera of Apple Inc's mobile phone respectively, the well water of both sides does not invade the river water.

But Apple Inc's regular practice is that its parts will be purchased from at least two suppliers to get better prices and reduce reliance on a single supplier. In the face of a dominant company, Apple Inc often uses a variety of ways to firmly occupy the control and bargaining power, and the acquisition of joint ventures, support for novices, patent control, and personnel stationing are all routine options.

After the settlement, the market and the media agreed that the lawsuit was a big victory.

According to the interpretation of the outside world, the patent litigation war initiated by Dali Liguang is beneficial to Dali Liguang to win more Apple Inc orders and counter price pressure. Dali Guangtong eats Apple Inc and non-Apple orders, but Samsung mobile phones because of the consistent manufacturing process and more self-control of the lens. Dali Liguang sued Samsung for infringement and settlement, and Samsung was forced to release the order to make up the last jigsaw puzzle of the Dali Liguang mobile phone lens and further expand the global market share.

Interestingly, since Da Liguang sued Yu Jingguang, Apple Inc has been actively looking for other competitors. Especially on the issue of iPhone7 dual cameras, Apple Inc introduced the Japanese company Kanto Chenmei to try to fight with Da Liguang, but unfortunately there is still a big gap between Kanto Chen Mei and Da Liguang.

The master plays the game.

Apple Inc's supply chain management has always been regarded as the benchmark of transnational supply chain management.

For example, domestic AAC Technologies Holdings Inc., which provides acoustic components for Apple Inc, initially had several production lines dedicated to supply Apple Inc. At present, according to the list of Apple Inc suppliers in 2019, there are already three factories, two in Jiangsu and one in Guangdong.

So how does Apple Inc control this critical supply chain?

Li Feng, the founding partner of Fengrui Capital, once mentioned the details in detail in a share: all the control software and computers on these lines are owned by Apple Inc, and the ERP system is also owned by Apple Inc. The people in charge of the production line of AAC often receive emails from Apple Inc saying that there is something wrong with a certain part of the production line, and then Apple Inc opens the authority and asks the person in charge of the production line of AAC to go to the scene to check.

In addition, Apple Inc has about 20 engineers stationed in the factory in turn. To put it simplyIn principle, except that the equipment and workers are AAC, the rest is controlled by Apple Inc.

Apple Inc blurs the relationship between design, development and manufacturing production. Development is manufacturing, and manufacturing is development. Apple Inc's mobile phone engineers can spend many days in the factory, working with workers who make components to develop functions. It is said that at most Apple Inc engineers had 2000 people in Foxconn factories.

Residency is just one of the ways to control.

Forbes gave Cook the title of "supply chain guru" (Supply Chain Guru). Gartner, a famous global consultancy, selects 25 companies with the best supply chain management in the world every year. Apple Inc has been the "supply chain master" (Supply Chain Master) for 10 years in a row.

To understand how strong Apple Inc's supply chain management ability is, let's first take a look at how difficult Apple Inc's supply chain management is.

Take Intel Corp as an example. According to the list of Apple Inc's supply chain published in 2019, Intel Corp currently has nine factories involving Apple Inc, which are located in New Mexico, Arizona and Oregon in the United States, Sichuan and Liaoning in China, and Israel, Vietnam, Ireland and Malaysia.

You know, in this supply chain list, if there is no internal production base related to Apple Inc, it will directly appear in the form of headquarters. Intel Corp's above nine factories or manufacturing sites are directly related to Apple Inc.

Box lunch Finance specially makes statistics and analysis on the location area and headquarters location of more than 800 factories. Apple Inc's supply chain is located in Ireland, Austria, Brazil, Belgium, Germany, France, Philippines, Costa Rica, South Korea, Netherlands, Cambodia, Czech Republic, Malta, Malaysia, United States, Mexico, Norway, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Israel, Italy, India, Indonesia, United Kingdom, Vietnam, China (including Hong Kong, Taiwan).

Of the more than 800 factories, 171 are from Japan, the United States, South Korea and other countries, and 436 are located in China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan). Among them, 152 are headquartered in Taiwan and 11 are headquartered in Hong Kong, China.

