Winnebago Factory Tour

[Music] hi i'm angie i want to welcome you to national indoor rv centers where we specialize in the sales storage service and detailing of only high-end new and used coaches so basically we do it all hi i'm angie with national indoor rv centers and today i'm thrilled to be here uh where the rv and lifestyle begin something that we all love and enjoy so i i am here in forest city iowa at winnebago so winnebago is the oldest manufacturer of rvs in the world it began february 12th of 1958 the founder was john k hanson and today i'm gonna take you behind the scenes on a factory tour i've got rich huntsey here so rich thank you welcome to winnebago thanks for having us here so rich is manager of all manufacturing here at winnebago so basically if you see a winnebago rv he's had a hand in it kids rich has been here for 37 of those 62 years that winnebago's been around pretty impressive yep right uh we're really happy to have you here i think you're gonna see some really cool stuff today that that a lot of uh the other parts of the industry don't do what we do we're pretty proud of what we do here at winnebago and we're gonna show you some of those um really awesome processes and stuff that we've implemented here to build a good quality motor when we win a bangle you want to make sure we keep everybody safe while we're doing this so here's a pair of safety glasses all right these are gonna be nice yeah they're nice ear plugs in some areas hearing protection we're going to be in some pretty loud areas and we also put make our visitors where well i feel special you should wear an orange vest make sure we keep you safe well thank you yeah thank you now one of the things that's unique to winnebago is the fact that they aren't just an assembler of motorhomes they're actually a manufacturer of motorhomes so correct me if i'm wrong but you manufacture 70 to 75 of all the parts that go into your motorhomes correct that's true we have uh six different facilities that produce parts that feed to our main assembly plants those processes include fiberglass plastics meaning like dashed panels and stuff thermal form rotational molding we have our own furniture division that supplies us with furniture we have our own metal division that supplies metal pieces to all the assembly lines and we have our own extrusion plant making aluminum extrusions what that does it helps us control the quality of all those pieces it's fully our under our control that's great and so today we'll go through all those plants and then we'll bring it all together on the assembly line where you can see that all those parts coming from all those plants all under winnebago's control and again they're the manufacturer they're the one that's building it it's their name on the product and you can feel really good about that all right rich so what are we going to see in this building here okay so this facility is our metal stamping division they supply all the steel parts to all of our rv manufacturing here in north iowa inside here is a twin bed fiber sheet laser that takes a 5 by 10 sheet of steel cuts it into whatever we need for the parts so we'll we'll do daily quantities of parts from 5 to 25 quantities of each part to make sure we we feed the assembly lines on a daily basis with just the right amount of parts they need we also have fiber tube cutters in here brake presses and all that stuff when they leave here they're on their way to our our electro-deposition paint system or to a sub-assembly area and then onto the electrode position so that's all housed right inside these doors so initially when i heard him say you know metal stamp i'm thinking of like stamps on the metal i'm not thinking about what we're going to see actually cutting out all these parts and and then just go into that that daily supply you're not you're not stocking shelves with parts right it's not like the old metal stamping where you got the machine going for chunk or chunk punching out parts that's actually uh very little of what we do in here it's now all fiber lasers so it's a laser that cuts the steel into a shape perfectly you know it's all it's all cnc controlled cnc programmed and then those parts go into a cnc operated brake press so it's very controlled and just for all of us cnc means computer numerical controlled systems are basically all done on a computer so the geometry resides within a program okay so it's exact it's within it's just in hundreds of thousands of inches of accuracy that helps us control quality consistency within our within our manufacturing facility so what i thought was super interesting that you told me a little bit earlier is how soon these parts will be used so the parts that this facility is manufacturing today and producing will be either welded into an assembly within three days or it'll actually go into a motor home within three days it's a very short supply chain what we send to scrap is very little and you've seen that with the skeletons there's almost nothing left and that's done through some of the cnc programming i was talking about there's a nesting program that that sets if we can fit another piece in here it'll it'll automatically put that piece in there to fill that sheet full of parts to minimize the weight all that steel does go back and get recycled that is so cool so high quality immediate use they're not sitting around getting rusty and old in some warehouse i think just super impressive overall [Music] behind us here is a is a tube laser this thing uses the same technology cnc technology that ourselves and evie uses only it cuts tubes instead of sheets 10 years ago i'd have a high dollar welder over in our welding area sorting through tubes measuring them with a hand with a tape measure to figure out which tube he needed he needed a tube that was 679 millimeters long you had to measure them off oh gosh with this new system we actually stamp it you have you do stamp metal no this is a laser okay laser we laser etched the length of the tube right in there so the operator beyond this can look at it and say that's exactly