Keystone Passport Ultralite GT bad news

westend wrote:

TacoPuller wrote:
That's just horrible. Yea, we don't want migrants coming in and taking jobs from THOSE workers. From the standpoint that the manufacturers are to blame, yes. They need to a) learn what quality is, b) teach it to their workers, and the ones that won't learn it need to be fired, and c) for the ones the DO learn it, care about them, reward them with a decent wage and don't let them go. Properly assembled, even cheap can last a long time- but you can't expect a donkey to assemble it.

Your post is about the fourth or fifth one I've read that blames the poor quality of RV's on the production workers that assemble them. One poster even stated that the problems were due to the "piece work" process that allegedly is used at the RV plants. I don't know what you did for a living to arrive at these assumptions but they are far from accurate.

Any quality issues start from the top and are directed or filtered downward. In my experience, nearly all workers that assemble or produce goods with their hands want to do a good job and are forced by management to achieve nearly 100% correct completion of their task. There is no incentive to do it any other way. Where problems start to arise is usually with supervision requiring completion of tasks quicker and not allowing sufficient time. Another problem could be the design of production process being ill thought out. If the production environment starts to closely resemble an anthill with workers at odds with each other, you can also expect problems. There can be other issues as well but none of them lie at the feet of the worker.

Your comment about migrant workers assumes a caste system or hierarchy of workers. I hope you have the opportunity to work with someone born outside our borders so that you can eliminate that type of judgemental thinking. Off hand, I'd speculate that 95% of anybody born South of Texas could work rings around you.

First of all, I am an research engineer, working in the automotive industry. I spend 35 hours a week writing test scripts for product testing, and 10 hours a week working with QA in postmortems on products that came off the line, and went into destructive testing to see how our quality holds up on a daily basis. We destroy perfectly good products to see where they might be production problems. We also torture test incoming parts to see if they meet spec. Samples of every part, not just some. Sometimes those products were brought to the attention of engineering from the line, and line personal are always welcome in our door, and everyone has my cell number for off hours. If a problem arises, it's off to China /Japan / with QA to discuss with offshore engineering teams and management. Every worker in my company can press a button to stop production, and there are millions of products going out per year. And guess what happens if they're right? They get a bonus. Enough times, and they get promoted. You said "there is no incentive to do it any other way.." That's absolute ****. 30% of the people that try to work here won't make the cut. Quality is something that is a part of one's character, not something you can write down in a resume.

My comment about migrant workers didn't assume anything. In high school, I worked along migrant workers where I grew up in California picking oranges and strawberries. Most of my friends were Latino, and were the hardest working people on the planet; unbelievable work ethic compared to many of the people I come across now. That ethic wasn't a joke; it was weaved into their culture and generations of hard working people brought that ethic with them when they came, and passed it down to their kids. That is the kind of people I look for in our team.

"Off hand, I'd speculate that 95% of anybody born South of Texas could work rings around you."

Nice. Find someone that can take my job. Oh, they have to know CTE of most polymers and machinable metals, and can help setup FEAs on FR-4 PCBS and polymer parts. They would also have to be able to write optics analysis scripts in Matlab, design 2.4GHz multilayer PCBs with embedded microstrip technology, and do critical evaluation with the electronics design and PCB layout personel (I have 30 years experience in high frequency electronics/PCB design). Plus they would have to be able to do electronic EMI/ESD analysis, and be completely versed in multiple programming languages. Plus handhold foreign design teams, be versed in political tact when it comes to telling them their testing methods are inadequate, and train them in best practices. I'm sure you can do all that, but if you know anyone else that can, send them my way. I would hire them in a second.