Ecommerce exec plus musician wife plus five kids (ages 4 to 13) times seven days equals 140 pounds of dirty clothes, which (calculated in terms of standard single washer/dryer capacity) translates to eight hours of laundry per week. Or does it? According to IBM B2B guru and operations expert Pat Toole, if you factor in heaping scoops of flow analysis, supply-chain management, and just-in-time planning, you can cut the 16-load job down to four hours.
"There were mounds of clothes," Toole recalls. "I analyzed the operation, looking for the efficiency constraint, and quickly realized that the dryer was the gate operation." He procured an additional washer and dryer (both high capacity) and optimized the system based on color, temperature, and cycle time. "The key is to sort the clothes for maximum throughput," he explains. "Matching socks for seven is a challenge, so I threw out all of the old ones and implemented an all-white policy." Talk about streamlining.
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