Merge, Spin, Dry
He's in the process of digesting appliance maker Maytag, but Dave Swift still has room left for banana chocolate pudding. As president of Whirlpool North America, Swift is overseeing the integration of Maytag, purchased in March for $2.6 billion. Three old Maytag plants that built washers and dryers will close, with the work shifted to two more-efficient factories in Ohio. That, he explains over lunch at trendy Brasserie in midtown Manhattan, will help Whirlpool keep a competitive manufacturing base in the United States. Yet to stay competitive, he warns, American factories need to stay as lean as possible. "The best cost equals the best future," he says. "That means some jobs are going to come out."
It's a good time to work for an appliance maker, though. Whirlpool's research shows that baby boomers who once regarded appliances as mere utilities now buy for style and design, spending hundreds on a new washing machine before the old one has conked out. Swift doesn't think that refrigerators with TVs in them-first offered by rival LG-will catch on. But a microwave oven with a TV screen might. Consumers also want dryers that work faster, washer-dryer sets with the same cycle time, and nozzles on the refrigerator water dispenser that don't splash.
Oh, and it would be nice if fancy technology made life simpler, not more complicated. "Imagine a microwave," Swift says as he twirls a dollop of pudding, "that knows how long, and exactly how, to cook food, because it can read an RFID tag that's in the food." Then he suggests that the future of quick eats may be even more glorious. "We've worked on steam cooking," he confides, "that can grill a steak in a microwave in about three minutes."
A Q&A with Dave Swift is at usnews.com/whirlpool
This story appears in the November 13, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.