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Old 07-06-2016, 07:29 PM   #57
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CampDaven View Post
Statistical Process Control (SPC) is an older but still effective version of LEAN.
I integrated SPC into several manufacturing activities.
It costs to start it up, but very little to keep it running. And the contribution to higher quality is huge, while customer satisfaction surges. After sale events all but disappeared, and repeat issues of the same fault ended.
Thus, warranty costs decrease dramatically and time at dealer facilities do likewise.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stat...rocess_control


Dave and Nola, RV Mutants
Very good link with lots of good info. I have always found it interesting that an American, W. Edwards Deming, was the one who taught the Japanese about quality control (SPC), just after WWII.

In 1981 Ford had Deming teach them quality control and in 1986 Ford became the most profitable auto company in the US (for the first time since 1920).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

hmmm..maybe some RV manufacturers need a refresher course?

PS-I've had zero problems with mine and the quality is fine.
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Old 07-06-2016, 08:06 PM   #58
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I have not put my 2 cents in yet because I have no desire to buy a new MH, Fiver, TT or anything else at this time or in the foreseeable future. When I bought I found a good quality, well maintained used unit and I am happy with it. If I were in the market for another unit I would not buy new even if I could afford it and that is partly because of all of the woes I have read about on this forum and others.

There is one thing that I don't think anyone else has mentioned.
If you have ever had a house built, did you have to have the builder come back and fix a few things? This is not to excuse the manufacturer's lack of QC but just to put the thought out there that some problems are to be expected. When you have a house that travels at highway speeds even more problems will arise.

Now as far as the engines and chassis, you would think they would be bulletproof by now, but that is not the case. Part of that problem is most likely brought on by new (unperfected) technology and government regulation about various aspects of the engine and chassis.

There is much room for improvement in the industry and QC would be a good place to start, but there will always be problems when money is a factor.

This is a complicated subject and I tend to over-simplify, but this is just my non refundable 2 cents worth.
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Old 07-06-2016, 10:29 PM   #59
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Originally Posted by LarrytheBear View Post
I have not put my 2 cents in yet because I have no desire to buy a new MH, Fiver, TT or anything else at this time or in the foreseeable future. When I bought I found a good quality, well maintained used unit and I am happy with it. If I were in the market for another unit I would not buy new even if I could afford it and that is partly because of all of the woes I have read about on this forum and others.

There is one thing that I don't think anyone else has mentioned.
If you have ever had a house built, did you have to have the builder come back and fix a few things? This is not to excuse the manufacturer's lack of QC but just to put the thought out there that some problems are to be expected. When you have a house that travels at highway speeds even more problems will arise.

Now as far as the engines and chassis, you would think they would be bulletproof by now, but that is not the case. Part of that problem is most likely brought on by new (unperfected) technology and government regulation about various aspects of the engine and chassis.

There is much room for improvement in the industry and QC would be a good place to start, but there will always be problems when money is a factor.

This is a complicated subject and I tend to over-simplify, but this is just my non refundable 2 cents worth.
I get what you're saying and I do agree that when building most things there will be hiccups from time to time.

The problem I have is when it's obvious companies are using inferior parts and it's directly due to driving down their costs. Take engines for example and I'll use 1 instance in particular. GM ran the cp3 injection pumps in the duramax motors without a lift pump for years. The end result is that the cp3's end up failing because they're overworked. Dodge ran the same pumps with a lift pump and doesn't have near the failures GM does. So what does GM do? They start using the cp4 pump which is even weaker than the cp3 and once again not using a lift pump. That's unacceptable to me. I'm a die hard GM guy but I flat out will not buy another GM truck until they start building what I'm paying for. Price out a new diesel GM and see if you think you're paying for inferior parts.
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Old 07-07-2016, 07:19 AM   #60
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15 Discovery

I knew before buying I was going to have a few problems with my 15 Discovery. A few is a understatement. 105 so far. Plus another 80 upgrades to get it right. Thank god I can fix most things. No trips to repair facility so far.