what i'm looking for and you got it you never use the wrong tube yeah again it goes back to quality you always use the right part in the right place it helps to keep that sport away well and that immediate information too he doesn't have to bring out the measuring tape exactly it saves us time the other thing is the other thing this does for us is material utilization the cnc the nesting software associated with this machine will take a 22 foot long stick of steel of tubing and it'll cut out of that what it takes to get the most usage out of that that steel tube so again less weight it'll look forward and say well i need some little short ones tomorrow i'll cut them today and put them in storage so we use up as much of that steel as we can very good so rich this is a brake press machine i've seen one before um but tell me what's different than that uh when do they go so we've we've added some things to each brake press you can see in the background there's two computer screens back there one of them he has on the quantity of parts he needs to use the other one is actually the drawing of the part of what what he's going to be building what he's building at the time um i think he's got a little pattern there he knows right where to fold he knows exactly which way to bend everything when he's done he can look at that make sure he did it correctly okay the other thing this does for is if something happens where there's a part that we determined that part needs to be scrapped he immediately can scrap it on his machine to tell the the coordinator to order another part because i just scrapped one something went wrong and i had this one scrapbook he makes a mistake he throws it away and another one's on its way the information back to the controller and then quality control quality control so angie i got to show you this this is a good example of an assembly that we make here in this factory okay all these pieces were formed in our metal stamping division where we were earlier today okay we take it into an area and put it into a fixture we weld them all together this is actually a dash for a class oh this is a dash now is this going to go and be e-coated too this is on its way into eco they will they will take these and hang them on one of these racks wow and it'll go through the ecosystem fully fully uh so how many on average how many parts go through the e-coding system in a day it depends on the day and the model mix we're running at the time but anywhere from 13 to 15 000 pieces a day wow we'll go through this 15 to 15 000 pieces a day are e-coated and then brought out here cooled down and sorted i got to point out this department that runs this machine is about 17 people oh wow so the amount of this is so automated the amount of people required to run this machine is very low yeah 17 people for 15 000 parks wow so you can watch this guy load this rack right here all automated wow it's a lifting mechanism none of the weight is being lifted by that operator so our the safety to that operator is paramount to us we'll make sure these guys have a way to do all this and nobody gets hurt or injured it's ergonomically right and he's not i think i could do that you're probably good all right rich so i came here in december i got a little sneak peek of this and it was probably my favorite part most impressed with this so um can you go ahead and tell us the details of your e-coating process yeah so so what we have behind us here is a electro-deposition paint system or e-coli we operate this system every day it produces somewhere between 13-15 000 pieces every day what it is is a series of ten so that cleans the parts etches them and puts an electro deposition paint on it you can see the system behind me right now moving up how this system works is the parts come in this end on rack they come in they drop into the first tank and you'll see it shift everything over one bay and go into the next series of tanks when you get to the end down there those those racks are going up into the upper chambers of this which is an oven that oven every time this thing cycles it moves them through the other end and they come out the other end they're e-coated parts that have based on paint on them and how many different stages do they get dipped in and what's happening in each stage some of them are the same but what it does is it it takes all the oil off rinses all the oil off the metal there's an etching phase of it and then of course there's the painting the paint is actually a water soluble epoxy so the parts go down into it and there's electric charge that makes the paint stick to the [Music] so i can honestly say in all my visits i've never seen any process that even comes close to this no it's pretty cool i um i don't know if there's any other rv manufacturers that have anything like this besides us so it's very important to winnebago to keep the parts coated to minimize the amount of rust you get from the highway very important quality quality i love it [Music] so duane's here to kind of walk us through the aluminum extrusion facility i know that we start with raw aluminum billets is that what they're called billets are good they look like really big bullets okay and then what happens from there so they get heated we have a couple of different presses they heat them up and then depending on the mold what they're actually building it gets pressed through the table and there's probably a hundred feet long something like that so we can make really long parts they stretch them out cool them and then they're cut to size and cut to whatever pieces we need whether we're making a screen door or some aluminum trims awning rails things like that all of that stuff is done here in-house that is really that you know interesting that you can do that all yourself so that really nice sturdy screen door you make it in-house yourself again rv manufacturers not disassemblers biggest take away from this whole visit with winnebago so since you make all your aluminum parts basically even down the road if we need to replace something we're gonna be able to get it and