Where is QC and PDI

gemsworld wrote:
I'm amazed how some people in this forum continually make excuses for poor quality and shoddy workmanship. :h

Having worked in for a helicopter company for 30 years as a Manufacturing eng there is a big difference in quality between production models and prototype models and the difference is tooling and processes. If the Mfg knew they would build 1000 or more of the same model they could justify and amortize the tooling, machines,and processes. If they were expected to sell only 100 or less a year they would not make the investment because we as consumers could not afford the extra costs amortized over 100 M/H's or less. They would be built "alternate method". What does that mean? Instead off wiring harness boards or NC routing the wires will be routed and trimmed and terminated on the MH. The windows will be trimmed by hand instead of a template or NC machine causing the windows to leak in some cases because the window aperture was not controlled accurately enough. If quality is not designed into the mfg tooling and processes quality control after the fact won't increase the quality. As long as MH Mfg's produce only small volumes this will be the basic problem. Having stated the problem as I see it there are things that can be done such as designing common parts for all models, using more flexible NC machines etc. As far as "shoddy workmanship" ask yourself for example which will produce a higher quality part with fewer mistakes a guy asked to layout and drill 1000 holes by hand or an NC machine drilling the same holes? Maybe if 1000 of us decided to by the same MH and the Mfg's did as I described we would have a higher quality MH with fewer mistakes but this is America and we all want something different.