A few empty iPad cases taking a crazy trip halfway around the world and back is a surreal illustration of the distribution challenges that Apple is facing during the pandemic.
Apple has historically relied on purchasing cargo capacity on passenger flights to ensure that products reach the right country at the right time, but the coronavirus crisis has decimated the air travel industry …
Cargo ships are much slower, but also much less reliable.
The information opens his report with the history of the empty iPad cases.
Apple’s Singapore distribution center ran out of the brown mailboxes needed to meet an increase in orders from China for iPad due to the increased demand for remote learning devices, said a person with direct knowledge of Apple’s logistics operations . Although mailboxes specially designed for iPad were originally made in China, the only solution that avoided delays for customers was to transport a shipment of boxes that were not used in a warehouse in the USA.
Apple placed dozens of flattened box pallets on a plane to China, after which they were transferred to another plane bound for Singapore, where they had iPads stuck in them so they could be sent back to China. (Apple does not have a distribution center in China to handle orders from its online store because most Chinese customers buy Apple products through other retailers.)
But that was not the only improbable transport path the company had to use.
At one point, Apple failed to ship a HomePod Minis made in Vietnam to California after a marine freighter canceled its stop at the port of Haiphong, near Hanoi. So the Apple logistics team, which needed to bring the devices to the U.S. before the November 16 launch date, decided to transport the truck speakers about 1,400 miles from a factory outside Hanoi to the Chinese port of Shanghai, according to the person with direct knowledge of shipments.
There, Apple loaded the devices on express container ships, which are more expensive to transport goods than traditional cargo ships, but can travel twice as fast. The smaller ships covered the distance from Shanghai to California in two weeks instead of four. HomePods arrived in Long Beach, California at the end of October and in time for their launch before the holiday, according to an analysis of the data from the US Customs and Border Protection vessel manifest and the person with direct knowledge of the shipments. .
Apple used a similar approach for AirPods made in Vietnam, although the port of Haiphong is less than 160 kilometers away from where the devices are made. Instead of waiting for space on a container ship that would travel directly to the U.S., some AirPods were transported about 700 miles by truck to the port of Yantian in southern China before boarding ships bound for Long Beach, according to with data from the vessel and person manifest. In January, Apple was still using these unorthodox routes to ship some HomePod Minis and AirPods from Vietnam.
Apple also had to use aircraft chartering a lot more to make up for the huge drop in scheduled flights.
The company is working on a plan for parcel delivery companies like Fedex to act as distribution centers in the United States, holding inventory and sending it directly to customers when orders are placed with Apple.
Ameya Khandekar no Unsplash photo
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