then as you're making it you can make it exactly to the specifications to each particular rv correct right yeah so one of the advantages of being a manufacturer and being able to do all that stuff in-house is we we control the shape the size we manufacture the dye itself here so we'll keep that for several years we maintain them on a rack i'll show you that as we go through to see all that gives us the ability to make parts for a dealer later you know for repair anything they might need but it also allows us to have better control of the design quality so we can make that size and shape anything we want so i feel a little so this is the actual dye and this is what more for for me let's dumb it down like it's your pattern it's your mold right so very intricate yeah so one billet of aluminum going through getting heated up will actually produce four strands through this dye that gets put on the end of the oven wow it just gets pressed through with a heavy press it pushes it and then these are all the other dyes i mean thousands so this this goes to show you that if you need a part when you call winnebago they can go into their system find the exact die and then create that part for you if we don't already have it in our warehouse we can make it that's amazing all right so finally i get to see where we get the the dye i'm getting that that now they're coloring them or painting them what are they doing here so they're doing powder coat paint on the aluminum parts here and we can do different colors looks like they're doing a beige or an off-white today we have different colors in those carts down there and so they just hook up to whatever color that they're going to spray and those guys stand in there and spray the parts it gets electrically charged and bonds and powder coats the aluminum i think they need it to be like bright pink we can get some so that's going to protect the aluminum basically sort of like you're decoding for the steel this is for the aluminum powder copy a little bit and they get it sprayed then it comes out and there's ovens over there or ghostly when the finish gets baked on so it's really difficult to scratch so as i've walked through and done my product videos i've been super impressed with how sturdy this green door is and then go to find out winnebago makes its own screen door yeah so it's kind of cool to walk through this whole process and see the actual powder coat and then see a finished product we can pick this up this thing's heavy yeah it's off the door by itself it's heavy it doesn't feel flimsy it's nice and sturdy and you use it all the time so you want it to be able to withstand the and because it's powder coated and it's because it's aluminum it's not going to rust it's not going to fade it's going to be very sturdy and durable for the life of the motorhome all right so we're here in front of rotocast and plastics so can you give us like uh the cliff notes of what happens i mean i know it's super important and it's not cliff note material but what happens in these two buildings dwane inside the rotocast building is where we make our own holding tanks our own freshwater tanks maybe some fender wells anything that's thick heavy plastic that we want to control the quality control the fit and finish and control the design we can do that here in our rotocast facility and then in the plastics facility on the other side we do thermoformer vacuum-formed plastics dashes shower surrounds parts and pieces like that where we actually heat a sheet of plastic suck a vacuum down on it and then we have a piece part yeah it's amazing what they can do i mean i just think of the manufacture the engineering that went into all the machines that do these things is pretty impressive let alone and then tell us about how on your tanks you do your own spin welds i think that's really neat yeah so once we have a completed tank and maybe we should back up just a little bit and talk about how the tank gets made we use this powder and plastic little beads and so we a proper mixture inside of a mold once that's all set the mold is closed and then we heat it in an oven and it goes centrifugal force and the plastic just forms out to the edge once it's done we remove the tank water test every single one of them to make sure they're solid all of our tanks are one piece as a result of that then when we have connections anywhere we need to put a drain line in or a water line that goes in so you can fill your tank we actually spin weld those connections so we have a special tool that spins right onto the tank and if you look up close you can actually see it looks like wax like it's melting it's like it's melted so it like fuses together uses them together at a molecular level so that that is not going to go watertight yeah that's what i thought was so interesting so after you do that you you know toss the mold or whatever and then let it cool and then they water test uh the gentleman there was telling me that it's like 99.6 of them have no issues so that's a very small failure rate like next to nothing and then if there is one they can recycle that and and start over when we start over and the beauty of it is a mine we've been doing this so long that's probably why we have such a low failure rate but the other thing is once we do if it is a failure rate as part of the design we just go back to the drawing board make another mold if that's what it happened to be so we that allows us to control the quality and really stop things on a dime before we we don't we're not going to purchase 100 holding tanks that have the same problem right and i think that's the message that i keep getting over and over again as we go through each building and each vertical that they they you build the quality and you're not just inspecting at the end it's great that you do that extra inspection at the end but each process is inspected as it goes and you make those corrections and therefore you have very little to fix at the end so winnebago makes a hundred percent of their holding tanks right here in this factory they take beads that start like