I don't believe how many people can't even turn a screwdriver. There is about 500 systems in my RV.
But this is no excuse for no final mfger quality inspection. And I was a Quality and Maintenance Manager.
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Old 07-07-2016, 09:05 AM   #61
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Originally Posted by cwk View Post
"The Toyota Way"
That is hilarious. I am intimately familiar with this method and have read and implemented many of the books related to related and similar processes, but I didn't include that as I figured it was so niche that I'd lose the audience.
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Old 07-07-2016, 10:09 AM   #62
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Wakup call for RV industry

We feel your pain and our own pain!
We have a 2014 Tiffin 36LA and have not had one excursion without a breakage. So many items it is on a two page list. Our first trip the slides wouldn't work nor the jacks. That was only the start. All of the electrical problems are factory install related. I took it, after I trouble shot these problems myself, to the dealer for warranty work like replacing the fireplace and damaged sink, scratched countertop and other stuff that should have never left the factor, not addressed. Took it back a muddy mess from the dealer, with misrepair and a scratch on the passenger side exterior. Won't take it back to them.
Sure Tiffin can send you parts and is happy to do so since I was doing the work and not costing Tiffin tech time @ $120. per hour. Now that the warranty is up I can still order parts but pay for them.
The point I am making is that the dealer system is part of the problem, both in the sales and service. Very incompetent dealer service, and sales that border on fraud are common.
If you are not very mechanical, or cannot find very competent service providers you probably shouldn't invest in a MH. Our disappointment in our 2014 Tiffin is profound and we are insulted in accepting such shabby quality both from Tiffin and the dealer.
As of today I am still repairing connections to the Kwikee Steps and had to repair the Whirlpool residential refrigerator because of the Modified Square Wave Inverter installed by Tiffin. Just beyond me how a manufacturer could use that inverter when a residential refrigerator with a circuit board is running in the circuit. There are more problems with this MH that I continue to redesign and repair.
So yes, count me among the many PO, insulted, and ripped off purchasers of MHs who would love to see somebody like Honda and/or Toyota come in this industry and create real healthy competition.
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Old 07-07-2016, 10:56 AM   #63
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Seeing the pie chart in the 'RV Daily Report' and the numbers it supposedly represented made me take a second look.

First, the article reports that 9 million households own RVs. The term 'household' is usually one dwelling with one family unit. Is that 4.6 people? (48% of U.S. consider 2 children to be ideal number) But many RVs are owned by seniors, with adult children, so the number gets even more difficult to determine. The author of the article used 9 million households to equate to individuals.

Next the article uses the number 289,852 as the number of people in the RV industry. Does that include just manufacturers or also those at various RV sales, service, and parts suppliers? The article doesn't say.

The author then divides 289,852 people employed in the RV industry by 9 million, to get 3.2%. He assumes that everyone in the business owns an RV and creates a graphic to illustrate that 'fact.'

And even with that bogus reasoning and manipulation of numbers, the graphic is wrong.



The RV industry is plagued by poor workmanship and even worse quality control or monitoring, allowing flawed vehicles onto the market. They 'gamble' that their inflated prophet margins will cover the true cost of selling and repairing each unit for 12 months of the warranty. I'll be impressed when someone offers a longer warranty on their product and stays in business.
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Old 07-07-2016, 11:26 AM   #64
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There is no reason for the industry to change as long as the players are satisfied with their profits.

And buyers keep buying.
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Old 07-07-2016, 11:30 AM   #65
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...Sure Tiffin can send you parts and is happy to do so since I was doing the work and not costing Tiffin tech time @ $120. per hour. Now that the warranty is up I can still order parts but pay for them...

Just FYI - not all manufactures will sell you parts or even send you (warranty) parts directly. To me, that means that they'd rather have cost-controls on dealer labor than possibly deal with the direct customer interaction or trust their own customers....
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Old 07-07-2016, 11:30 AM   #66
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I see evidence of shortcuts and less than perfect workmanship in my 11 year old Bounder all the time, but I mostly marvel at how they did it at all. In 2005 my Bounder sold for about $100k. When you consider the cost of the chassis, components, tooling and design of some weird one-off parts, labor to build it and dealer mark-up, it's a miracle in my view.

They are not making all that many of any one model to spread their production engineering across, or even to fine tune the process. There's plenty of room for improvement, to be sure, but give all of these obstacles, I'm sure I would not be able to afford the improved product.
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Old 07-07-2016, 04:24 PM   #67
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Part 2 Has Been Posted

Greg Gerber from RV Daily Report has just posted Part 2 of his series and it's eye opening. I'll enjoy hearing from seasoned owners their opinions about specific motorhome experiences.

