Thursday, December 27, 2007
QUALITY CONTROL IN THE RV INDUSTRY
Where can people find quality in today’s RV dealerships?
By Chuck Marzahn and Tom King
Our industry faces a quality crisis. Customers blame dealers. Dealers blame manufacturers. There is plenty of blame to go around.
The customers judge us based on how well our quality initiatives perform. Dealers ought to focus on areas under their control and, just as our customers do, drive change in the industry with their purchasing decisions. Hire the right people and build a culture that will not accept less than the highest quality.
Quality issues ignored
Throughout the industry supply chain, many opportunities to improve quality suffer from indifference. On the national manufacturer level, some ideas got kicked to the curb because they were deemed “too political.”
Recent meetings of the joint industry task forces on quality produced little meaningful change. That disconnection stems from the manufacturer’s view of the dealer as the customer. Sure – exceptions to that premise exist. Overall, we have many opportunities to improve. Let us focus on what we can change.
Quality is judged by customers
We know that the ultimate test of quality is the customer’s decision to buy one product over another. Perceived quality is one of the three components of value. The others are price and convenience.
“Better, faster, cheaper” is the simple way to say it. You can have it quick and good, but it won’t be cheap.
Alternatively, you can have it cheap and quick, but it won’t be top quality if you want it that way. See how it works? Recent studies show that our customer base cares more about quality than it has in the past. What are we prepared to do about it?
The briefest history of QC
The briefest possible history of quality goes something like this: Long, long ago, in a country not too far away, craftsmen did all the work. They literally put their names on that work and, thus, staked their reputation on the quality of their products.
Those were the days when Paul Revere was a silversmith and used a “hallmark” to show the pride taken in each product sold. With the industrial age, we accepted work that may not have been so good, but it was cheaper and readily available.
Remember when “Made in Japan” meant that it was cheap junk? Think about the agony over China’s quality now in the world markets. There was a push just after World War II to rebuild Japan. W. Edwards Deming came to help at the request of General Douglas MacArthur. Deming’s method was to use “statistical process control.”
Other great thinkers, such as Joseph Juran and Phil Crosby, worked in that field around a discipline called Total Quality Management (TQM). In the early 1980s, dealerships started embracing “quality circles” with a push toward continuous improvement. The most recent iteration of TQM is “Six Sigma.”
The concept in that discipline forces the error or defect rate to a smaller and smaller percentage. It does get expensive after a point. Think about a wall and how reaching it would represent achieving complete perfection. Now try walking halfway to the wall from wherever you are currently standing.
The first time is pretty easy. But try it again and again, inching closer to perfection. After three of four times, you’ll quickly discover diminishing returns.
Why don’t manufacturers buy in?
Some manufacturers take it seriously.
Others don’t. They say it is hard to see a payoff for the time and money spent trying to improve quality. They say that dealers don’t seem to care about quality because when the next cheap product comes along, the dealers scramble to get it on the lot before anyone else in their market. If manufacturers view dealers as their customers, then they’ll argue their customers say “we don’t care about quality!”
Where does quality live in your store?
To find out where quality can be found in your operation, simply return to the time when craftsmen took extreme pride in their work. They knew, if only intuitively, that the existence of their jobs depended on the quality of work they did. Years ago someone said to me that the answer to quality could be found if everyone did their jobs as if they were doing the work for their mothers. (That presumes that you, in fact, love your mother very deeply.)
Think about how that plays out. Do every job as if it were to be shown to your mother in the same manner as the drawing you showed her in the second grade. Remember that pride? Now apply that pride and workmanship to each task before you today.
Quality lives between the ears of the technicians in the store. It rests in the conversations your service writers have with customers (both external and internal). That quality doesn’t come from someone looking over someone else’s shoulder. It comes from a drive inside each person to accept only the best work that you can possibly do.
How do you get quality?
Quality is a long-term project. It’s about hiring people who really care. It’s about building a culture where “good enough” isn’t good enough. It comes from requiring and expecting excellence at every level. Look around. Do you have folks who feel that way? Do you feel that way? Without processes, accountability and a drive to be the best, you will never rise above mediocrity.