this shred it into powder and then put it in molds that then create your fresh water tank your gray tanks your black tanks they also make their dashes they also make plastic sheets from this powder which are then formed into other parts that they use in the motorhome so it just goes on and on and on all the things that winnebago manufactures for its motorhomes [Music] all right so we're here in the cabinet shop or sawmill tell me about all the things that happen here so a lot goes on here this is really one of the facilities that feeds several different operations on our campus start with raw lumber inside and we're creating cabinets some doors frames of the cabinet a lot of that i see trim i see it's amazing to see all the pieces that eventually are going to come together and make this beautiful house that we get to take down the road and enjoy this country with so so all of those parts and pieces come together at the end of this facility and some of them are actually put on organized carts and shipped to our class b facility in lake mills and then other parts are ready to go straight to the line and if you look right over here we have line one and line three we've got cabinets hanging today that are gonna go to line one there's a conveyor belt goes up and over some roadway outside and these drop off right into the main production facility and meet the unit online those cabinets just streamline the process takes it right to where they go in and they're not set on the floor over there for any length of time we don't worry about damage you know they they're going to meet those they're going to meet the unit that they're intended for as soon as they get over there those cabinets if we were to look real close actually have a serial number of the unit they're going to go in so we could go over there find the unit and put it in the spot right all right so i'm here with doug in the winnebagos stitch craft facility so can you tell us what happens here and how it's unique to winnebago and in the rv industry well we're one of the few manufacturers that manufactures our own furniture and where it all starts is right here we get our soft goods our fabrics in fabrics vinyls and fabrics we have about 80 different part numbers right now we have had as many as 500 so we really downsize standardize a lot of the colors which really helps us blow product through the building right now we're using about a thousand yards a day before we process okay just in the fabric and all right so can you kind of show us how it goes from this and then becomes the cushions and kind of walk me around and just show me how the how the sausage is made i guess so we get basically we schedule on a two-day bucket basis okay so with mixed model production we run a few models of this and a few models of that we try and combine the two days worth so we it takes just as long to cut one layer of fabric as it does oh so well we sort our tickets uh the material handler brings the material up to the table and preloads it so you've got ten pieces of fabric here uh this is the same this is actually a curtain here so you've got you've got layers of liner that's right in the curtain and also the actual curtain material this can be different colors also depending on the option because we uh sort by cut file okay so doug they took the big the pieces the big pieces of fabric that you cut and then you laid the pattern on yep and then vacuum sucks it all down so plastic on top the plastic holds the material in place so it doesn't shift and then cut the parts on the cnc cutter which is important because that means everything's precisionly cut you're not going to have misshapen size and we also have a water jet to cut our interior panels vinyl flooring rubber step tread and various wood parts that we cover with fabric for interior panels and once the pattern is taken out are all cut up the operator and the off loader look at the kit guide for our on our tablets and it color codes which pieces go on which shelf so it's pre-kitted before it goes to the kitting area and it takes like i said it takes just as long to cut one layer as it does 20 that's why we do the two day buckets yeah and so then those kits i'm assuming that you'll have a kit for the seamstress she'll have all all the pieces at one time together in their kit so that it's just real quick to sew when you get to that point and that's what we'll look at next okay great all right doug so you mentioned the kits can you tell me a little bit more about that right after the parts come off the cnc cutter and then all of our kits have a kit guide oh wow and what this does it tells them all the pieces that are in the kit and it also tells them if it needs j-hook or any special fasteners zippers so everything just comes together everything comes together right here this is also where the unit gets a uh it's a serial number the labels i've been talking about these labels so that if they if they rip a piece of fabric or a cushion they've got that label on there so you never get rid of your labels on anyone about winnebago products because these are like your lifeline to replacement all of our stone covers have this label you just need to find it we try and hide it i know but what it'll tell you on here is what the part number is the dealer needs to order if your dog rips up your seat tells you the part number the seat the serial number of the unit the data was produced and also the fabric color we usually keep fabrics for possibly five years three to five years if we don't have the exact replacement a lot of times your dealers or customer service can direct you to one that's close that you agree upon that's great also sometimes we do run out of material and have to substitute a different material that information will be on your on here also so do not take these off your cushions yep that's what i say all the time all right so i see a lot of sewing machines back here this is where the magic's made where the magic's made uh this is uh this is a very one of the most skilled positions at winnebago i've been around several areas in