How Did Making a Soap Bottle Go From 90 Days to 21 Days?
Bath & Body Works reduced the time it takes to make a bottle of soap from 90 days to 21, shares The Wall Street Journal. It also reduced the number of miles the parts travel from 13,000 miles to a just a handful of miles. Part of the solution: the company trimmed out China and Canada.
BBW was able to move production to the US largely due to robots and computers. In China, 50 people may work on a bottle. In the US, labor is too expensive. The company replaced the 40 people with robots. The bottles are made with just 10 US workers--and expensive computers. It's really "Made in the U.S.A ~ By Robots."
Here at Shop Local, we believe in local manufacturing. We believe that shopping local's 'sister' is manufacturing local. While BBW uses a lot of robots and machines, we still appreciate them bringing jobs back to our shores.
Excerpts from the article:
"BBW, whose headquarters is about 10 miles from the beauty park, was founded by Les Wexner as part of his retail conglomerate, L Brands. The body-products seller grew from 27 stores in 1990 to more than 1,000 in 1999 and 1,810 as of April. "
.....
"Nguyen estimates that production in the U.S. employs around 10 people and required $12 million in capital investment, versus employing around 50 people with under $2 million in investment for similar production capacity in China."