Showing posts with label Adam Lashinsky. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adam Lashinsky. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Secretive Apple (2)

Image representing Apple as depicted in CrunchBaseImage via CrunchBaseSecretive Apple
Apple: $10 Billion To $400 Billion In 10 Years
The Significance Of Eating An Apple

The Next Web: This is how Apple’s top secret product development process works
Every product at Apple starts with design..... Instead of the design being beholden to the manufacturing, finance or manufacturing departments, these all conform to the will of the design department headed by Jony Ive.

A start-up is formed....... Once a new product has been decided on, a team is organized and segregated from the rest of the company by secrecy agreements and sometimes physical barriers. Sections of the building may be locked or cordoned off to make room for the teams working on a sensitive new project. This effectively creates a ‘start-up’ inside the company that is only responsible to the executive team, freeing them from the reporting structure of a big company.

Apple New Product Process (ANPP). .... a document that sets out every step in the development process of a product in detail .... maps out the stages of the creation, who is responsible for completion, who will work on each stage and when they will be completed.

Products are reviewed every Monday. ...... no product is ever more than two-weeks away from a key decision being made

The EPM mafia. ...... The engineering program manager (EPM) and the global supply manager (GSM). ...... executives that spend most of their time in China overseeing the production process.

Once a product is done, it is designed, built and tested again. ...... a 4-6 week process that ends with a gathering of responsible Apple employees at the factory. ..... The EPM then takes the beta device back to Cupertino for examination and comments, hopping right back on a plane to China to oversee the next iteration of the product. This means that many versions of any given device have been completed, not just partially prototyped. This is an insanely expensive way of building a new product, but it is the standard at Apple.

The packaging room. ...... A room in the Marketing building is completely dedicated to device packaging. The security here is matched only by the sections of the building dedicated to new products and to design. At one point before a new iPod was launched there was an employee who spent hours every day for months simply opening the hundreds of box prototypes within in order to experience and refine the unboxing process.

The launch is controlled by the Rules of the Road....... a top secret document that lists every significant milestone of a product’s development up until launch. Each milestone is annotated with a DRI (directly responsible individual)
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