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Discussion 4,

Effective supply chain management is a very difficult task that requires intensive work, attention and effort, especially for a giant such as Apple, Inc. Therefore, finding child labor is quite common among good producers and manufacturers, especially when they incur into outsourcing practices. The article clearly highlights how child labor has been a recurring issue within Apple’s supply chain, and provides a good example of how detrimental and negative it can result for a company that enjoys good image and reputation.

Mostly everything about Apple is constantly in the mouth of consumers throughout, for example, the IPad, IPhone 5, Apple Map or even environmental and labor issues at its suppliers' facilities such as child labor, extended working hours, and lack of employee benefits to name a few. However, and even knowing all these facts, IT research firm Gartner ranks Apple Supply Chain as the best supply chain in the world for 3 years in a row (Supplychainopz.com, 2013 ). Without a doubt, Apple Inc. is the world leader in Innovation, Branding and Software Ecosystem.

Not only Apple is victim of irregularities in its supply chain system, Samsung, for example has been continuously reported of child labor, employee exploitation, and unethical practices in its supply chain as well (Watch, 2013). For example, China Labor Watch (CLW) has published a report on the labor conditions at a Samsung cell phone supplier, revealing labor rights violations that include $84,000 of monthly unpaid overtime wages, up to 148 hours of overtime per month, intense rates of work that have workers assembling one cell phone case every four seconds, regular verbal abuse by management, forcing workers to work barefoot, fines imposed on workers, and insufficient safety training and safety measures (Watch, 2013).

These kind of issues are common among giant manufacturers such as Apple and Samsung, and especially, among companies that outsource the production of goods and...