Let's not confuse Quality processes with manufacturing processes. Manufacturing processes vary from product to product, for sure. I personally am not at all convinced that modular construction would be a good fit for RV manufacturing. 

FR can't sit on its laurels though. There has to be continual improvement. I am glad that there is competition. It will make the products better as manufacturers, not just FR, will need to improve to compete effectively.

I have been to the old factory that was shared with Surveyor. I saw how the R-Pods are built. To a certain extent, there is modular construction in that cabinets are made and then set in place. Then the walls are added and finally the roof is installed. There are only so many places through which wires and pipes (both water and gas) can be run.

The biggest thing is attention to detail. There should never be a check valve installed backwards. There should never be pipe joints not properly tightened. There should never be wiring installed incorrectly. There should be cleaning done as the work progresses so there is not piles of trash to rattle out as the trailer goes down the road.

FR needs to insist that the suppliers also clean up their work. There should not be debris in the fresh water tank (plastic shavings that plug up check valves and faucets). Converters should not be failing. Refrigerators should be reliable. If there is an issue, FR needs to insist that parts suppliers improve their products. After all, it is FR that gets the blame when these parts fail, even if it is not FR's fault.

Years ago, I worked for Uniflite (no longer in existence) making cabin cruisers. It was a long process. The hulls were laid up of fiberglass, stringers were added, and the inside was painted. Then it was pulled out of the mold and placed in a cradle. The carpenters would then start fitting bulkheads in the hull. Large pieces like engines  were lowered in and installed. Then a molded fiberglass deck was lowered into place. These all had to be fastened into place by a person (me) going around them and fiberglassing them into place so they would be held firmly and not move. If you think the R-Pod is a rolling earthquake, add to that the pounding of moving on water at high speeds. Then a deck which was molded separately was lowered over the hull and fastened into place with pop rivets and then we had to glass it in place to seal. Initially, we had pretty easy access as some bulkheads were not placed until the deck was fiberglassed in.

This all changed when they hired some "experts" who wanted to make it more efficient by building modules that they could drop in. Once they started doing that, quality went downhill as no matter how much they kept trying to tweak the modules, they never did fit quite right and sometimes, I was trying to put fiberglass over three and four inch wide gaps where before, things fit pretty tightly to the hull. In addition, by having the modules made, there was extremely limited access to some places and the ventilation was terrible. The fumes burned my eyes and I was trying to crawl through small holes to stretch and put fiberglass where it needed to be.

Wiring was no easier for being done up ahead of time. Wires wound up being in the way of construction and instead of saving time, it seemed to take so much longer to get anything done. What was supposed to increase standardization and quality ended up doing neither. Uniflite got bought out by ChrisCraft and then eventually disappeared. The point of this story is that modular systems don't always mean an improvement in quality.

Quality needs to be improved, and by having a dedicated plant, this should be easier to achieve. Changing materials (Azdel, for example) will make for a better product. The R-Pods that are being built now have changed materials (aluminum double steps instead of steel single steps, power awnings as an option, etc. I do believe Forest River intends to compete and survive.

+1

Just like in the auto and many other industries it will be the market that drives the changes.

Sadly, FR would save actual $ as well has have more satisfied customers if they just took it upon themselves to change their Quality system but as we've said, it takes a seismic shift in management culture and that usually doesn't come without some significant pain from the market and competitors forcing it. 

Fred (lostagain) and David make some very good points and counterpoints in this discussion. Yet Tars Tarkas, and something that lostagain also said in his posts nailed it and makes sense. That in the end sadly it will only be market forces that make FR change. When FR starts to see profits drop because consumers take their hard earned dollars else where they will be forced to change or the R-Pod will die plain and simple. I'm sure you have all seen this in many different industries and I've seen this even in the RV industry. I'd hate to see the R-Pod and its concept die but lostagain is absolutely right that unless FR adopts a QC attitude they will see their profits slip until its not variable to manufacture the R-Pod. I also agree that it seems to often in the RV industry the sales and marketing team control the show which to an extent is dictated by the boom and bust cycles of this industry. Yet, those companies in this industry that have succeeded long term have adopted much of the quality attitude and process that lostagain points out.

To make this really simple for anyone to understand it's either FR up's it's "game" and continually strives towards a quality commitment on their R-Pod. Or some other manufacture will come into the market and clean their clock to the point there will be no R-Pod model manufactured and sold. Doubt me, just look a Jayco, Starcraft, and all these other manufactures who are jumping into the lightweight camper trailer game and tell me they wouldn't just love to bury FR and the R-Pod. Sooner or later as Tar Tarkas say's there always someone circling the water the R-Pod is swimming in and just waiting to take a big bite! It's either adopt and continually strive towards quality or the sales and marketing team will all be looking for a job!

