Whirlpool's plant in Schorndorf, Ge...

Whirlpool's plant in Schorndorf, Germany degrees up the company's global manufacturing platform with the Access concoct that produced the successful Duet horizontal-axis washer for the U

* at the late 1990s, executives at Whirlpool Corporation realized that a significant portion of the North American market was ready to embrace a high-efficiency, big-capacity, front-load clothes washer. It also realized that the washer it eventually would launch had to take the industry by dint of storm--a killer appliance that would dominate the market's relatively small, however growing, front-load segment.

Fortunately, Whirlpool had a leg up