How far behind is Newmar in Tech and Furniture?

[Joe Hogan]

Has anyone had a factory service experience at Tiffin?

 

[MapNerd]

I hear this "excuse" often and I can see both sides of this. We can debate every single item of this ongoing discussion and have polar opposite sides, I can take either side. But let me just oppose this statement and let's discuss the opposite of this. Auto manufacturers yes produce exponentially more vehicles which means they have to take more time to ensure it's right before it goes to production. Now let's take a RV or boat where they make 5 PER YEAR, yes, an extreme, but let's look at the opposite of A LOT to A FEW produced to make this point. Hand made items, remember those? Wouldn't less production (or couldn't less production) yield a higher quality result due to having more time to review the production carefully? If you're not throwing 30,000 items down an assembly line but only a fraction of that, couldn't Q/A be able to actually have an impact? I would think as a result of this concept that a RV manufacturer making less has the power to make it better. The problem comes in when a company tries to over produce, they should be making X but they are instead producing 2X. You get the point. The moral is I'm not giving any company a bye because they are not as big as GM, BMW, Honda. Compare to Tesla if you want to put it in a closer comparison.

At the production rate of 5-per year, you’re talking Marathon Coach. They produce more than that, but that’s the production-rate ballpark you’re making a comparison to. Ever looked at how much those cost? Yeah, they’re hand made with high levels of precision, delivering very near automotive quality. As a result, they bear a commensurate cost. When you buy a Marathon, you’re paying for that higher quality fit and finish and that higher focus on QA/QC and if something is not right, they fix it...by hand.

Meanwhile, major car makers are pushing out hundreds of vehicles a day. The engineering department just for a couple of components of the wrangler probably dwarfs the entire engineering department for all of Newmar. Their processes are highly automated. Every single part of a modern vehicle is designed in CAD with millimeter precision, 5-9 years before you ever see the part. It goes through extreme levels of testing in a myriad of environments. Development for the JL Wrangler started 8 years before you knew it was coming. Then, they push out hundreds of them a day, for 5 years straight minimum before doing a model refresh. That why they can invest in engineering at that level.
When a mistake happens, if it doesn’t get caught it ends up deployed on hundreds, often thousands or tens of thousands of units. So they pay extreme attention up front because it’s going to cost them tens of millions of they have to do a recall. Eventually, they feel comfortable enough with the product design, accept the risk and send it into production and eventually, with every model there’s some weird thing that gets discovered like leaking headlight fluid and they have negotiate with the NHTSA about a recall, often doing it voluntarily to save face and avoid bad PR. Just months after the JL Wrangler was released, there was a recall due to welding cracks in the frame. I guarantee that wasn’t cheap and all the engineering in the world didn’t save them from it. They had to outright replace every single unit that had the issue.

RV makers like Newmar meanwhile, sit in a funky middle ground. They don’t produce enough units to scale up and tool out for the level of engineering and automation needed to produce a product with that level of fit and finish. If they did, they’d be bankrupt in a month as the market is not there to buy the units in those numbers. At the same time, they produce too many units to give it the level of QA/QC that you seek.

That level of quality is reserved for those willing to spend millions on an RV and even then, its still going to be built by fallible humans and there are going to be issues with the build. Sounds to me like you’re looking for a Marathon Coach on a mid-level Newmar budget and that’s totally possible, but it’ll need to be 10 years old so you’ll end up needing to replace most if not all of the technology.

 

[TJ&LadyDi]

I hear this "excuse" often and I can see both sides of this. We can debate every single item of this ongoing discussion and have polar opposite sides, I can take either side. But let me just oppose this statement and let's discuss the opposite of this. Auto manufacturers yes produce exponentially more vehicles which means they have to take more time to ensure it's right before it goes to production. Now let's take a RV or boat where they make 5 PER YEAR, yes, an extreme, but let's look at the opposite of A LOT to A FEW produced to make this point. Hand made items, remember those? Wouldn't less production (or couldn't less production) yield a higher quality result due to having more time to review the production carefully? If you're not throwing 30,000 items down an assembly line but only a fraction of that, couldn't Q/A be able to actually have an impact? I would think as a result of this concept that a RV manufacturer making less has the power to make it better. The problem comes in when a company tries to over produce, they should be making X but they are instead producing 2X. You get the point. The moral is I'm not giving any company a bye because they are not as big as GM, BMW, Honda. Compare to Tesla if you want to put it in a closer comparison.

You make some good points, @Neal. Let me respond to two that caught my eye.