David I remember and was aghast when car loans went to three and then OMG four year loans and I thought are you crazy! LOL!

Fred your totally onto it and I have no explanation as to why FR hasn't standardized into a modular system with the wiring and plumbing systems in the campers they build. I'm not sure any or which RV manufactures do but it seems like a such a simple win, win, idea for the manufacture in profits and consumer in quality. But hey what do anyone of us here know? 

I think market pressure is the only thing that's going to cause the changes you all are talking about.  And I don't see that happening as long as FR is selling about as many rPods as they can.  We all pay lip service to to quality concerns but enough of us keep buying. 

It's probably going to be market forces that change the equation, and that may come through some manufacturer(s) eventually offering quality at a competitive price. 

I want quality as much as anyone.  My Pod has had some issues but none that I'd pay thousands of dollars more to avoid.  Maybe I would, I don't know, but if I think I might have to put a strap under the black tank or even replace the converter, probably not.

TT

Here are some of the top companies in the world to adopt lean. 

https://www.manufacturingglobal.com/top-10/top-10-lean-manufacturing-companies-world

For the trailer industry, we've seen a big improvement in the structural integrity of the trailers the more they've moved to welded aluminum frames.  This could be carried over to the roof structure and some of the interior walls.  Wiring is a mess in most trailers.  The development of simple wiring harnesses would eliminate the bowl of spaghetti behind the electric distribution panel.  [In the elevator industry, for example, I've seen the control cabling go from spools and spools of individually connected wires to the controller to a plug and harness system.]  There are only so many configurations of trailers in any production line and simple wiring harnesses could be developed for each.  

The same is true for plumbing.  Simple pre-manufactured plumbing systems could be fabricated to reduce field assembly along with the probability of faulty assembly.  A careful examination of the process would yield, in my view, many opportunities for pre-fabrication and a corresponding reduction in sloppy field assembly.  

To me, it's a question of the RV manufacturer's engineers and field assembly folks analyzing the construction process and focusing on standardization of process and the elimination of weak points, such as structural staples.

Will they do it?  Not until they're forced to by a competitive market.

First, Quality is "meeting the requirement, expectation, and needs of the customer, being free from defects, lacks and substantial variants." So Quality encompasses both the specifications and the elimination of defects associated with meeting those specifications. 

Then there is Quality Control. "QC focuses on identifying defect. QC ensures that the approaches, techniques, methods and processes are designed in the project are following correctly. QC activities monitor and verify that the project deliverables meet the defined quality standards. Quality Control is a reactive process and is detection in nature.. It recognizes the defects. Quality Control has to complete after Quality Assurance."

Since it seems to be clear that there are consistently problems with things like loose wires and leaky plumbing fittings, I think we can safely say that there are problems with FR's QA process which appear as QC failures. The trailers going out the door are frequently failing to meet the product specifications. Dealers and/or owners are fixing them after the fact. I can't see there's room for much debate on that point. 

There are several manufacturers who are more focussed on quality (nucamp and casita come to mind), but they achieve it by running smaller operations, training and treating their employees like craftsmen, and catering to those willing to shell out the $$ for their products.  That sort of business is hard to scale. 

I don't know if anyone in high volume RV manufacturing has implemented these concepts. A quick Google search shows that Winnebago has adopted LEAN manufacturing practices or at least is attempting to, not sure if they've been successful.  

Its quite difficult for a company to change an ingrained culture, there this an enormous resistance, a lot of it is even unconscious. The auto manufacturers, most of them, had no choice. Competitors like Toyota did it first and ultimately they had to follow or die. Bankruptcy is usually a pretty good motivator for behavioral change....

i expect that part or the reason the big RV manufacturers haven't changed much is their boom bust cycle. I read somewhere that Airstream is now building 8x as many trailers as they did at the bottom of the great recession in 2009. That's about a 30% annual growth rate year on year for 9 years, hard to sustain and maintain quality at the same time.  With that kind of cyclic business it is really difficult to change people's mindsets and to innovate your processes, you're always either laying off folks or hiring anyone you can to grow as fast as possible. 

Quality requires focus on detail, adequate time to complete the task, discipline for poor performance, adequate training for employees, and adequate quality materials.  These are all, each and every one, management choices.  When a company pushes production speed over quality, doesn't demand quality of its employees, uses cheap materials and poor methodology, you get the typical travel trailer in today's market.  

Indeed, it would be interesting to see someone start a company producing simple high quality trailers using the concept of the Pod and its knockoffs.  It can probably be done without losing the competitive price point in the market.  Again, offgrid is correct in pointing out that's exactly what Toyota did.  Now nearly every car manufacturer does it and we have come to expect cars to last in the hundreds of thousands of miles instead of celebrating when and if it made it to 50K.