From ‘Bendgate’ to Bacon: How Apple’s New Detroit Academy is Saving Small Businesses
Michigan State University
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Earlier this year, Apple opened the new Apple Manufacturing Academy — a business initiative based in Detroit, Michigan where it’s partnered with Michigan State University to help accelerate innovation among American manufacturers.
Classes began on August 19, offering free training for American workers in advanced manufacturing skills. Now that businesses have had a chance to partake of Apple’s wisdom, is it making a difference? Does Apple simply give small businesses a two-day opportunity to learn, then cast them upon the seas of commerce to fend for themselves?
What Is the Apple Manufacturing Academy?
Apple announced its plans for the new Apple Manufacturing Academy in Motor City in February as part of a pledge to invest $600 billion in the US economy over the next four years. While that amount isn’t a significant hike in the amount of money Apple usually invests in the United States, this time around, Apple appears to be focusing on strengthening its American supply chain, thanks to pressure from President Trump’s “Made in the US”-centric administration.
The academy, created and run in partnership with Michigan State University, offers free courses led by Apple experts, designed to assist small and medium-sized American businesses in transitioning to advanced manufacturing.
Apple says academy sessions “focus on machine learning and deep learning in manufacturing; automation in the product manufacturing industry; leveraging manufacturing data to improve product quality; applying digital technologies to enhance operations; and more.”
The program also provides small businesses in America access to both in-person and online training and consultation.
Success Stories
This week, Wired reported on one of the success stories from this program, showing that its benefits aren’t limited to the free monthly workshops. At least three participants told Wired that Apple employees also made site visits and offered technical support.
Approximately ten Apple employees assisted ImageTek — a small manufacturer in Vermont — in developing a computer vision system to check millions of labels for color errors during production. Once in place, the system was able to detect bacon labels that had a far-too-pinkish beige before they went out the door.
“We’re not a gigantic company, and we don’t have any AI or software team,” Marji Smith, ImageTek’s president says of the 31-year-old, 54-employee business. “What Apple is doing is positively impactful for us.”
Smith says the timely catch helped prevent ImageTek from losing a crucial customer.
Lessons Learned
It turns out that not only did Apple provide training and consultation, they were also more than willing to share hard-earned lessons from controversies like “bendgate.”
You may recall the 2014 reports of iPhone owners who found the newly launched iPhone 6 Plus bending in tight pockets. The issue affected only a small number of users, and was admittedly somewhat blown out of proportion by the media and the internet, but Academy participants say Apple employees were upfront about their experiences and what they learned from them. While the report doesn’t go into specifics on what those lessons were, it notes they helped Apple to illustrate the importance of the kind of automatic quality control that saved ImageTek.
