| Go to any full-service carwash on a busy Saturday | | | | The name of the game at a busy car wash is to |
| and watch the production line for an hour or so. You | | | | move the cars out of the way and get them back |
| will immediately see the sense of urgency to get the | | | | on the road to make more room for the flow of |
| cars out of the way and keep the flow going. You | | | | production coming up behind them. It is all about |
| will watch the cars coming in from the street backing | | | | productivity. Perhaps, after you sit and observe all |
| up and creating a log-jam and you will see the | | | | this you can see why the layout of the car wash is |
| completed cars backing up the tunnel and production | | | | ultra-important to the level of production and a |
| cycle. And you thought a car wash was a simple | | | | mistake in a carwash's layout will have huge |
| business? | | | | ramification on its profits or lack of. |
| Hardly, as the modern day car wash is filled with | | | | The tunnel of the carwash is like a choke point, |
| robotic equipment that is so complicated that | | | | where you have to take all the volume and run it |
| Murphy's Law can ruin the entire day is a heartbeat | | | | through a single file line. Now that tunnel washing |
| and it still takes people, lots of people at the | | | | procedure may only last 90-seconds from start to |
| beginning of the assembly line to prep the cars | | | | finish, but, if you get bottlenecks on either side, you |
| (vacuum and pre-wash) and at the end of the | | | | drastically reduce the number of cars you can wash |
| production line (move cars up to exit and dry them | | | | in an hour, thus your days totals will be much less. |
| off). | | | | This obviously affects the bottom line. |