Letter To Bob Olsen Longer Warranty for new coaches

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It should not be the customer that has to deal with these vender's Winnebago should get better vender's if they have a lot of problems with them. Some times price point for lets say a TV should not drive Winnebago to go with that Company.
      By the time you take it to the dealer and he trouble shoots it and decides it needs replaced you could have made two some times three trips to the dealer. A lot of time and money for the customer. 
 
Composition 101 is required here. 2-3000 words without a break or paragraph  ? I won't even begin to read it.  Sorry.
 
That's a rather small city where Winnebagos are built.  I'm wondering if a lot of folks are from the same family and they just kind of gloss over family members that can't produce. Also a lot of folks had been laid off when I was there and that  plays havoc with work ethic and morale.
 
ct78barnes said:
With the purchase of your Sightseer you received a new-vehicle limited warranty against defects in material or workmanship for a period of 12 months or 15,000 miles from the original date of purchase.  Unfortunately, there is no provision for extending in time or mileage the terms of this limited warranty.
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If a motor home warranty is good for 15,000 miles why does it have to have a time limit also?  If the product will stand up through 15,000 miles what difference does it make whether it takes 12, 24, or 36 months to do it?  Is this just another way for the RV manufacturers to get out of fixing their poor quality control?  Sure someone will say car manufacturers have both mileage/time warranties but their time usually runs from 3-5 years not just one.

Without any extra cost each builder position should have to sign off on his/hers part of the manufacturing process and if something goes haywired that shouldn't happen that person would be held responsible for it, heads would roll, not expecting someone else down the line to correct it.  As was stated, RVs are hand made one at a time, not assembly line products which should lend more to quality control than the assembly line process.

Allen
 
Wow - Bob called you, that's executive involvement. I guess if I bought a Tour and not a Sightseer, maybe Bob would have read my email.
 
As was stated, RVs are hand made one at a time, not assembly line products which should lend more to quality control than the assembly line process.
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That's an age old debate - the quality of craftmanship vs assembly line. Assembly lines tend to produce a more consistent level of quality (whether bad or good), whereas craftmanship tends to vary a lot more. A master craftsman will nearly always produce top quality work, but when you consider there are 30-40 workers involved in producing an RV, they are not all master craftsmen, plus some will be having a bad day. The procedures of an assembly line are designed to smooth out those differences and make a repeatable process that will consistently deliver the same goods each time. RV production is somewhere in between craft and assembly. A lot of the work depends on individual craft, yet the RV as whole moves down an assembly line to a fixed time schedule and no individual worker has an overall responsibility for the final product.
 
As was stated, RVs are hand made one at a time, not assembly line products which should lend more to quality control than the assembly line process.
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What? Obviously you have never been to Forest City Iowa to the Winnebago plant and taken the tour. RVs are definitely made there on an assembly line. Not a very fast assembly line, but an assembly line none the less.
 
Yes, Tom, it is an assembly line of sorts, but nothing like the highly proceduralized operations that produce automobiles or computers or ping pong balls. An RV basically moves from one craft shop to another and the RV is hand built in a half dozen major stages rather than in tiny increments at dozens of workstations.
 
Having watched the complete manufacturing process at Forest City a couple of times (and the Freightliner factory) and visited the Mercedes Benz factory in Sindelfingen, Germany, the primary similarity between the two manufacturing processes are that parts and components enter the line at one end and a finished product rolls out the other end but there are significant differences.

With cars for example, tab "A" always fits into slot "B" - exactly the same place for unit 10 as for unit 10,000.  The engineering tolerances are significantly tighter for automobiles because they have to be.  It's just not that way for the house sitting on the chassis - an assembly tech is applying some level of craftsmanship when installing a part or a sub-assembly.  Tab "A" still needs to fit into slot "B" (to continue our metaphor), but the tech could align the tab to the left or to the right since the slot is larger.

For example our Horizon had wood trim around the salon ceiling fluorescent lights.  The trim around one light never looked right and when Forest City fixed it (it was on our original punch list) the tech said the person on the assembly line misaligned the trim when installing.

A motorhome is an amalgamation of a hand installed house on top of a more-or-less automobile-like mass produced chassis.
 
And it's been noted already, it's way different when a company is producing thousands of units (cars) as opposed to a few hundred at the very most (Motorhomes).  But in all fairness, the quality control we are debating here spans EVERY RV manufacturer.