winnebago this is by far the most skilled takes about six months to uh train a sower to be uh really good and you have to be really good at sewing you have to be really good at puzzles because once you get that kit it's rolled up with everything you need you've got to be able to sort them pieces out and put them together in the proper sequence to make a good piece of furniture so how do you make your cushion well a lot of times you can do it one several different ways one way is just manually stuff it if you ever tried to stuff a cushion it's really hard to do it doesn't go back in so to aid that we developed some vacuum boards and ashley will show you how easy it is to fill a cushion okay oh wow no wonder i can't ever get it back in vacuum cleaner and a space bag might work there you go so then as she releases the vacuum she kind of fills the cushion back up again what we use inside of it is called a silk film uh-huh so that's not just a plastic it's a very fine film oh yeah and it does two things it helps us fill the cushion of course the other thing is we don't take it all out so it can just stay in there the nice thing about silk film it doesn't make any noise if you spill something on your cushion it's going to be an extra layer of water protection for your cushion very cool the foam that you use inside your cushions a little bit heavier in the center softer on the outer layers multi-density as you can see in the racks here this would be an example of a cushion where we have it's really soft and you get the soft touch you need to get the firmness on everything that's one thing we're known for is the quality of the workflow yeah that's really nice and soft so this is the final stage of get prepping the cushion for the coach yes we'll uh pull some of the plastic out so it doesn't get in the zipper and then the operator will try and fill the corners out sometimes you need picks and stuff to get the foam to fill up the corners nice get the wrinkles out again if uh if the operator sees anything as far as defects it's immediately sent back comes back out it goes and one thing about our accountability system every sewer initials that piece of cover that she's sewn so it goes back to the operator the operator does the fix it doesn't fix by some rework i will and that's always good too because then they're doing the fix that helps them make sure they don't make the same mistake again right they learn from it yes right great so winnebago just doesn't stop they build their own furniture too right we build it we deliver it right to the line in serial number sequence doesn't get much better than that yeah manufacturer not an assembler they do everything i mean they do just about everything here on site so very cool thank you so much doug appreciate your time [Music] so rich this is where you make the walls for the units so no one's here right now they start a little bit early in the morning i hear their early birds 4 30 in the morning or five and then they go home a little earlier and that's they they're making walls in the morning for the units they're going to run in the afternoon okay so they want to make sure they get here and give the glue you know the walls time to cure so they start they work some crazy hours but that's part of producing quality products is to make sure we're letting those walls cure long enough before we start actually moving them around so that's kind of why there's nobody here right now and so what happens right here well we we laminate the walls just to the north of this big machine this is a four-headed um router it's got four robotic heads in there that cuts all the pads for the wires that are woven in there but then they come out of here it's a process as they go down this assembly line it's just like any other assembly line there's certain processes that happen and we laminate the interior paneling on in the next step down then it goes into another router cnc router okay where we actually cut all the penetrations and trim the outside edge okay you know and once again it's very accurate um produces high quality parts that you can you can rely on when you put the two together they're gonna fit great this is also where all the tube goes the two aluminum tubes go in that create that interlocking we keep talking okay perfect and then the support within the wall itself yeah and just just to the off to the side of this is another line really similar to this with two routers in line that's where we produce the floors and the roofs it's almost identical process reactive hot melt glues foam sandwiched and then we route the holes in it at the end all right so i guess this is the uh the beginning of the assembly line here yes this is where it all starts this is where we actually start taking the chassis and turning it into a motor on the motorhome okay great and then what's unique about your assembly line compared to other manufacturers well you know not everybody's the same as us we use a tow line system for the majority of our assembly processes where that unit comes in and goes on to these pads and these pads are moving continuously moving down the line it sets the pace helps us regulate the amount of speed an operator has to work once again it plays into the quality of the vehicle great and if you watch you can just barely see it's moving it's not moving fast it gives you plenty of time to do quality work over time we're probably running about 20 inches a minute okay this guy here just got done setting the body mount on the chassis that's one of the ways we assure that we build a nice flat platform so that's gonna be like the your foundation of your four yep could be the foundation and also you know we put we mount everything we can to make it ergonomically good for the employees these would be horrible this is the leveling system really those would be really hard to mount after the coach is built so right there's nothing in the way the operator can walk up here but we're usually having to dip down to see those so that's kind of cool to see a jack actually before it's uh i keep mentioning quality to you notice