In the management of multinational enterprises, many enterprises suffer from the problems of overseas supervision, localization, local policy, culture and so on. However, these problems are only one of them for multinational supply chain management.The efficient collaboration of multinational enterprises is a difficulty, let alone with multinational enterprises distributed all over the world, it is even more difficult.

As early as 2012, Zhu Jizhi, then vice president of Ketong Core City, said at an event that Apple Inc's supply chain isSeamless supply chain, that is, Apple Inc will be integrated into the upstream development, production and manufacturing of all components.

If calculated one by one, iPhone can be split into about 500 components, which brings the number of suppliers upstream of Apple Inc to 200, but there is a principle in Apple Inc's process of managing all suppliers--Suppliers are not allowed to have any "black boxes", including chips, antennas, headphones and other major components are listed, must be completely controlled by Apple Inc.

And Apple Inc needs complete control of the whole process, not a rookie in the industry. In addition to the C-end familiar enterprises such as Intel Corp, Samsung, Texas Instruments Inc, Qualcomm Inc and Panasonic, there are American Line Arts, one of the world's largest manufacturers of magnetic components, Zhenglong Co., Ltd., one of the world's top 100 paper companies, and Sunmoon Group, the world's largest closed semiconductor testing plant.

These enterprises already have their own culture and system, how to make other experts become their own helpers, or even work together and efficiently as a whole, this is simply an impossible task.

Control freak

Apple Inc has a strong desire for control over core technology and business efficiency.

In 2012, Apple Inc announced a $356 million acquisition of biotech company AuthenTec, which would allow Apple Inc to use AuthenTec's hardware, software and patented technology.

A year later, Apple Inc configured Touch ID technology in the iPhone5s at that time. The core reason is to monopolize fingerprint identification technology in stages. In fact, the mainstream mobile phone manufacturers did not really popularize the technology until two years later.

Later, Apple Inc repeated his old trick and tried to buy Imagination Technologies. Apple Inc took a fancy to the company's ability to process graphics chips, as well as Apple Inc's prediction of the future. However, when the merger failed, Apple Inc began to "poach people".

The core technology is related to the long life in the future, and the business efficiency is related to whether the life is good or not.

The source of the patent lawsuit between Da Liguang and Yujingguang is that Apple Inc will not bet on a certain enterprise with the required devices. When there are only two or more suppliers to choose from, the stronger his voice and price reduction power will be.

Non-core technology to find a number of suppliers, mutual containment price.For example, the list of contract manufacturers are Compal computer, Flextronics (Flex Limited), Intec Group, Guangbao Technology, Pegatron, Quanta computer, Wizuang Zitong, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (chip foundry) and Hon Hai.

Buy those that involve core technology.Once Apple Inc finds that the technology of a supply chain manufacturer is bound with Apple Inc's future core interests, he will choose to acquire this manufacturer. For example, AuthenTec just mentioned. And this benefit is not only the bundling of the right to speak and future interests.

In the early years, key components such as touch screens in iPhone. As a result, Apple Inc will invest a lot of money when the supplier builds the factory and directly buy out 6-36 months of production capacity. When these technologies become popular commodities and competitors can purchase them, Apple Inc uses the agreed contract to get the relative preferential price of the supplier. It is also related to the fact that iPad and iPhone can always maintain high profits.

In other words, things are provided to me when they are good, and sometimes I want cheaper things. What everyone is grabbing is the time to guarantee mine first, and at the same time to ensure high quality and matching business efficiency.

How to understand the efficiency here?

"inventory itself is a complete sin." Cook, who is famous for hating inventory, believes that running the electronics industry is like selling fresh milk. It must be selling the freshest products to customers, keeping a large amount of inventory, either incompetent or lazy.

Large inventory is anti-business efficiency.In addition to bargaining power, cost control, product quality control and discourse power, the efficient coordination of low inventory is also an important indicator of supply chain management.

So how did Apple Inc achieve low inventory?

More than a decade ago, Apple Inc's inventory was unusually high and the shipping rate was low, which lagged far behind Dell. Then Cook began to rebuild Apple Inc's efficient supply chain.

Cook mentioned in the Legend of Cook that in order to strengthen his control over the supply chain, he persuaded suppliers to move to the vicinity of the Apple Inc factory to make component delivery more efficient, and then invested in the state-of-the-art enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and directly connected the information systems of parts suppliers, assembly plants and channels. From the system, we can master the details of weekly sales forecast, accurate inventory statistics of retail channels, order demand to outsourced factories, whether there is too much inventory, and transfer at any time.

