Les Jones

E-commerce > Supply Chain Management Comes to the Sock Drawer

Tuesday E-commerce Report #15

Lately I've been reading about supply chain management, and it reminded me of this Wired magazine article from 2000.

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.

What is supply chain management? There are a variety of definitions. Here are a few:

An attempt to coordinate processes involved in producing, shipping and distributing products, generally performed only by large corporations with large suppliers. Private Trading Exchanges can extend Supply Chain Management to all trading partners regardless of size because they provide a central location to integrate information from all supply chain participants.

The optimization of the entire fulfillment process, from consumer purchase back through the retail store, retail DC, wholesaler, manufacturer DC, factory, raw material/component supplier, etc. for greater responsiveness, speed, and efficiency. It encompasses supply chain planning and supply chain execution.

SCM has radically altered the face of manufacturing and retail. Companies like Dell and Wal-Mart that master SCM come to dominate their fields. Careful attention to SCM reduces excess inventory (which creates greater capital efficiency), virtually eliminates shortages, and provides a more agile organization that can quickly re-allocate resources in a changing market.

The Wired article is a great example of supply chain management applied to domestic life. The idea of sock standardizion instantly appealed to me. I always hated sorting and rolling different brands, sizes, and colors of socks. And having different kinds of socks is inefficient. If you lose one sock, it's the same as losing the pair.

But just white socks? After reading the Wired article I thought about my sock needs and settled on three styles:

Gold Toe brand black dress socks. Black socks are a staple for formal occasions. If you're standardizing, it makes sense to standardize on a company and a product like Gold Toe socks that are going to be around for a while. Getting rid of my navy socks also means that I no longer have to turn on the light to see if a dark sock is black or navy.

L.L. Bean ragg wool hiking socks. Great for hiking and cold winter days. L.L. Bean keeps making the same stuff forever, and I've been buying these socks for 15 years now. Recently, though, I've found something better. I'm switching to SmartWool brand Merino wool socks. They're more comfortable and faster-drying, have better elastic, and their khaki colors matches my khakis. (I didn't know this until recently, but the fashion mavens say you're supposed to match your sock color to your pants color, not to your shoe color, to make your legs look longer.)

White athletic socks. Needed when wearing tennis shoes. Athletic socks are so cheap that I don't worry about maintaining a single brand. When my white sock supply starts looking threadworn I throw out the old ones and buy a bulk pack of whatever's on sale. I used to keep two lengths (ankle length and calf length), but recently bought some quarter-length socks to simplify things even further.

Laundry day couldn't be simpler. When I take clothes out of the dryer I sort them into piles: socks, t-shirts, underwear, and shirts and pants. The sock pile gets thrown into the sock drawer with no sorting or rolling. When it's time to get a pair of socks I open the drawer and find two socks of the same color and I'm done.

LATER: More about supply chain management. Hat tip: Virginia Postrel.

Les Jones is an e-commerce manager living in Knoxville, Tennessee. He offers consulting in Web design and site promotion, and programming in JavaScript, Web+ Markup Language, and the Web+Shop shopping cart system.