that red mark yes that means i've been torqued to the proper torque spec and we mark it when we're done to make sure we don't miss any that is super important and the qc inspector at the other end will look to validate that all those have a stock mark on them so they match just something we do to assure that it's another of your quality fascinating that's great all right uh rich so i'm noticing that the chassis are going down the line backwards yeah there's a specific reason for that we like to set the superstructure on this first okay and then the cab comes on later so what you'll see these guys do is they put that super structure on there get it perfectly leveled then the cab comes on and sits in front of that so we can square things up really nicely the cab matches the back side too right so again your foundation is squared up yep all right rich so you keep saying super structure i know it's a steel superstructure but what is that okay so when we talk about superstructure what that is is the lower part of the unit that creates the structure of that vehicle to make sure the twisting and the strength of that vehicle is solid so what we do is we fully assemble this whole superstructure that gets dropped on top of the chassis what's important to know here is as we build these things we got to maintain a three millimeters of tolerance end to end to make sure we have a nice flat platform when we're done so these guys up here build these super structures within three millimeters yes it's all steel these some of them have aluminum channels in them but for the most part it's steel we pick it up and it goes the assembly line and it's dropped down to the chassis that you've seen earlier right and then we we love make sure it's within three millimeter tolerance down there also that's in so that's gonna fit three millimeter tolerance isn't even an eighth of an inch so you guys really have to be on your game here to make sure that fits together correctly right keeping your unit flat and level starts right here this is where it all starts if these guys don't get it perfectly level and flat within three millimeters they'll struggle downstairs to get that that unit level to three millimeters so it's very important what these guys do so in a minute we're going to see the uh they got the superstructure on now we're going to see the cab be installed okay after just a bit here and i know there's lots to talk about in the cab area so let's head over there not only we have the super steel structure that the windshield gets mounted into i know it's a precision thing that happens and we have a total expert here doing it with us today jeff the gentleman is going to be installing the windshield he's been doing this for 36 and a half years jeff jeff's been here almost long as i have and he's been as long as i remember just put windshields in this is a very controlled process to put a windshield in and jeff's uh absolutely there's nobody in the industry knows more about putting a windshield in and jeff we've been doing a long time you know it's just what to do to make sure we don't have any windshield leaks so what is the biggest reason that you get a windshield when you put a windshield and you set a windshield into urethane if you set it in there and then you move it it's going to leak it'll create air pockets in the ceiling so the trick is to put it in place and it's got to drop into place exactly where you want it so we've created some little fixtures to help him do that and just been a big part of how those how those go in but you'll see when he goes to do this we've also spent some money on a manipulator that goes up and down and tipped four and after and you do that all with one hand so he can use his other hand to make sure he's guiding things into place putting the urethane on right now and you can't really see it from this angle but there's a there's a specific tip on the end of that that creates as tall a bead as we can possibly get it's a very controlled [Music] installation of the bead of sealant on there you can see how that manipulator works wow it handles that windshield very easily just can put it into place very little effort see how it's tipping it you can line everything up sets it on the little skids on the bottom who knows where it's at bam it's in place you don't have to move it around wow it's in place well you made that look easy and i'm sure it's not all and if you were i tried it it would be a bunch of people it would be there yeah i like to you know put it in place and then scooch it a little bit all right rich so lots to talk about right here tell us what's going on i think there's some good examples of here of things we build ourselves first off these wire looms are all created in our waverly iowa plant we do all our own wire looms okay that's huge let's go a little bit over that first of all i know that you label all your wires all the wires are labeled with a code that matches up with the drawing so if the technician's troubleshooting you can look at the drawing and match it up and know what those wires go to it isn't like 40 different colors of wires there's only two white and yellow they all have their own designation on exactly what component they're powering or and that's going to eliminate a ton of frustration it's going to be a lot quicker to repair or make a repair because they can see what the wire goes to it's all together in all of our wire looms be it the chassis loom that goes in underneath the chassis up through the side walls the roof they're all automotive grade uh wire looms with plugs on the end of them so oh nice okay so they're protected that's right okay great the other thing we do is we have our own thermal form plastics division that makes all of our own plastic parts just beautiful so all of this dash was created by in north iowa here except of course this is the cluster from the chassis manufacturer that's integrated into our our parts and of course the radio and stuff we buy all that but this this whole dash was assembled here in port city which is uh great because then you get to you get