[geeks] this is where the mac should be

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: "Jonathan C. Patschke" <jp at celestrion.net>
>Date: 2006/10/12 Thu PM 07:42:06 CDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] this is where the mac should be


<snip>
>   3) Apple wanted to keep tiny inventories (ie: like Dell) with niche
>      processors, ASICs, and boards, and got tired of IBM and Freescale
>      telling them exactly where to stick that argument.


I just read in yesterday's Wall Street Journal (European Edition - I was in Germany over the weekend for a wedding) that talked about the No. 2 man at Apple who, among other notable activities, lowered the on-hand inventory from some silly number of days (28-30?) down to a one-time low of 2 days inventory on-hand, saving the company the overhead of keeping several hundred million (US dollars) of inventory. He accomplished this by "requiring" suppliers to locate near Apple distribution points.

One of the interesting situations he walked into when he joined Apple was that parts were shipped from Asia to European factory to be built into systems, which were in turn sent back to Asia to satisfy customer purchases...

Interesting article...

Lionel