When Cook turned on the computer, Apple Inc's parts suppliers around the world today's output, and even the rate of good products, can be accurately queried through a world-connected information system. In this system, Apple Inc can effectively reduce inventory to zero, thus saving the withdrawal of a large amount of liquidity. ("A Global Journey of an iPhone")

The large backlog of capital and cost is also anti-business efficiency.

Let's see when an Apple Inc mobile phone becomes Apple Inc's stock.

Assemble all the parts to Hon Hai and complete the task of assembling iPhone here. Some of the parts are paid for by the module factory and purchased from the parts manufacturer. The contract for some core parts was signed directly with Hon Hai, and it was not until Hon Hai assembled the phone and Apple Inc paid for the finished product that the phone became Apple Inc's inventory.

At the same time, once Apple Inc downgrades his product expectations, suppliers with heavy assets and a large backlog of inventory and parts are the main punters. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd, a famous chip foundry, has won the bid for A9 chip in 6S, so several new 16nm Fin FET Plus production lines have been added. Soon after, Apple Inc lowered his sales forecast and, according to media reports at the time, his actual opening rate was less than 50 per cent. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd's general production line is directly affected.

Business week of the United States once wrote: compared with other computer manufacturers in the United States, Apple Inc does not have a good reputation in Taiwan's electronics industry and is notoriously difficult to serve. Because of its high requirements for the safety and quality of its products, life for its suppliers is particularly difficult. But manufacturers in Taiwan are still willing to work for Apple Inc.

Following the old path of Nokia?

Under the leadership of Cook, Apple Inc closed many factories at one time.

Cook called his old friend Terry Gou and boldly handed over the product to a contract factory in Taiwan. Most of these Taiwan-funded factories are located in mainland China and are famous for their efficiency and lean. From then on,Apple Inc officially became a "light company", focusing on research and development.It was the cluster of Taiwan-funded contract factories on the other side of the Pacific Ocean that took over the production burden for Apple Inc.

In "the Global Journey of an iPhone", Apple Inc is mentioned as the beginning of a "light company".

In this context, let's take a look at the event that Apple Inc went to Intel Corp and launched a self-developed chip M1. Are some of them incompatible with the strategies of the past? Is there even a hint of Nokia before?

In fact, since 2013, the pressure on Apple Inc's supply chain has increased year by year.

When seeing the commercial significance and value of becoming a supplier of Apple Inc, many key suppliers were acquired.

According to Susquehanna Financial Group, SanDisk, Broadcom, Intersil, Sharp, Elpida Memory, RF Micro Devices, TriQuint Semiconductor and Fairchild Semiconductor were all acquired by large companies, thus reducing competition among Apple Inc's suppliers.

These changes prompted Apple Inc to produce several components within the company.

In 2017, Imagination Technologies, Apple Inc's graphics chip supplier, said it would cut its orders in half within two years because Apple Inc wanted to make GPU internally.

The range of internal production is gradually expanding, from semiconductor components, processors, graphics, Bluetooth and other chips to the recent M1.

According to US media reports, Apple Inc has spent more than 10 years on chip research and development, spending at least $1 billion to acquire more than six companies. In the past 15 years, Apple Inc's Mac computer has been relying on chips made by Intel Corp, objectively helping Intel Corp to become the world's largest computer chip manufacturer.

From outsourcing, mergers and acquisitions, gradually become self-research, in order to maintain competitive advantage, and control of hardware, "light company" Apple Inc is no longer light.

For Apple IncSupply chain management is not an elegant art, but an invincible fighting skill in the market competition.

Coase has a classic conclusion: "the boundary of an enterprise is that the internal transaction cost is equal to the external transaction cost."

This is an internal and external balance, it doesn't matter whether the pressure is transferred to the external "light" or the control of the self-sufficient Nokia model, which tends to be not absolute-it needs to match the life cycle, business, competitive environment, and so on.

"One More Thing" is the theme of this M1 chip launch, and it was also a classic mantra in Jobs' press conference.

Near the end of the conference, Jobs would coolly say "One More Thing" (and one more thing) and bring bigger surprises.

However, the important change in the supply chain management trend revealed this time should not be a surprise for suppliers.