A uniform might seem like a straightforward government purchase: Figure out how many people need one. Pick the sizes. Place the order. Ship the uniforms.
But what if the size chart doesn’t fully reflect the people wearing them?
That’s the question asked on the latest episode of Fed Thread, where David McLaughlin, co-founder and CTO of Bodd, explains the surprisingly complicated business of outfitting a large workforce.
The conversation reveals what happens when organizations make decisions about people using data that may not accurately represent those people in the first place.
Here are a few takeaways that may make you look at a size chart a little differently.
Your uniforms have a data problem
The traditional uniform process involves requirements, design, prototypes, wear testing, manufacturing, warehousing and distribution.
Then the employee puts it on.
That’s when an organization may discover that something doesn’t fit the way it was intended. But by that point, changing the design or the size mix can be expensive.
McLaughlin’s argument is that workforce data can move much of that learning earlier in the process, before the design is locked in and thousands of garments are sitting useless in a warehouse.
Same measurements, different bodies
Two people can have the same waist and chest measurements and still need very different garments. Shoulder shape, posture, torso length, hip-to-waist ratio and where someone carries weight all affect fit. A tape measure can’t capture that.
Bodd uses portable body scanners to collect hundreds of measurements, along with information about shape and posture, in about a minute.
For a workforce wearing uniforms or protective equipment, fit isn’t just about comfort; it’s about whether the garment works when someone moves, carries equipment or layers clothing.
Adding sizes can’t fix fit
The obvious answer to a sizing problem might be to offer more sizes, but more sizes also mean more inventory. If the underlying patterns still don’t reflect the people wearing them, an organization can wind up with a bigger size chart without a better fit.
Then there’s tailoring.
“Tailoring, whichever way you look at it,” McLaughlin says, “it doesn’t scale.”
For protective equipment, alterations can introduce another concern. Changing a garment that’s designed to provide a specific function can affect how it’s intended to perform.
Sometimes the issue isn’t that someone picked the wrong size, McLaughlin explains—they’re just wearing the “least wrong size.”
Your sample better look like your workforce
A small group can be useful for testing a design and figuring out what needs to change, but who is included in that group matters.
If the people being measured all come from one location, one job or one narrow group of volunteers, the data may tell you a lot about that slice of the workforce and not much about everyone else.
That’s one reason McLaughlin distinguishes between learning from a small group and validating against a broader, representative workforce. The same goes for different groups within the federal government. Army, Air Force and Navy personnel, for example, don’t necessarily have the same body profiles, environments or uniform requirements, he says.
When the workforce changes, but the size chart doesn’t
People join and leave organizations. They age. They have children. They recover from injuries. By and large, everyone’s body changes. Recent advances in weight-loss therapies, including GLP-1 medications, can also cause rapid and drastic body composition changes across a workforce within a matter of weeks or months.
If the workforce changes and the data doesn’t, says McLaughlin, sizing drifts. That makes body data less relevant as a one-time measurement and more necessary to keep current, particularly when uniforms or protective equipment are being reissued.
McLaughlin believes outfitting a workforce should start with understanding the workforce itself. For more on Bodd’s philosophy, business approach and successes with other government institutions, listen to the full Fed Thread conversation, presented by Blue Cross and Blue Shield Federal Employee Program.
Catch more conversations on podcast platforms, YouTube or on the Fed Thread hub page.
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