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| Apple took years to ditch a supplier that violated its standards |
A new report from The Information delivers insights. Although Apple claims to find practices like forced labor uncomfortable, we always hear about abuse from employees of Apple's suppliers.
A former employee who worked with Apple's Supplier Responsibility team said: `` There are several issues that have prevented Apple from cleaning up its supply chain.
There aren't many manufacturers that can meet Apple's quality and size standards, and fewer companies can meet Apple's requirements in no time.
When it comes to this issue, the company is generally unprepared for rising costs and production delays.
The former employee claimed that Apple avoided or delayed abandoning the manufacturer because that was hurting its business.
The report provides some examples of how this caused problems for the company when in 2013 Apple discovered that one of its suppliers, Suyin Electronics, had hired underage workers and the company was manufacturing HDMI ports. And USB to the company's MacBook series.
The manufacturer promised to change this behavior, but a later investigation by Apple found that three other underage workers were on the Suyin assembly line, including a 14-year-old.
Although Apple did not provide Suyin with a new job based on the results of the investigation, they continued to work with Suyin due to some current contracts and it took more than three years for the connection to be permanently cut off. .
Apple investigated Biel Crystal, a company that makes glass screens for iPhone, and found that Biel Crystal's environmental, health, and safety culture was weak at all levels of management, requiring more than two dozen corrective actions.
However, after a year of investigation, Biel Crystal has failed to implement the many improvements that Apple has requested, and the two companies continue to work together, in part because the Biel Crystal may be removed from the supply chain by linking Apple to a single glass screen vendor.
Apple tries to avoid this policy at all costs as it can take advantage of competition between vendors to get the best prices on components.
In addition, this strategy allows Apple to avoid situations where the modem is from a single source (Intel).
Additionally, Bill Crystal's punishment means the order will be sent to Lens Technology, announced by The Washington Post, to force Uyghur Muslims to make parts for Apple.
An Apple spokesperson said: The company has the highest standards in the industry to ensure that workers in its supply chain are treated with dignity and respect.
He added: We are closely monitoring the vendors we work with and will act quickly if any problems arise to ensure they are resolved and resolved or end the relationship. We have done this many times.
Apple has cut contact with the manufacturer several times in the past, although something different was mentioned in its own report.
Since the launch of the first iPhone in 2007, the company has removed 22 manufacturers from its supply chain. This is only a small fraction of the more than 2,000 factories around the world that manufacture the company's products.