RollingHome
Well-known member
I firmly believe the problems visiting HL products are ALSO common to other RV’s in the same price range. These problems do not go away until the selling price goes up. Quality and cost rise together, it is common knowledge, the reverse is also true. It is commonly known as “you get what you pay for” The only time this rule changes is with economy of scale, i.e. remember the mass produced imports killing the big 3. RV manufacturers do not have the advantage of economy of scale. This takes place at tremendous production rates, rates that far outpace all the units produced in Elkhart by all 8 makers. Oh sure, one by one they will out do the other guy in a way that impresses some buyer… but, what was sacrificed to make this happen. There always is a trade off and someone loses. That someone is usually not the manufacturer.<o
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Having a QC inspector at the end of any assembly line will only catch visible flaws, like missing trim or crooked wall paper accents. Maybe even the fact a King Size bed was installed when the optional Queen size was ordered. The flaws that create “REAL” problems for the end user/s are often covered over and hid from sight. A QC inspector could/would spend too much time and hold up too many units to be feasible. These hidden flaws are often found a few years later (after the warranty expired) when they cause a problem or prevent use of a feature. What many companies do to alleviate defects is to engineer safe guards in or make design changes NOT for the customer directly but for the installer. These changes are often made to make the install go quicker, easier and prevent trade collision between the plumber and electrician, the duct work installer and the cabinet maker. <o></o>
As an example, most of our coaches are already wired for the front BR roof AC unit (as are some other brands). Often all that is needed is to remove the powered vent fan, wire up the new AC unit and turn it on. Places like Camping World realize this and will charge only $ 89.00 to install the new BR AC that you purchased from CW. IF and only if the electrician did his part correctly and no one else undid what the electrician had completed can it be done easily.<o></o>
Enter trade collision – when my RV was built the electrician did his job correctly, he prewired my RV for the front BR AC unit. However, when the powered vent fan installer installed my power vent fan he CUT the wires off so short they could not be used. He did this to make his job easier. New wires had to be run in my RV (and other RV's). What HL did was change the wiring path (location) to make it easier on the fan installer. Since the (new path) wires are no longer in his way, he doesn’t cut them off. The electrician wins, the fan installer wins and the end user wins. How could an end of the line QC inspector have caught this ? See the pics below of the cut wire/s.
Any assembly line worker/s who slows up the process and cost others the quota + $$$ bonus (see my earlier post) is going to have some serious problems in the work place. This worker/s may cut corners to avoid being hassled by co-workers by not securing the central vac correctly, not tightening the faucet nuts and by not getting every piece of debris off the roof before the membrane is installed. The membrane is glued down on top of ¼” luan plywood. Any debris that is left gets glued permanently between the membrane and luan, making “harmless” air bubbles...yeah right ! The luan is glued to the aluminum rafters and foam. The pretty ceiling panels you look up at are glued to the bottom of these rafters and foam. To correct the debris bubble problem would take days, would cause much roof destruction and be very costly. Besides, the bubbles are harmless (yeah right) hard to see unless indirect lighting is applied. Sun light is direct and so is high bay lighting in a dealers shop. So it rolls down the highway as is. The problem is not found until someone steps on a pimple and pops a “roof zit”… too late, it’s out of warranty you have a hole that must be repaired. See pics. below
Below what a popped roof zit looks like.
If a QC inspector slows the assembly line process "TOO" much, he or she gets a promotion.... out the door, that's just the way it is in the real world. RV's can have a myriad of problems, not only the two above. When a nitpicker QC with an eagle eye catches too many flaws he or she may cause the loss of the afore mentioned quota bonus. This can/does lead to work place bullying, mysterious flat tires, calls in the middle of the night to their home, so forth and so on... The turn over rate for line QC inspectors in some industries is tremendous and the big wheel just keeps on rolling and rolling and rolling.
