Unit II Project

School: Columbia Southern University - Course: ACC 3301 - Subject: Accounting

The company that I have chosen is Apple and the product that I chose that they are making is the iPhone. The Apple headquarters is in Cupertino, California and is a technology company that makes consumer electronics that can be used for business, education, or private use. While most know about the computers, tablets, and phones, Apple has also expanded its portfolio into streaming services that they are developing and producing in house. Apple is best known though for the iPhone that is the reason that I chose that product out of all the devices that they produce. There are various activities that are involved with the value chain for the iPhone. Manufacturing, design, engineering, distribution, sales, research, and development are all parts of the value chain. The research and development would be the initial steps because that is the step where you are researching all the technology that is going to be going into the device and then developing everything that will be going into it like the operating systems and applications that are necessary for the device to run properly. Designing and engineering are the next steps and are very similar to the research and development steps but take on a new role. Designing and engineering is more of the physical components of the device, this is where you are sculpting everything and packaging it into one sleek package. Next would be the manufacturing side of things, you have come up with all the components and know what all is going to be included in the device so now it is time to take all those parts and put them together for mass production. After the device has been manufactured, we now switch to the distribution and sales side of the process. We now have our device, and it is waiting in our warehouse, so we need to find a way to deliver it to the consumers and retail stores. Distribution is very important because that is where we are now taking our finished product and shipping it out to the masses. Lastly is sales, this is the part where we are making money now. The sales aspect is the payoff from all the hard work pays off by bringing in revenue. In all these business units a cost that will be incurred is going to be personnel. You must have people working in each group for work to be done so that is a cost because of their salaries. For research and development, we would also be looking at equipment used for research, and the cost of equipment to develop. The design and engineering would be cost that are related to the materials and equipment to make the devices or come up with the ideas and test models. The manufacturing side would incur costs from making the device and any equipment that is needing for mass production. The distribution side of costs would be the packaging and distribution or shipping costs, and the cost of all the shipping equipment that is used to package, weigh, and print labels. The sales side of cost would be all directly related to marketing, and allocated devices for display.