to create the dash and how it works and the movement rather than just having to fit it into the space based on what you get that's right which you can buy yep that's exactly right um steel structure is all this we only seen metal stamping division earlier all these parts were made in metal stamping and welded into this framework um so are you telling me that most other manufacturers don't use a steel superstructure to mount their windshield wipers okay so they just mount it into fiberglass our windshields are mounted to steel um if it is mounted into fiberglass directly behind that fiberglass is steel backer behind the fiberglass so there's still the same amount of strength there we we use an automotive um installation process where it's where it's urethane into the into the steel just like you would in an automotive automobile so in a in a head-on collision this windshield's not going anywhere that's that's major i know that's one of those concerns that some of my customers have on you know is a collision what will happen and you know that's got a steel superstructure and the automotive windshield that's not going to come in on them is is a big deal alright so now we've got our foundation laid we've got the front cap on with the super seal structure and now we're at the main assembly plant and i hear it's called big bertha why big bertha it's the largest building on campus okay so these units as you can see a lot of the systems are in place already on this coach the the furnace right here that's already installed uh much of the wiring that goes up into the side walls and through the floor is all installed see that we've switched gears just a little bit here we've gone to our navion this is navion frame and uh class c instead of the class a and i see that the construction is quite a bit different can you tell me a little bit about that well navion is a is a little bit more weight sensitive product so we try to make it the framework we it's still got just as much structural integrity as the other units we do but we use aluminum which is a little more expensive but what it does for us it gives you carrying capacity in the end product is it by building it out of an aluminum frame it's much lighter then we can gain that background in carrying capacity on the coach other than that the how we shoot these level and stuff all stays the same everything the same so we still have a great foundation good to go and as you can see in this station they've applied the generators installed and we do this to help our employees do these things safe ergonomically we put this generator in you can imagine and your service guys can probably tell you installing a generator from underneath there's a lot more difficult than having everything right in front of here once i get a floor on this things get more difficult to do so we install the generator they run all the wires the holding tanks are installed well it's got to just be easier because you can see where you're putting it so therefore your installation is going to be better and less mistakes the lp systems are all in place wow all manifolded up ready to go lp tanks in it the water center's in everything's ready to go through the floor so then as you go to the next station down here so this station you can see we've put a we put the floor on i want you to key in on what this floor is made of foam plywood it's all laminated together with a reactive urethane which no matter how much heat you apply to it that kind of glue never comes apart it's very durable so that's going to give you extra insulation in your floor having the foam because the extra insulation it also creates a lightweight extremely durable stiff floor really rigid once we get that laminated together um the other thing i want to point out is you know people will say well now you get that on how do you get those holding tanks back out that's right the hold intake generator right not true in a service environment all them things drop out the bottom we do it the way we do it because it's easier for us in assembly but if you have a problem with your generator or a holding tank all of winnebago products are are designed for serviceability so the component can be pulled out and you can replace it with a direct replacement part so designed with service in mind i love that yeah we do our techs love that too at national end rv center so that's really nice i like this i think i could do this guy's job because i'm pretty good with frosting i have a tube i don't think i'd recommend trying to taste this stuff it's uh it's a urethane sealer it goes on every one of these tubes on here i'll get a bead of caulk like that so when that floor goes down not only does that stuff help seal it's also a very strong adhesive okay so along with the screws we use to screw that floor down once that urethane is cured the floor adds to the structural integrity of the coach okay just having all that glue on there it is it is considered a sealant but it also has a really high adhesive quality to it also very cool i think i could i think i could want to try that one out so here comes our floor and you're going to tell me about this blue aluminum here yeah instead of uh the bottom of this is aluminum skin okay uh there's another product called darko that looks like a black mesh it isn't quite as high quality of this we choose to use the aluminum on the majority of our units okay because it just has such good moisture barrier and and sealant properties that we use aluminum on most of our large units okay now they're bringing all the water so the water holds up through okay again safety nothing can let go that's got good flippers in there that it can't fall all right so you can see that there's a whole lot of component components that are either being installed or have already been installed like our batteries we've got our def tank here uh shore power cord our floorings in but everything that's basically laying on top of the coach is going to be part of this coach correct we're pretty much done floor down everything underneath there's pretty much done even the duct