When I removed my cargo bay wall in the "man cave" I started a good belly laugh at what I saw. Patti came to see what was so funny. She stated with absoluteness, " I know you, you're not going to leave that mess ". I replied, " Oh yes I am, ya can't see it from my house. Besides, that's not a job, it's a career !". Besides, I would never ruin such a wonderful master piece of work. HL is accepting this quality of work because the buyer will not pay to have it done right. Instead, they will buy the cheaper unit down the street which was built by the same Elkhart Craftspeople. HL will go out of business and when the new buyer finally discovers the mess behind their wall they will comment " man, HL would have never left this kind of work go out their door, they did it right " followed by, "It's a shame they went out of business, they WERE a great company " and the noobee will ask, Who's HL ?".
There exist other techniques that ALL RV makers could employ. Such as, they could have color coded and labeled wiring harnesses and PEX tubing packages made elsewhere (read between the lines) by lower cost labor and installed in Eklhart. What if ALL 8 RV manufacturers in Elkhart started documenting names of workers who have cost them money by performing slip shod work which had to be redone. These same names could be entered into a database available to 8 RV makers. They could call this "The Blackballed Name List". As it exist right now, the RV makers do not even know the name of the workers who built your RV unless they were their permannet employee and then it's doubtful. The Elkhart 8 just don't have time for this type of detailed record keeping. I'll bet, just the threat of this being done would increase the level of workmanship.
Most of the gripes I see on this and other RV forums are about workmanship. RV's that are ugly, unfriendly, fall apart, poorly designed, poorly engineered or over priced sound their own death knell. They die in a few short years without any help.
If the Elkhart 8 would get together and work as a team to solve the common problems that are currently plagueing them all the results would benefit everyone in the equation. Here's what I believe would happen ;
1). They would ALL make more profit !
2). The end user (u & me) would get a better unit !
3). The RV line workers would have a better work environment because the slugs would be elsewhere, cream rises !
4). The cost would go down for everyone !
The same problem/s are plaguing industries across America. Until there are fundamental change/s in the way we conduct business by changing our current mindset this downhill slide will steepen and end with a very hard landing at the bottom. That is what happened to the big 3 in Detroit in the last century. Does every industry have to learn the hard way before they change. History is doomed to repeat itself over and over until we all realize, we win as a team, we fail by ourselves. Charles Deming (the father of Quality Control) knew this when he brought Japan out of the WW II ashes (after the USA refused to listen to him), listen to him speak “The present style of management is the biggest producer of waste, causing huge losses, whose magnitudes can not be evaluated, can not be measured”
Happy RVing
></o>Having a QC inspector at the end of any assembly line will only catch visible flaws, like missing trim or crooked wall paper accents. Maybe even the fact a King Size bed was installed when the optional Queen size was ordered. The flaws that create “REAL” problems for the end user/s are often covered over and hid from sight. A QC inspector could/would spend too much time and hold up too many units to be feasible. These hidden flaws are often found a few years later (after the warranty expired) when they cause a problem or prevent use of a feature. What many companies do to alleviate defects is to engineer safe guards in or make design changes NOT for the customer directly but for the installer. These changes are often made to make the install go quicker, easier and prevent trade collision between the plumber and electrician, the duct work installer and the cabinet maker. <o
></o>As an example, most of our coaches are already wired for the front BR roof AC unit (as are some other brands). Often all that is needed is to remove the powered vent fan, wire up the new AC unit and turn it on. Places like Camping World realize this and will charge only $ 89.00 to install the new BR AC that you purchased from CW. IF and only if the electrician did his part correctly and no one else undid what the electrician had completed can it be done easily.<o
></o>Enter trade collision – when my RV was built the electrician did his job correctly, he prewired my RV for the front BR AC unit. However, when the powered vent fan installer installed my power vent fan he CUT the wires off so short they could not be used. He did this to make his job easier. New wires had to be run in my RV (and other RV's). What HL did was change the wiring path (location) to make it easier on the fan installer. Since the (new path) wires are no longer in his way, he doesn’t cut them off. The electrician wins, the fan installer wins and the end user wins. How could an end of the line QC inspector have caught this ? See the pics below of the cut wire/s.
