Job opening

[booster]

That was exactly my point, I could never understand the bay thing in the first place, rather than fix the delay problems. Bandaid over amputation type solution to me.

I am glad the Germans at least won that round. I wonder if they made them change the original plant back yet.

Maybe someone who had a recent tour would know?

[Davydd]

Assembly lines equate to less quality and restrictions on what you might desire. If you want cheap and "any color as long as if it is black" as Henry Ford quoted you might like it.

[booster]

Originally Posted by Davydd

Assembly lines equate to less quality and restrictions on what you might desire. If you want cheap and "any color as long as if it is black" as Henry Ford quoted you might like it.

Positively not true these days. With the computerized inventory and order processing, any option can be delivered to be installed on any vehicle going down the assembly line, all automatically. These systems are super flexible for special orders compared to old school, all are the same, assembly lines, as all the right parts show up at the right assembly station in the correct order, just as the vehicle gets there.

As to the quality, and inline assembly allows the tooling for the stations to be very specialized to what is done at that station, without duplicating it elsewhere or endless moving of vehicles to the stations like Roadtrek was doing when we were there. Good tooling and proper workstation design, along with the specialized training at the station for the personnel will essentially always give better quality.

One off personalization works well at Starbucks, but not in a mass or semi mass producing factory. You can get away with it if you are like ARV and have very low numbers of sales, few employees to train, and very little in the way of competitive pricing to meet, but very few producers have those luxuries these days.

An inline system in a place like Roadtrek or Winnebago isn't going to be as sophisticated as one at GM or Honda, but if done well all the inventory will be allotted at order placement and barcoded as pulled for assembly, then scanned when installed with workstation and operator IDs. These days, that would be considered a very simple, unsophisticated, system.

When I go to the GM dealer for parts for the 07 van or my 1996 Roadmaster, they look the stuff up by VIN only, not be description or year of the vehicle. They can tell me exactly what parts were used on that particular vehicle. Historically, Roadtrek couldn't even tell you what battery charger you had in your unit, so they have a lot of catching up to do.

[Davydd]

Originally Posted by booster

Positively not true these days. With the computerized inventory and order processing, any option can be delivered to be installed on any vehicle going down the assembly line, all automatically. These systems are super flexible for special orders compared to old school, all are the same, assembly lines, as all the right parts show up at the right assembly station in the correct order, just as the vehicle gets there.

As to the quality, and inline assembly allows the tooling for the stations to be very specialized to what is done at that station, without duplicating it elsewhere or endless moving of vehicles to the stations like Roadtrek was doing when we were there. Good tooling and proper workstation design, along with the specialized training at the station for the personnel will essentially always give better quality.

One off personalization works well at Starbucks, but not in a mass or semi mass producing factory. You can get away with it if you are like ARV and have very low numbers of sales, few employees to train, and very little in the way of competitive pricing to meet, but very few producers have those luxuries these days.

An inline system in a place like Roadtrek or Winnebago isn't going to be as sophisticated as one at GM or Honda, but if done well all the inventory will be allotted at order placement and barcoded as pulled for assembly, then scanned when installed with workstation and operator IDs. These days, that would be considered a very simple, unsophisticated, system.

When I go to the GM dealer for parts for the 07 van or my 1996 Roadmaster, they look the stuff up by VIN only, not be description or year of the vehicle. They can tell me exactly what parts were used on that particular vehicle. Historically, Roadtrek couldn't even tell you what battery charger you had in your unit, so they have a lot of catching up to do.

I said if you like cheap. Assembly lines will get you lower cost vans and more vans no doubt. One word so far from Hymer's efforts if you like assembly lines is "Sunlight".

[booster]

Originally Posted by Davydd

I said if you like cheap. Assembly lines will get you lower cost vans and more vans no doubt. One word so far from Hymer's efforts if you like assembly lines is "Sunlight".

You also said all of them the same, which is not true anymore.

As to quality, that primarily has to do with the company doing the work, and we all know that Roadtrek quality from the bay assembly was equally horrible. The Sunlight also suffers from cheap design, which has nothing to do with the inline assembly.