There is no Golden Goose here that is producing perfect RV's every time. I have had the good fortune to have owned 4 new RV's. A new Travel Trailer, a new Fifth Wheel, and two motorhomes. And you know what? Even the low end TT had it's share of problems and issues that should not have been pushed through to the consumer (me). And the 5ver was a real piece of work. And each from a large reputable company.

So the poster that made the statement about striking Winnebago from his list is making a big mistake. Not because of some blind loyalty to Winnebago, but more so because it's important to have a manufacturer that will stand behind their product and try their best to make it right.

How soon we forget all of the RV manufactures that recently went out of business and closed their doors. It's is just as important to have a company that will be there for you next week after the papers are signed.  So I vote for reasonableness when considering your next RV purchase, and think about all issues that will affect you in your term of ownership of your RV. 

Then vote with your wallet.
 
Quality starts with Bob Olsen and works its way down. Maybe that's why he didn't receive your letter but instead it went to customer service. Bob is probably to busy to talk to his customers and that is a "big mistake"

This  hit the nail right on the head. I just got a price for a extended warranty for 2,000 dollars I would have been more than happy when I bought my coach to get this at the time of purchase.This is for a 6 years 60,000 miles. This is just for the house part of the coach. I think a lot of customers would like a option to get a extended Warranty from Winnebago. Just like GM and Ford does with there car.
 
Without any extra cost each builder position should have to sign off on his/hers part of the manufacturing process and if something goes haywired that shouldn't happen that person would be held responsible for it, heads would roll, not expecting someone else down the line to correct it.
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The first travel trailer my parents owned in the late 1960s was an Aristocrat Mainliner.  Aristocrat was based in Morgan Hill, CA and one of our first trips with the trailer took us through that town.

When we got the trailer, one of the corrugated siding pieces was slightly misaligned with the row above it.  Noticeable, but in my dad's opinion not worth raising a fuss over.

As we went through Morgan Hill, a passing motorist flagged us down.  He introduced himself as Irv Perch, the owner of Aristocrat, said he had noticed the bad fitting panel on our trailer and apologized for letting it out of the factory in that condition.  If we would follow him to the factory he'd have it fixed right away.

When we got to the factory, he directed us to park outside the Mainliner assembly building.  He went inside, pulled two workers off of the line, and had them strip the siding off of that side of our trailer and make it right.
 
The other reason that you didn't hear from Bob Olsen is that he hasn't been the CEO since June 2011. At that time, Randy Potts took over the CEO operational role. Bob Olsen remains Chairman of the Board but Board Chairs are not generally involved in the day to day operations of the company as they might have been in the past and as Chair, he is no longer a part of the management team.
Clearly, improved quality is in everyone's interest and I suspect that a more strategic approach would be to resend it to Olsen or other directors with some ideas as to why it would make business sense to implement a longer warranty. A longer warranty would likely result in management having a greater focus on initial quality than might exist today.
Winnebago, like a few others, has been fortunate to survive the economic downturn. It certainly looks like it isn't over yet and aggressive actions will be required going forward by the management team to further cut costs without reducing value to the customer.  Going forward, the challenges that businesses are facing are more difficult as the "low hanging fruit" in way of cost savings was harvested in the past couple of years. You have to remember that Winnebago is a widely held public company that has to balance shareholder and customer expectations to be successful and any ideas implemented must address the interests of both stakeholders. They are tracked on this quarterly by the market.
 
Do you think Randy Potts would really read my email or would customer service receive the email and go no further .
 
If it's like most larger corporations, I suspect a staffer summarizes the mail he gets and includes it in a weekly briefing. Probably the staffer says something like "You received 9 letters this week, 5 complaints, 2 suggestions, 1 request for a donation and 1 request for you to speak at a high school reunion. I forwarded the complaints to Customer Service for action and the suggestions to [production, finance, marketing, etc.] for evaluation and tossed the donation request into file 13. Do you want to speak at the reunion?".  The CEO may or may not choose to read further or get directly involved in any of them, probably depending on how busy his day is. Then the aide reviews what happened to last weeks batch of letters, i.e. how they were resolved and whether or not [in the staffer's judgment] any of them NEED the CEO's attention.
 
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