Why doesn't apple automate production of their products.

[lavablade02]

Apple does mostly manual construction of their products. Why doesn't Apple use machines to cut down on costs?

[TheGeeker]

I am not sure but for me at least I have only heard bad things of their production operations in China.  

[babadoctor]

ask elon musk how that worked out for him

 

 

they do automate most of the products, what are you talking about?

[Nocte]

Apple does not really manufacture the phones. Third parties do it for them.

Also, an assembly line would only work for 1 model, you change something and you have to remake it (or change it).

I do not think the sunk fixed costs of an assembly line would be recovered before it needs to be modified.

[lavablade02]

45 minutes ago, babadoctor said:

ask elon musk how that worked out for him

 

 

they do automate most of the products, what are you talking about?

They don't automate much, they have foxconn do it mostly by hand

3 minutes ago, Eibe said:

Apple does not really manufacture the phones. Third parties do it for them.

Also, an assembly line would only work for 1 model, you change something and you have to remake it (or change it).

I do not think the sunk fixed costs of an assembly line would be recovered before it needs to be modified.

That makes sense

[wasab]

Machine cost more than humans and they do not do as well a job.

[Mira Yurizaki]

To be fair, most of the parts are likely machine assembled. A person isn't going to lathe away an aluminum block to make a case.

 

However the final assembly is done by people because people (at least in Taiwan) are cheaper to employ than machines. Plus I'm not sure if we have, in mass production, machines that can work with 6DOF at that level of precision and finesse.

[aezakmi]

they don't want these friggin immigrant robots to take their jobs

[TopHatProductions115]

With the way Apple keeps pumping out new designs (and deprecating existing ones), I don't think they could do it cost-effectively. Sure, machines can pump out the parts and put some of them together. But, the final product can be put together, for cheaper, by hand. Now, for a company like HP (who may end up reusing a previous design or reusing a present one a million times over), that may work. Also, have to consider relative shipping volume. Apple might not be pulling an HP, if you know what I mean (shear number of physical units shipped/day). Combine this with the point made by @Canada EH, and you have a lot of the story as for why not  

Edited May 2, 2018 by TopHatProductions115
Additional citation

[Canada EH]

2 hours ago, lavablade02 said:

Apple does mostly manual construction of their products. Why doesn't Apple use machines to cut down on costs?

Manual labor is so cheap, so they prefer to use children in 3rd world countries to make their products.

Besides that, they'd have to retool, and retooling costs big money. So why bother when labor is so cheap in 3rd world countries.

[Techguy1993]

They use many machines? Also they have a robot that takes them apart for recycling.

[Sniperfox47]

On 2018-05-01 at 7:03 PM, Canada EH said:

Manual labor is so cheap, so they prefer to use children in 3rd world countries to make their products.

Besides that, they'd have to retool, and retooling costs big money. So why bother when labor is so cheap in 3rd world countries.

Nah why pay for child labor when you can pay adults slave labor wages and then put up suicide nets to keep them from killing themselves xP

 

(^^ the above is also a gross misrepresentation and oversimplification of the matter)

[W-L]

On 2018-05-01 at 7:02 PM, lavablade02 said:

Apple does mostly manual construction of their products. Why doesn't Apple use machines to cut down on costs?

It depends which operation or processes but a lot of the work is automated it’s mainly the final assembly and fit and finish work that gets the human touch. There are certain aspects as mentioned also such as cost to develop and integrate such a assembly line for it to be only superceed 12 months later with a new interation.