Final Production Day

Today was the final production day for our new RV.  Station 7 involved putting on the compartment doors and inspections.  When we arrived at 6am, we found that all the compartment doors for one side were already installed.  During our time at this station, inspectors worked their way through the unit and all around the outside to look for things wrong.  I had thought that the production team had done a great job, but I was wrong.  There were definitely some really small things that they found that I never would have.

When they find something, they put some yellow or blue masking tape near it and note it on an inspection sheet.  There really were only about 15 items on the sheet, and I was told that it was a relatively small list.  Every door, cabinet, drawer, whatever was tested for alignment.

This is a closeup of one inspector looking at an outside compartment.  He spent about 1 minute or two at each compartment with his light and took pictures.

Here is a picture of the side where the doors were already installed and being inspected.

The other side's doors were placed and ready to install.  The first side was actually done after work yesterday.  Tiffin has a backlog of orders and they are letting the workers have overtime to keep up.

All three inside TVs were checked and working.  The outside TV will be installed after painting.

Here the front engine cover is installed.  Then we move on to station 8.
 

At this station, the bubble testing happens.  What they do is seal up the unit (doors & windows closed, all intentional openings to be used later are sealed with tape).  Then a worker is pushed around on this set of stairs and she squirts soapy water on all seams, joints, windows, and anywhere else needed.  

We actually had two areas of bubbles.  One was on top of the roof and I could not get pictures of it.  Apparently a seam had a leak.  They redid the seam and caulked it.  No more bubbles there.  The second set of bubbles was outside the kitchen window.  This was an easy fix - just tighten the screws!

Everything noted on the inspection report gets fixed here.  Some of the items needing fixing were:  The outlets over the sink were not powering up, one of the spyder switch control panels had no power, some cabinet doors needed fixing, etc.  I even helped the inspector and found that the ceiling fan only worked in one direction.  All these and others were fixed.

Here James, who installed our flooring back on Monday before the first production station, comes in to fix a problem.  Apparently the slide had pushed out two tiles.  He was able to easily correct the problem.

Had a chance to even test the fireplace!  It warmed up nicely!

One of the last items fixed outside was a defect in the siding.  A worker came over and fixed it and then sanded it down.  Every item on the defect list was fixed by the production team before the unit left the main production floor!

This is a picture of Kelvin, the supervisor of our production team.  He has 26 workers under him that cover 8 stations.  There are actually two lines making gas coaches.  The normal one is called the "gas line" and I believe it has 19 stations.  The stations there do less work and the workers are more specialized so the units move through the stations quicker.  In Kelvin's team, they take longer at each station and each worker can work on more than one area.  It gives him great flexibility and his troops really take their time and do a good job.  The production line is officially called the "Breeze Line", but since there were not that many Breezes to make, they make mostly gas coaches too.  We really like Kelvin and his team.

Kelvin actually responded to two items I had seen.  One was the bedroom vanity countertop which I thought should have some trim around it.  He agreed and arranged for one of the workers to take some scraps from the counter top and make a mini backsplash.  It really looks classy.  He also added some trim around a door frame to give it some class!  He takes all the time needed to answer questions or concerns.

This is Diane, the parts lady.  She is the nicest person you would ever meet (except for the rest of the team who are equally nice!).  She always has time for your questions too.  And if she can't help you directly, she knows who can and gets them involved.

Overall, I am so glad we came here to watch our unit being built.  It was a great education for me as far as how things are installed should I ever want to make changes (and I have already identified a few) and I think it helped the workers seeing who the customer is.  I actually think they did a better job just because we were there watching and interacting.  (Though I suppose they would to a great job anyway!).

Once Station 8 was complete, it was time for it to leave the production building and go be insulated underneath.  Then it is off to the paint shop which is over in Belmont, MS, about 8 miles away.  It comes out battle ship gray!

Be sure to turn up the sound.......

Soon I will be posting our visit to the paint shop and will explain how it saved us from a major problem!