RV Death Spiral: Manufacturers in race to the bottom | RV Daily Report
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Old 07-07-2016, 06:46 PM   #68
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Can't go by what you were "told". Up to the buyer to be aware and do research. If you go by what you are told when buying anything, you deserve what you get especially when sales people are involved
It's not only RVs.
We thought we had done our research when we bought a 2016 GMC Canyon SLT. At turnover, we were told by the salesfolk, that they would be "there for us, no matter what."
Hah!!
We finally traded off that POS with only 1500 miles, when all of our "concerns" were labelled "within factory tolerance" at the warranty department. In fact, when we complained that the "door ajar" sensors kept going off, they had the unit for five days, and then told us to "slam the doors".
Reminds me of our Newmar which we bought brand new two years ago. I think I am up to about Project number 30, fixing what I shouldn't have had to. I'm not happy about a lot of it, but I agree with other posts on this thread. WE BROUGHT IT ON OURSELVES. Yup. I shop at Walmart too.
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Old 07-07-2016, 08:54 PM   #69
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Cars are mostly built by machines and although people like Quadder (and many others) do get lemons, it's much harder for machines to make different mistakes than it is for a group of humans who are paid to complete their work quickly.

The auto industry is also different in that almost every state has some level of consumer protection in case they end up purchasing a giant piece of junk.. Or at least a piece of junk that has real safety issues. Most states don't protect the consumer at all on an RV.

I've had a bunch of cars, a few with factory defects, some I had to fix out of my own pocket, but all in all - quality is good across modern foreign and domestic models. I've had cars hit 200k without a major issue. We all pretty much expect 100k without an issue.

Compare a 1980s GM to a modern GM. I don't think most people would question that the quality, reliability, performance, and safety have all improved - albeit at a cost.

Compare a 1980s Airstream to a modern Airstream. Which is better? I don't actually know, but I'll bet there are opinions. Even with other brands, I think best case, quality is the same - and lots of people are going to argue that it's worse.

And to be fair, I've had one car issue: I've got a 2015 Dodge (3500) - it's got 10k on it, it's been in the shop for 20 days now, that's probably the most trouble I've had with any vehicle. At 30 days, in my state, and a 2nd repair attempt, I can pursue repayment, repurchase, trade, or take it to court as a lemon. Or if I can leave it alone if they're making progress. If the RV industry faced that sort of thing, things would turn around real quick.

I have a 2015 Keystone. It's got 5k on it. It's been in the shop for 110 days (it's still there). It's had the same issue "fixed" 4 times. The roof has been replaced. It's got major issues with several slides and it's back for it's 2nd repair attempt on those. I've had the dealer claim other issues were "fixed" but couldn't show me any evidence of work. My consumer recourse (if I exercise it) involves an attorney because consumer protection is very limited. And again - I'd be relatively OK with it as long as I saw forward progress, but when I'm still stuck with the same dealer on a 4th repair attempt and we've been out of service for this long, something is wrong... (To be fair, this may mostly be a dealer issue, but the manufacturer of the RV sets the policy that locks me to that dealer.. And the manufacturer is the largest manufacturer in the US - Thor)
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Old 07-08-2016, 08:04 AM   #70
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I've been reading this thread, and the newsletter articles that prompted it, and something keeps running around in my head.

The industry would correct itself right away if we, as consumers, would only buy new RV's that included a bumper-to-bumper 5 year warranty. Imagine how quickly manufacturers would start using better quality parts, better construction methods, and embracing "real" and lengthy quality control processes before delivery.

Now I know this is unrealistic and will never happen. After all it is the manufacturers who set the warranties they want to, not the consumer. But it's a real shame the consumer cannot insist on getting what they want, and frankly, what they deserve. Manufacturers would correct themselves right quick. They would have to, to survive.

For me, I am taking possession of my first RV next week - a 2 year old used DP with 17,000 miles on it. Reading this forum and others, I decided early on not to buy new and to only buy a used coach that had a previous owner who maintained it right and repaired it properly as needed. I'm pretty sure I've found it. I talked to the previous owner enough to get a good sense of things and he kept meticulous records. But I suppose I won't really know till months or years "down the road" (pun definitely intended). Crossing my fingers I've done enough due diligence.

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