So what exactly is wrong with getting more vans done at lower cost, assuming of course that you are making quality products?

[GeorgeRa]

Originally Posted by Davydd

Assembly lines equate to less quality and restrictions on what you might desire. If you want cheap and "any color as long as if it is black" as Henry Ford quoted you might like it.

A very generic statement which would not be true in my reality. Most often than not assembly line equates to higher not lower quality and in a well-engineered manufacturing offers less restrictions unless demands are way out of the mainstream.

The generic definition of quality is meeting or exceeding customer expectation, based on that your own definition of quality details are very likely very, very different than mine and we are all entitled to have our own.

I assume, you continuing to promote your love affair with Advance RV, in today’s world of manufacturing to achieve quality a minimum volume is necessary to justified an upfront tooling, even with their prices it would be difficult for them to justify $100K molds to get a state of the art fit and finish.

Mr. Jobs did not make his iPhone in a little garage in Palo Alto like Hewlett and Packard made their audiooscillator in 1939, your Ford example is even older, it is 100 years old, it is a different world today.

[avanti]

Originally Posted by GeorgeRa

A very generic statement which would not be true in my reality. Most often than not assembly line equates to higher not lower quality and in a well-engineered manufacturing offers less restrictions unless demands are way out of the mainstream.

The generic definition of quality is meeting or exceeding customer expectation, based on that your own definition of quality details are very likely very, very different than mine and we are all entitled to have our own.

I assume, you continuing to promote your love affair with Advance RV, in today’s world of manufacturing to achieve quality a minimum volume is necessary to justified an upfront tooling, even with their prices it would be difficult for them to justify $100K molds to get a state of the art fit and finish.

Mr. Jobs did not make his iPhone in a little garage in Palo Alto like Hewlett and Packard made their audiooscillator in 1939, your Ford example is even older, it is 100 years old, it is a different world today.

Yes, exactly.

It IS possible to get quality from a one-at-a-time, skill-based manufacturing approach, but it is hard. It is even harder to get it consistently. What is not possible is to do it at scale (because each unit of production requires extraordinary amounts of time and skill, and both are prohibitively expensive). The process is called "handicraft". It is an 18th- and 19th-century idea.

ARV is an extraordinarily good example of what they are, and I am glad they are around. But, what they are is a lifestyle company run by a highly talented and experienced enthusiast, operating on the financial coat-tails of an established and mature business in an entirely different field. It is obvious to (almost) everyone that they couldn't have come into existence as a normally-funded business, and that they could never be brought to scale without giving up much of what makes them interesting.

[InterBlog]

I think it is important to remember that Class B assembly lines are really meta-assembly lines. They are lines that, in large part, assemble components that other assembly lines have already produced as finished, functional products.

A Class B manufacturer could itself have the best assembly line in the world, but if it's assembling substandard components, whatever quality control they achieve will be undercut by component failures. It's a variation on the theme of garbage in, garbage out.

[GeorgeRa]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

I think it is important to remember that Class B assembly lines are really meta-assembly lines. They are lines that, in large part, assemble components that other assembly lines have already produced as finished, functional products.

A Class B manufacturer could itself have the best assembly line in the world, but if it's assembling substandard components, whatever quality control they achieve will be undercut by component failures. It's a variation on the theme of garbage in, garbage out.

From that perspective I could do conversion in a few hours, just stuff good components in and be done. It took me months to do my conversion, and bulk of my time was spent on quality "stuffing".

[booster]

I reality, nearly everything of scale is made out of a bunch of stuff that was already made somewhere else, and class b's are no different. As GeorgeRa mentioned, the devil is in the details, which certainly would include choosing good components like Interblog says, but also includes the likely more important things like compatibility and how cleverly they all work together to give a better product.

We always would tell new engineers and technicians that most products and the processes to make them are pretty easy to duplicate and that means that someone can tool up down the street, buy the same components and such, and make the same product (barring patents of course). For that reason, the important part of the manufacturing, and design, is to find out ways to use the same parts and similar methods in innovative ways to give competitive edge. That is what creates winners and losers in industries like building RVs, as most anyone can do it, but few can do it well and still make money at it.