Any assembly line worker/s who slows up the process and cost others the quota + $$$ bonus (see my earlier post) is going to have some serious problems in the work place. This worker/s may cut corners to avoid being hassled by co-workers by not securing the central vac correctly, not tightening the faucet nuts and by not getting every piece of debris off the roof before the membrane is installed. The membrane is glued down on top of ¼” luan plywood. Any debris that is left gets glued permanently between the membrane and luan, making “harmless” air bubbles...yeah right ! The luan is glued to the aluminum rafters and foam. The pretty ceiling panels you look up at are glued to the bottom of these rafters and foam. To correct the debris bubble problem would take days, would cause much roof destruction and be very costly. Besides, the bubbles are harmless (yeah right) hard to see unless indirect lighting is applied. Sun light is direct and so is high bay lighting in a dealers shop. So it rolls down the highway as is. The problem is not found until someone steps on a pimple and pops a “roof zit”… too late, it’s out of warranty you have a hole that must be repaired. See pics. below
Below what a popped roof zit looks like.
If a QC inspector slows the assembly line process "TOO" much, he or she gets a promotion.... out the door, that's just the way it is in the real world. RV's can have a myriad of problems, not only the two above. When a nitpicker QC with an eagle eye catches too many flaws he or she may cause the loss of the afore mentioned quota bonus. This can/does lead to work place bullying, mysterious flat tires, calls in the middle of the night to their home, so forth and so on... The turn over rate for line QC inspectors in some industries is tremendous and the big wheel just keeps on rolling and rolling and rolling.
When I removed my cargo bay wall in the "man cave" I started a good belly laugh at what I saw. Patti came to see what was so funny. She stated with absoluteness, " I know you, you're not going to leave that mess ". I replied, " Oh yes I am, ya can't see it from my house. Besides, that's not a job, it's a career !". Besides, I would never ruin such a wonderful master piece of work
. HL is accepting this quality of work because the buyer will not pay to have it done right. Instead, they will buy the cheaper unit down the street which was built by the same Elkhart Craftspeople. HL will go out of business and when the new buyer finally discovers the mess behind their wall they will comment " man, HL would have never left this kind of work go out their door, they did it right " followed by, "It's a shame they went out of business, they WERE a great company " and the noobee will ask, Who's HL ?".There exist other techniques that ALL RV makers could employ. Such as, they could have color coded and labeled wiring harnesses and PEX tubing packages made elsewhere (read between the lines) by lower cost labor and installed in Eklhart. What if ALL 8 RV manufacturers in Elkhart started documenting names of workers who have cost them money by performing slip shod work which had to be redone. These same names could be entered into a database available to 8 RV makers. They could call this "The Blackballed Name List". As it exist right now, the RV makers do not even know the name of the workers who built your RV unless they were their permannet employee and then it's doubtful. The Elkhart 8 just don't have time for this type of detailed record keeping. I'll bet, just the threat of this being done would increase the level of workmanship.
Most of the gripes I see on this and other RV forums are about workmanship. RV's that are ugly, unfriendly, fall apart, poorly designed, poorly engineered or over priced sound their own death knell. They die in a few short years without any help.
If the Elkhart 8 would get together and work as a team to solve the common problems that are currently plagueing them all the results would benefit everyone in the equation. Here's what I believe would happen ;
1). They would ALL make more profit !
2). The end user (u & me) would get a better unit !
3). The RV line workers would have a better work environment because the slugs would be elsewhere, cream rises !
4). The cost would go down for everyone !
The same problem/s are plaguing industries across America. Until there are fundamental change/s in the way we conduct business by changing our current mindset this downhill slide will steepen and end with a very hard landing at the bottom. That is what happened to the big 3 in Detroit in the last century. Does every industry have to learn the hard way before they change. History is doomed to repeat itself over and over until we all realize, we win as a team, we fail by ourselves. Charles Deming (the father of Quality Control) knew this when he brought Japan out of the WW II ashes (after the USA refused to listen to him), listen to him speak “The present style of management is the biggest producer of waste, causing huge losses, whose magnitudes can not be evaluated, can not be measured”
Happy RVing
