Thor Forums

[Beacher]

Coincidentally, I am a Quality guru at an aerospace high tech U.S.A. manufacturing facility, (not RVs). However, as I mentioned before, I almost did go work in the RV industry about a decade ago.

The limiting factor to flawless QC, is the cost issue. In order to allow for RV manufacturing in the U.S.A., virtually all of the remaining RV manufacturers run their operation extremely lean. The practice is even called "Lean Manufacturing"!

As such, most, if not all of them have done away with dedicated separate in-process and final inspection personnel. Instead, they have trained each employee to be "empowered" and responsible for quality at all phases of production, and at their assembly step. Each worker has the authority to stop the production line if they identify a defect, to have it reworked and corrected before it gets to the next assembly step.

Ideally, each successive employee in a production line is additionally responsible for more and more items to "inspect", with multiple eyeballs seeing that things are in perfect order by the time the product is finished.

In reality, everyone is usually gung-ho on Monday morning, or right after their daily/weekly department meeting. Then, as the week goes on, they are thinking about their personal life, dinner plans, or the weekend, and not so much about anything other than the task at hand, and how fast they can get it done. So, towards the end of the week very few defects get reworked.

Chances are, if you get a lemon, it was assembled or made late in the week.

With every really good Quality system there are systems, procedures, and checks and balances to help overcome the reality of the human condition. These processes are in place to help eliminate the end-of-week syndrome at the manufacturer's factory.

But, as everyone has experienced, for RV's, it's ultimately left up to dealer to correct any last minute defects found before delivery to the purchasing customer. The better the dealership technicians are at performing "Dealer Preparation", the less problems the final customer will have.

Some RV dealerships simply focus on profits through sales volume, so they have really bad Prep technicians. Better dealerships focus on customer service and repeat sales, and they typically have very good Prep technicians.