Unfortunately, Roadtrek does nearly all the things that have been mentioned by all the people in this discussion quite poorly.

Of course, when an engineering god answers the ad in the first post, all will be good at Roadtrek. I think $96K Canadian is something like $75K US? That job here would likely be closer to $100K+, and would carry a high engineer type title like senior, lead, head, supervisor, or even more likely manager or director. And of course, you still would have to deal with Hammill and the culture, which could likely make the job more like torture.

It is going to very interesting to see where Hymer is taking the company in the US, as, so far, it has been very different than I had thought it would be, and hoped it would be.

[InterBlog]

I wouldn't argue those points about assembly. That's the whole reason why my husband and I persevere with an older Airstream Interstate instead of building our own. We would dearly like to do that, but we know what kind of commitment that would take, time-wise.

Still, though, what the end user perceives as "the problem" in many cases is actually more of a third-party problem, not a Class B assembly line problem.

Or sometimes it's a compound problem. For example, one of the engineers over on Air Forums concluded that certain power awnings were failing at least in part because Airstream appeared to be installing them improperly on the subtly curved surface of the van body when they'd been designed exclusively for flat-surface installation. Airstream should have been more thorough in the development of its own assembly line installation procedure, BUT, arguably, the awning manufacturer should have realized the sheer volume of its own customers who were going to attempt to apply their product in a slight different way. Expensive awnings are not exclusively placed on flat-sided plywood box trailers - anyone can see that. So arguably, that one was a two-party screw-up.

[booster]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

Still, though, what the end user perceives as "the problem" in many cases is actually more of a third-party problem, not a Class B assembly line problem.

Or sometimes it's a compound problem. For example, one of the engineers over on Air Forums concluded that certain power awnings were failing at least in part because Airstream appeared to be installing them improperly on the subtly curved surface of the van body when they'd been designed exclusively for flat-surface installation. Airstream should have been more thorough in the development of its own assembly line installation procedure, BUT, arguably, the awning manufacturer should have realized the sheer volume of its own customers who were going to attempt to apply their product in a slight different way. Expensive awnings are not exclusively placed on flat-sided plywood box trailers - anyone can see that. So arguably, that one was a two-party screw-up.

I understand your point, but there is a big thing I would not agree with. Personally, I think that if a third party product is misused, it is not a third party fault if it doesn't work right. Case in point, if they put an awning designed for flat surfaces on a curved surface, this is not on the awning vendor. Same with other things like inverters or other electrical items. if a manufacturer of a class b RV installa things that don't play well together, it is certainly not the vendors problem, if their requirements are adequately called out.

Some engineers and manufacturers are very prone to blaming vendors for all of their errors. I don't think this is the case with Roadtrek, though, as they seem to always claim there was no error in the first place.

[InterBlog]

One of my lines of business is industrial training. The efficacy of training is easily measured by applying quizzes and other prove-up mechanisms that measure retention and comprehension. Whenever I go through that measurement process, I always find the results to be sobering, and consistent. Where my communication has been effective, the majority always scores high. In those specific areas where I am not as effective, the majority scores low. It's never a case of some people getting it and other people not getting it, more or less randomly. The results always trace back to me, the provider.

It's easy to blame downstream clients but it's not good business and it certainly doesn't lead to continuous improvement. If I were an awning manufacturer instead of an industrial trainer, it would be easy for me to point the finger at Airstream. But the fact is, in that scenario, I retain some responsibility for not providing Airstream with what Airstream needs to succeed, same as I do in real life if I fail to provide industrial operators with some of skills that they need to succeed.

I can't be a miracle worker in that situation, and I cannot be the sole actor, but nevertheless, I must have some ability to anticipate and iterate with respect to what the end user needs. Or else I'm just behaving closer to a rote manner which is not bringing that much value to the table.

[GeorgeRa]

If one awning doesn’t fit get another one instead of using one which doesn’t fit, there are a few awning manufacturers so there is a choice. I had an awning on my very rounded Bigfoot trailer, it fit perfectly. Fiamma has many different adapters to different RVs.