Chuck Marzahn and Tom King are well-known and respected consultants and trainers in the RV industry. They have worked with many dealers at all levels of dealership operation throughout the United States and Canada. They welcome your comments at mail@marzahnandking.com
By Chuck Marzahn and Tom King
Our industry faces a quality crisis. Customers blame dealers. Dealers blame manufacturers. There is plenty of blame to go around.
The customers judge us based on how well our quality initiatives perform. Dealers ought to focus on areas under their control and, just as our customers do, drive change in the industry with their purchasing decisions. Hire the right people and build a culture that will not accept less than the highest quality.
Quality issues ignored
Throughout the industry supply chain, many opportunities to improve quality suffer from indifference. On the national manufacturer level, some ideas got kicked to the curb because they were deemed “too political.”
Recent meetings of the joint industry task forces on quality produced little meaningful change. That disconnection stems from the manufacturer’s view of the dealer as the customer. Sure – exceptions to that premise exist. Overall, we have many opportunities to improve. Let us focus on what we can change.
Quality is judged by customers
We know that the ultimate test of quality is the customer’s decision to buy one product over another. Perceived quality is one of the three components of value. The others are price and convenience.
“Better, faster, cheaper” is the simple way to say it. You can have it quick and good, but it won’t be cheap.
Alternatively, you can have it cheap and quick, but it won’t be top quality if you want it that way. See how it works? Recent studies show that our customer base cares more about quality than it has in the past. What are we prepared to do about it?
The briefest history of QC
The briefest possible history of quality goes something like this: Long, long ago, in a country not too far away, craftsmen did all the work. They literally put their names on that work and, thus, staked their reputation on the quality of their products.
Those were the days when Paul Revere was a silversmith and used a “hallmark” to show the pride taken in each product sold. With the industrial age, we accepted work that may not have been so good, but it was cheaper and readily available.
Remember when “Made in Japan” meant that it was cheap junk? Think about the agony over China’s quality now in the world markets. There was a push just after World War II to rebuild Japan. W. Edwards Deming came to help at the request of General Douglas MacArthur. Deming’s method was to use “statistical process control.”
Other great thinkers, such as Joseph Juran and Phil Crosby, worked in that field around a discipline called Total Quality Management (TQM). In the early 1980s, dealerships started embracing “quality circles” with a push toward continuous improvement. The most recent iteration of TQM is “Six Sigma.”
The concept in that discipline forces the error or defect rate to a smaller and smaller percentage. It does get expensive after a point. Think about a wall and how reaching it would represent achieving complete perfection. Now try walking halfway to the wall from wherever you are currently standing.
The first time is pretty easy. But try it again and again, inching closer to perfection. After three of four times, you’ll quickly discover diminishing returns.
Why don’t manufacturers buy in?
Some manufacturers take it seriously.
Others don’t. They say it is hard to see a payoff for the time and money spent trying to improve quality. They say that dealers don’t seem to care about quality because when the next cheap product comes along, the dealers scramble to get it on the lot before anyone else in their market. If manufacturers view dealers as their customers, then they’ll argue their customers say “we don’t care about quality!”
Where does quality live in your store?
To find out where quality can be found in your operation, simply return to the time when craftsmen took extreme pride in their work. They knew, if only intuitively, that the existence of their jobs depended on the quality of work they did. Years ago someone said to me that the answer to quality could be found if everyone did their jobs as if they were doing the work for their mothers. (That presumes that you, in fact, love your mother very deeply.)
Think about how that plays out. Do every job as if it were to be shown to your mother in the same manner as the drawing you showed her in the second grade. Remember that pride? Now apply that pride and workmanship to each task before you today.
Quality lives between the ears of the technicians in the store. It rests in the conversations your service writers have with customers (both external and internal). That quality doesn’t come from someone looking over someone else’s shoulder. It comes from a drive inside each person to accept only the best work that you can possibly do.
How do you get quality?
Quality is a long-term project. It’s about hiring people who really care. It’s about building a culture where “good enough” isn’t good enough. It comes from requiring and expecting excellence at every level. Look around. Do you have folks who feel that way? Do you feel that way? Without processes, accountability and a drive to be the best, you will never rise above mediocrity.
Chuck Marzahn and Tom King are well-known and respected consultants and trainers in the RV industry. They have worked with many dealers at all levels of dealership operation throughout the United States and Canada. They welcome your comments at mail@marzahnandking.com
