school assignment about where parts for an iPhone come, what and which ones are inside one
hi, I have a school assignment about where part of an iPhone comes from. i.e. where copper comes from and aluminum and other sources
iPhone 15, iOS 17
Good morning,
Unfortunately, this is not the place to ask. Apple will not see your inquiry in this user-to-user setting.
We are all other end users like you, not Apple. We cannot answer that because we have no access to Apple's materials procedures. And sensitive sourcing/purchasing documents are not going to be publicly available on the web. This is as close as I believe you can get from Apple: Environment - Apple
Note the link at the top of that page to the pdf of a 2023 report.
If you call or write (actual business letter on paper) Apple, that may work but, historically, they have been very "closed-mouth" about sharing internal procedures. If you want to try them anyway:
IMHO, teachers should never assign research papers about Apple. Apple is simply too protective of its assets and intellectual properties to release enough internal information to make more than a paragraph. What I see on the web about Apple is largely based on speculation, not official sources. When I was in school such papers required supportable facts, not speculation.
About modern manufacturing: I worked for a U.S. manufacturer who used large amounts of both copper and aluminum. Although I cannot state where we got them, I do know that Purchasing maintained multiple trusted suppliers for every sourced item in case one or more suppliers were unable to fill an order on time. For some most critical materials, one item could have up to a dozen contractually-bound suppliers.
Likewise, each of our suppliers got their raw materials from multiple sources as well for the same reason. Mines flood; transport systems have equipment outages or labor shutdowns, etc. Only multi-path sourcing maintains manufacturing continuity, regardless of the point in the supply chain.
I refer you to a Amazon Prime Video 3-part film series on automobile manufacturing that shows the critical material issues facing modern "Just In Time" automated manufacturing. Electronic devices are now made with very similar process as the cars shown in that series.