az99
N.Y.
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fla-gypsy wrote:Piece work is common in many industries and makes for highly productive employees. QC is the key to what that product will end up like The best QC Dept. in the world can not fix what is allowed by management to be haphazardly pushed down the assembly line. If management does not require good quality work from the assembly line, they sure aren't going to have the QC Dept. reject any units.
The assembly line at Jayco is building exactly what the management wants built. With all the unemployed people in Elkhart, if Jayco wanted to build quality, the people are certainly available.
I would bet if you had a meeting of every person in the Jayco QC Dept., you would not need more than 2 chairs.
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JayWalker2009
USA
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mlts22 wrote:wny_pat wrote:D & M wrote:Because they get hourly wages, they won't do a slap dash job?  Most trucking companies pay by the mile or by percentage of rate. So the more miles you run in a week or the more loads you pull the higher you pay is. So the faster you go the more money you made. I was a union driver who got paid by the hour. Safety man would have a fit if he caught us speeding. He would say "why are you speeding? Your just cutting your pay and endangering the motoring public". Our company had one of the safest insurance ratings in the industry. And it is still in the business and has operated since 1925. Not many trucking companies can make that claim, especially those companies that pay by the mile or by percentage. It is the same with furnature factory jobs who pay by piece work. They are in a hurry, slap things together, and end up cutting fingers off. Most of these furnature factories have gone out of business because it is getting harder and harder to find people willing to work under those "slave" conditions. Plus the have all kinds of shoddy product causing customer relations problems. Hourly workers don't do sloppy work! No, they don't do a "slap dash job" because they have a safety man watching to make sure that they are doing it safely and properly.
You would be surprised... in this economy, people are looking for any type of work, so places that treat their employees and customers like #2 are becoming the norm, not the exception. Mainly because it is so easy to close down a factory, hit Alibaba, and get a similar product from China for a fraction of the price. Then, the job becomes taking widgets off the truck, slapping a company label on them, and then putting them on another truck to ship to stores.
Agreed, and this is why the companies who treat their employees well are able to experience the nice luxury of 'low turnover rate' and that helps their bottomline in the long run. Turnover is expensive.
And ironically, companies who treat their employees well also typically excel at customer service. The two are usually congruent. Too bad they are not as plentiful as they once were, but these type of companies do still exist.
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sunkatcher
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It is really hard for an on looker to understand, with all this expertise available in the U.S. and how easy it is to build quality. How was it you let the Japanese kick your Lilly white in the auto industry? Must have been someone else’s fault? They have more rules in manufacturing than you do? They build by the hour not by the unit? Managment is dumb and lost the edge? Can’t seem to stumble on it but I think I know how and why they did it and continue to outperform the American auto maker but for now I will go back to my QC lab alone and wait.
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Dick A
Spokane
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Quality generally has a direct relationship to both work ethic and management. Many of us "old-timers" feel workers work ethic is not what it was in earlier generations. But.... along with that opinion, there are a lot of managers who are not worth their salt.
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Dog Trainer
Richmond Mi.
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You can produce quality, have a great workforce and do it wheter you are per part or hourly. The way to do it it to have someone that owns or has a huge vested interest in the out come. Problem I see is that most of these companies are owned by stock holders not by the man on the floor or the one with thier name on the building. Botoom line is how they get paid and for them the bottom line is stock dividends. If they fail they get the boot and a golden parachute.
There are many good companies out there that produce good quality with pride and great regard for the end user. I would bet 90% of them have the owner involved in a big way.
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mwebber78
New England
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ArcticDodge wrote:I can talk Lean, VSM, Six Sigma, Kaizen, TPS, pareto, BQMS, Poka Yoke, Takt times, spagehtti charts, 5s, etc. all day long.
All of which are great tools for creating the most optimal manufacturing process. Trick is finding the depth to implement given current constraints on any said system. Some 5s folks actually put a "Stapler" lable on a stapler and outline its location on the desk. That's not high on the value added scale.
Amen.
I have 15 years of experience working in a lean manufacturing facility. Yes - I've seen "trash can" and "light switch" labeled at places I've benchmarked. I laugh because they just don't get value added systems....
As far as RV producers paying to a piece-rate, it is as antiquated as their (lack of) quality control systems and self-check methods.
Michael 
2 DD's and my DW 
2011 Forester 3171DS Class C
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SRT
Head of the Lakes, MN
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Dick A wrote:Quality generally has a direct relationship to both work ethic and management. Many of us "old-timers" feel workers work ethic is not what it was in earlier generations. But.... along with that opinion, there are a lot of managers who are not worth their salt.
"Peter Principal?"
SRT
2000 32' HR Vacationer with Banks
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Buck62
Charleston, South Carolina
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It all boils down to money, it cost money to train people, write detailed work instructions and the biggie for management to ensure work procedures and instructions are being followed. The RV manufacturers do not want to invest money in their labor force. I see a lot of comments about Amish workers and I think you will find very few TRUE Amish workers on the assembly lines. Do you think there is a large Amish community in Red Bay, Al. Just like the auto industry in the 70's the philosophy is build them cheap and let the dealers fix them, after all that what dealers are for. Just do a search on these forums for major problems and all the manufacturer will come up in complaints. Thirty years ago piece work pay was the norm. but as we can see from the current quailty of motorhomes we are still 30-40 years behind times.
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ExRocketScientist
Laurel, MD
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Joined: 11/11/2010
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Buck62 wrote:It all boils down to money, it cost money to train people, write detailed work instructions and the biggie for management to ensure work procedures and instructions are being followed. The RV manufacturers do not want to invest money in their labor force. I see a lot of comments about Amish workers and I think you will find very few TRUE Amish workers on the assembly lines. Do you think there is a large Amish community in Red Bay, Al. Just like the auto industry in the 70's the philosophy is build them cheap and let the dealers fix them, after all that what dealers are for. Just do a search on these forums for major problems and all the manufacturer will come up in complaints. Thirty years ago piece work pay was the norm. but as we can see from the current quailty of motorhomes we are still 30-40 years behind times.
Good that you brought up the US auto industry in the 70s. I think most will agree that was the low point for quality. Now the stuff they turn out, relative to its complexity (far more complex than it was in the 50s through 80s), is probably the best they have ever produced. So how did they do it. I think it started with Ford. They realized if they didn't focus on improving quality, they would go under. GM and Chrystler were forced to follow suit in order to continue competing agains Ford.
But in the RV industry, they just seem to fold.
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vladen
Louisiana
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wny_pat wrote:vladen wrote:Hourly,, hehe Ive seen a lot of clock riding in my time. Im really not that impressed with the concept. Well, you'll get ahead in life doing piece work for sure. Great concept, just keep the little guy down and kick him in the gut once in a while. Make sure he never gets far enough ahead to leave town and find a good job!
Dont get me wrong I love hourly pay, some of my best goofin off was done on the clock.
Vlad's busy workings
All hope is gone
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