Just Suppose

Since most rvs are "handbuilt" unlike autos, employ incentives to departments with reduced warranty claims. Could be one step.

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

Many of the RV factories I have visited pay by piecework. When x number of units are done, you can go home. I would pay by the hour, slow the pace, allow the builders time to get it built right the first time.

Agree with Water bug, Quality is a large one that needs to be broken down with paretto type analysis of frequency of occurrence matched with the actual impact to the end user, then address them one by one, highest score to lowest.

My pet peeve is that the delivery inspections are very poor. I have been fortunate enough to purchase 4 new RV's from a TT to Class A DP, my expectation is that the first year will be a fiasco of visits to dealers to repair items that could have been caught with a rock solid pre delivery inspection and QA process.

Tough question since quality can always be improved with time and money, neither of which are given out readily. That being said, I think most of the quality complaints can easily be solved given a dose of these. Boiling it down to a couple of areas:

1. Water leakage (which causes delamination and wood deterioration. From what I can tell trailers are being built much they way they have been since the 1965 trailer I am restoring. Sidewalls but up against each other and roofs, are jammed with putty and covered with metal strips. Also roof seams and penetrations are generously gooed with caulk. There are better ways, but right now the easiest way would be the generous use of some strip sealant like Eternabond. I think this would eliminate leaks and about 75% of the complaints.

Next is floor structure. Either the sandwich foam structure of just a sheet of OSB. Two thoughts. My 1977 Jayco PUP had a plywood floor exposed to the bottom (no insulation,just an undercoating) and it held up with no rot in the 31 years I had the trailer. The 1965 trailer I am working on has a plywood floor, had fiberglass insulation and sat on a Celotex siding (1965 homebuilding product) that was exposed to the road. Again I saw no rot on the plywood or wet insulation. Only problem with the floor was in the corners where the edges leaked (see item #1).

Finally is general construction technique. Most trailers, cabinetry and the like are assembled with an air stapler and framing lumber, like 1 X 1 covered in paneling. Again, time and money would fix this.

Obviously there are a lot more but you get the idea.

JU

FMEA to begin with because there is an awful lot to do . FMEA is Failure Mode Effect Analysis. Once FMEA is completed, we would know which quality failures most effect the customer. Then you start by attacking the biggest fish first. Once he is dealt with, start on #2 and so on.

EDIT Was typing while the previous post was submitted.

EDIT2. FMEA is a common tool in the auto industry. It is a standardized proceedure that measures everything from loss of life to minor inconvenience and not noticed by customer.

EDIT 3. Frame failure could result in loss of life. A sticky cabnet door is a minor inconvenience. FMEA assigns 10X the priority to example #1, no matter how many complaints are recieved on example #2. It measures Effect and not customer satisfaction. However, the end result is increased customer confidence and satisfaction.

Need to know what the customer complaints are.