Just Suppose

Gjac wrote:

jwmII wrote:
Today it was announced that September 2016 was one of the bigger months for RV sales in the recent past. Unfortunately there were no announcements regarding any of the manufacturers ramping up their quality. There is not much incentive to improve quality as long as there are record sales each month.

Don't you think that reducing warranty costs would be an incentive to improve the product? From what I have seen most of the problems are not quality problems but design/mfg process problems. I don't believe that workers are lazy and purposely try to put out an inferior product. I also don't believe you can inspect quality into the product it has to be part of the design/build process itself. I would focas on fewer products so that I could afford good production tooling and NC mfg processes. It is hard to justify spending a lot of money up front if they only build low volume units. The more workers have to layout holes and cut things by hand the more mistakes are made. NC layouts and production tools eliminate these mistakes and will make a more uniform product.

Warranty costs are not a factor because these vehicles are being sold with substantial profit margins and warranty costs per unit are cheap when you see what a manufacturer pays a selling dealer for warranty work. Also independents that take on warranty work are cheaply paid. So much so that many will not do warranty repair.
Dealers have to provide separate staff in many cases to handle the warranty expenses for the numerous lines they sell.
As far as CNC equipment to do a lot of the work; There is no incentive to spend the big money those tools require along with the training the operators require when you can hire illegal immigrants off the clock for half the money and no benefits. All that is really needed is round wheels at each corner so it can be shoved out the door to the next station and then on to a dealer and an unsuspecting buyer who then have to sort the whole mess out most of the time with less than satisfactory results.

Build units faster and increase profits. Get promoted to president and Have my new VP do it for me, as i'm on the golf course.

:)

free radical wrote:

Oasisbob wrote:
Improve quality on the asembly line. Most problems start there. Have you seen the videos from on the line? Very rushed. Quality is secondary to speed. Slow down, promote profit incentives. Have workers sign off and give incentives for quality keeping track of each rig and where warranty issues are. In short reward good quality work. Let the employees have input. They might surprise you. For the most part quality sucks in the RV industry. And why not? We keep buying this over priced junk. Shame on us. Better hope the Chinese never take over this industry

First one needs to find good employees,
and one way to do this is to have a mandatory drug testing,no exceptions..

Name one mfg that doesn't have a drug testing policy.

minnow wrote:

time2roll wrote:
...Buy back some of the lemons and make my employees go on an RV trip.

If the company is taking everyone camping, then the designers and engineers need to pack an overnight bag too. It's real easy to sit behind a computer screen with the CAD program running and quite another to actually see how the design and floorplan actually work in the real world.

NuWa use to do just that, they had a few models that their employees could use.

Oasisbob wrote:
Improve quality on the asembly line. Most problems start there. Have you seen the videos from on the line? Very rushed. Quality is secondary to speed. Slow down, promote profit incentives. Have workers sign off and give incentives for quality keeping track of each rig and where warranty issues are. In short reward good quality work. Let the employees have input. They might surprise you. For the most part quality sucks in the RV industry. And why not? We keep buying this over priced junk. Shame on us. Better hope the Chinese never take over this industry

Spot on except for the Chinese comment. I think American workers can do just as well if given the opportunity.

Unless the company owner is ready to invest more money in employee training, build fewer units for the time needed to retrain and change the company culture, spend the money on real marketing to learn what their customers want in each price range and model type, and the owner wants to change their focus from margins to quality the new vp of quality is not going to have much impact on product quality.

The desired changes must come from the top down, starting with the owner. Simply hiring a new vp does not mean the owner is prepared to change their attitude.

Plus the owner must be willing to push back on impatient customers when defects are found and the corrective action delays delivery.

jwmII wrote:
Today it was announced that September 2016 was one of the bigger months for RV sales in the recent past. Unfortunately there were no announcements regarding any of the manufacturers ramping up their quality. There is not much incentive to improve quality as long as there are record sales each month.

Don't you think that reducing warranty costs would be an incentive to improve the product? From what I have seen most of the problems are not quality problems but design/mfg process problems. I don't believe that workers are lazy and purposely try to put out an inferior product. I also don't believe you can inspect quality into the product it has to be part of the design/build process itself. I would focas on fewer products so that I could afford good production tooling and NC mfg processes. It is hard to justify spending a lot of money up front if they only build low volume units. The more workers have to layout holes and cut things by hand the more mistakes are made. NC layouts and production tools eliminate these mistakes and will make a more uniform product.

Today it was announced that September 2016 was one of the bigger months for RV sales in the recent past. Unfortunately there were no announcements regarding any of the manufacturers ramping up their quality. There is not much incentive to improve quality as long as there are record sales each month.

Vice President of Quality. What a laugher that is. It'll never happen because they are selling all they can build. They all gather at their various conventions and kiss each others rear ends and keep shoving their planned and engineered garbage out their various factory doors.

When we the consumer quit buying their over decorated junk and quit paying their inflated prices, then Maybe quality might get better. Right now the industry has no incentive to improve their quality. Remember as well that most of the individual parts that come together to make an RV are of decent quality, Items like the chassis, heaters, lighting, kitchen equipment exclusive of vapor absorption refrigerators which no one seems to get right these days and everything else down to the nuts and bolts.
The manufacturers lack the ability to install and put into service all of those items to create a fully functioning unit. Until they do the buyers will keep rewarding these Bandits with their hard earned cash by the wheel barrow load. With that working for them; It's like I asked before. Where's the incentive to build quality.

Makes you wonder how many of the folks in charge at the manufacturers (or any regular employees even) get out there and camp? You'd think if there were more people who worked in the industry using the products there would be a change. I see some folks who work for automotive manufacturers post on the forum, but never anyone that works for any RV manufacturers.