So, I don’t agree to blame an awning manufacturer for a wrong fit, the guilt is 100% on the “stuffer” stuffing a square peg in the round hole. The penalty for the manufacturer of a no fit awning should be resulting in the lack of sale, that is how the market works.

[Phoebe3]

If my contractor installs a door-and-jamb combination from Home Depot, I fully expect her to use shims to make it fit the frame. It's not the door manufacturer's fault if it falls out of the wall.

I can't believe there aren't spacers available to adjust the fit of a straight awning to a curved-roof RV.

[GeorgeRa]

Originally Posted by Phoebe3

………………
I can't believe there aren't spacers available to adjust the fit of a straight awning to a curved-roof RV.

…and if spacers don’t exist it would be the Airstream responsibility to make an adapter or work with the awning manufacturer to make a custom adapter.

[SteveJ]

I would wonder what kind of engineer/manager and whatever all else they expect they will get for basically truck driver wages.

It does not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling about things getting less bad in Roadtrekville.

I'll stick with my 2000 Chevy 200 Versatile.

A person wonders how they will stay in business with their attitude and QC issues.

[booster]

I think that there is a totally different perspective of those that have worked with the actual production of products, and those that have not. Being with the product and production workers day in and day out will give anyone a better idea of what actually happens. An example would be: how can an engineer or tech writer put together a detailed work instruction document for a process if they have never personally done it themselves? One place I worked required all new engineers to work two weeks of production work, rotating through the various departments. I loved every minute of it and built relationships with the production crew that let me do my engineering job better later on. I found it very interesting that I was the only hired engineer that thought it was a good and useful program, which is pretty sad IMO.

Re-consultants and trainers. I have probably been through more training and consulting programs than nearly anyone on earth over nearly 50 years of manufacturing experience (production worker, engineering, management). I will be a bit blunt here, but is the way I think it is. Post training/consulting surveys are nearly useless, as the folks filling them out have only one primary goal, preserving their jobs (I have literally sat in meetings with bosses who are trying to determine who filled out which "anonymous" survey so they could get rid of the ones they wanted). You won't even come close to learning the actual results unless you talk individually to all involved, after you have their trust, which is the hard part. In my experience, you have to earn the shop floor trust over a long period of time before you are truly trusted to get good information, and if you sell them out even one minor time, you will never get the trust. If a production worker isn't comfortable telling you if they mess up, you really can't trust much else of what the say,IMO. If you can't understand the mess up and help make it not happen again rather than writing them up, you will never hear about other issues, that could solve many other problems.

A sidebar would be how those of us who do/did this kind of work can help get better outcomes. Personally, whenever there was a new "program" to improve things where I worked, I was always the first in line to sign up to help facilitate the program. Way better to help guide the program from the inside than to sit back and complain or resist. If I had the clout, I would always try to get a one on one meeting, off the record, with the consultant or site facilitator to get on the same page and to go over shop culture and personalities.

Nearly all, but not all, consultants, show up with a solution that they will try to fit your problems to, when they really need to evaluate your problems and come up with an unique and innovative solution to. IMO, this is the major reason these programs have such a dismal acceptance and success ratio.

[wincrasher]

Originally Posted by SteveJ

I would wonder what kind of engineer/manager and whatever all else they expect they will get for basically truck driver wages.

It does not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling about things getting less bad in Roadtrekville.

I'll stick with my @000 Chevy 200 Versatile.

A person wonders how they will stay in business with their attitude and QC issues.

Exactly. I pay a minimum of $200k for engineers to be at site to cover their discipline in an industrial setting. To expect one to cover multiple disciplines, as well as a management role in a large manufacturer for such a paltry sum of $75k US is beyond ridiculous and speaks volumes as to why Roadtrek/Hymer is where they are at quality wise. They still run it like a mom&pop operation and that needs to change. They need a new engineering & QA organization with an executive at the top of it. That person could command a salary of at least $300k plus stock options and deferred compensation. If you want to get serious JH, send me an email.