First, I think you are correct that if more time was spent on each coach (especially on quality control), a better product would be the result. The down side is that each hour added to the production cycle adds cost and reduces units produced (at least on a production line running at capacity). So, a company would have to increase the price of its units to cover the added cost.

Second, in order to avoid over-producing at the cost of quality, a company only has a couple of choices. It can simply accept the size of its market share and keep producing X number of units. Or, it can expand production capacity. That second option is a pretty costly endeavor, especially in an uncertain RV market. Neither option would be very attractive to a dynamic company, but because of the cost of expanding production facilities, the likely choice would be to ramp up production using existing production facilities.

This is where it gets tricky. A really dynamic company can make a significant effort with quality control, but this will also add some cost (but not as much as expanding production facilities). If this is done really well, unit quality can be maintained...to a point. "Bean counters," however, typically see QC staffing as an unnecessary overhead expense and prefer to think that better training of production workers will improve quality. But, then, they also view employee training as an unnecessary overhead expense. That's a major problem, especially in a major corporate environment.

So, it seems that being willing to pay more for the quality we expect is part of the solution. Are we up for that?

TJ

 

[Neal]

Factor in warranty costs. What was the cost to dispatch someone to @MapNerd? In that case Newmar may own that asset. In my case at Pellican Lake and Ft. Myers I think Newmar paid a good penny to have my washer/dryer pulled and reinstalled numerous times for Whirlpool visits. If you can improve quality that may balance warranty costs. Look at the cost of the Flexsteel situation (assumed).

All campfire talk, again, we can each switch seats and take a different view. I share your views too. Pass the smores please.

 

[MapNerd]

.

Factor in warranty costs. What was the cost to dispatch someone to @MapNerd? In that case Newmar may own that asset. In my case at Pellican Lake and Ft. Myers I think Newmar paid a good penny to have my washer/dryer pulled and reinstalled numerous times for Whirlpool visits. If you can improve quality that may balance warranty costs. Look at the cost of the Flexsteel situation (assumed).

All campfire talk, again, we can each switch seats and take a different view. I share your views too. Pass the smores please.

I’d wager Newmar spent more on my visit that they typical service cost. It’s early in the NewServe service line so that total capex for getting that operation up and running is currently being spread out over a small number of service calls. Eg. $125k Truck + (hourly rate of tech x hours worked) + fuel costs + maintenance costs + benefits costs + parts costs / # service calls = omg.

it will level out over time but according to Mark (the technician) they’re looking to add a second tech to FL soon.

Owning an asset isn’t always cheaper. In fact, it’s rarely cheaper. NewServe is not a cost play on warranty calls imo. It’s a customer experience cost center that increase brand loyalty and pays off in the long run.

 

[sheridany]

Furniture replacement complete and they reupholstered the sleeper sofa by hand. The guy was a true craftsman. Everything else was new. Nirvc told me the cost was ~$17k For everything and I was out of warranty when they initiated the replacement. Flexsteel has issues and hopefully this will hold up. They may be behind on tech and their QC has much room for improvement but they do take care of their customers, at least that is my experience. Shout out to Erica M at Newmar for going the extra mile and getting this done.

 

[J&JD]

Newmar replaced everything piece of our furniture last year even though only the passenger chair showed a small bit of flaking. Amazing really. Not many companies would follow through like that.

 

[AbdRahim]

We are still going to need specialized driver/passenger seats. No "residential furniture" is going to work there. Does this mean that those seats won't match the upholstery/color in the rest of the coach? Not a major deal for us, but it probably would be for some.


Why? As has been stated, "technology" comes at a price; both dollar-wise and maintenance wise. I'm all for technology when it serves a necessary purpose. For us, glass dashes, computerized light switches and similar high-end technology are unnecessary and simply introduce additional failure points into the system.

That's our story and we're sticking with it.

TJ

Yea man. Give me switches and buttons any day. I am beginning to hate computer controlled coaches etc. I can replace a switch. A tablet to turn on lights, open slides, flush toilet - to me - ridiculous and a waste of time and money. And, I am not even old.

 

[MichaelMdG]

Today I replaced the last two halogen bulbs that I still had in my 2019 Mountain Aire to LED. It is a small item but really? Halogen bulbs in a 2019 motorhome?
Do I think that Newmar is technology challenged? Yes
Most of the technology advances that I see in my coach are coming from Freightliner not so much from Newmar.

 

[MapNerd]

Do any mass market RV manufacturers have a unit with LED lights? Asking out of ignorance.