work from the furnace has been ran you know the toilet's installed the water heater the furnace all that stuff isn't done and all the wiring has staged in spots that will easily feed into the coach as we continue the construction of these vehicles so now the next thing i'm guessing is going to be our cabinets and where do where do they come how do we how do we do that that's interesting what you've seen in in other facilities you should see a bunch of people carrying them over and setting them up here ours actually are built up on this resume above us oh wow and then they're they're in an apparatus up here and when they call for them they'll bring the whole set of floor-to-ceiling cabinets out and drop them all at one time onto the top of the couch all right so i see that we've got walls installed here we've got our overhead cabinets these will be installed as soon as the sidewall goes on too so to minimize water down there we put these cabinets in there so when the side walls go on they operate everything came from up here so there's not you're not you don't have you have less chance for damaging your cabinets just because they go from here right to the unit yep no water on the assembly line all right so i see now that we have walls up pretty soon we're going to have a roof so tell me what supports these walls well these walls are built with aluminum framework welded aluminum framework inside of these interior walls and they're laminated with a reactive hot melt glue just like we do the floors your your main selling point of a winnebago is your interlocking joints right everywhere where where the wall meets the floor or the roof the side wall it's an interlocking joint to make sure that that gives us um stress strength from every twisting and everything it locks everything together it can't twist so what do a lot of other manufacturers do right here just a bunch they'll use just a bunch you're relying on the screws not shearing to for your strength in ours the screws simply hold it in place the interlocking joint is actually the spring all right so i see that you guys are already like testing out the hitch here yeah i guess that's one way to look at it what we have here is this is actually the kit of all the parts used in the next department here for this vehicle so the employees working on this unit this vehicle right here when they need a part they come to this kit this little kit rack it's got all the parts on it it's something we've done really different in the last two years three years so what did you know before you said that this was lined with shelves and parts and so years ago we we would typical manufacturing they'd take parts out of the warehouse on a pallet bring the whole pallet of parts out stack it up next to the line so every part had a pallet stack full of parts out here our whip was through the you know through the roof and the employees had to go look through those pallets find the parts they needed for that specific vehicle because you're not doing not every vehicle that comes down this assembly line is the same they're different right it's a mixed model assembly plant so every model going down here it's rare that we run two of the same one behind each other so those those assembly line jobs became incredibly difficult to remember all the things you had to train an employee so you get a new employee it took months to train them a lot of chance for error though so this is going to be more efficient and eliminate error because i can see on that parts list everything that's on that list has been highlighted it's in the kit exactly so if it's there it's going on this coach yeah and think about this the person that making up this kit their job is simplified because they're in a kidding area just simply going down that list and collecting all those parts off a very organized rack system filling the kits rolling the kits over the line now the people in the lines job's easy because they don't have to look for their parts and we're creating velocity through the system while maintaining safety quality productivity and all the things we care about so smart i love it all right so i see that we've got a bunch of slide rooms here ready to go into these units right here so this is what we call a feeder line okay um how we how it works is we build these slide-out rooms fully right next to the assembly line and then they're fed over to the line as you can see there's even furniture installed in them that's right there's cabinetry installed in them the electron electronics is all done in them what this does for us if there happens to be an issue as this guy puts that room in the person that he has to talk to to get the issue resolved is right there right next to him so it's one of them things that supports quality so fast it's like that we fix the issue right now well that's really huge too because that means you don't keep repeating the issue exactly so you find the problem they go talk to each other they fix the problem and it's done it's done it's very fast communication this way so we've we've emulated this exact model with more than just slide out rooms we have cabinetry we have uh front caps all that stuff being prepped and fed to the line all downstairs on the main floor right next to the assembly area so in all those cases if there happens to be something we need addressed it's quick so you're building in that quality because it's getting tested throughout the process or through the build process so when you get to the end you're not having to fix a major problem that started that's correct halfway down the line speaking of testing we're just about to the test great let's go check it out all right so rich you keep telling me how that how you test as you go tell me about this line here okay so we we plug the coach in as soon as we get all of the 110 stuff hooked up inside the coach that makes it safe to to uh hook them up and test them we plug them in and we have a rail system that follows the coach all the way to the end of the line so once we plug it in we don't unplug it till they're ready to go offline so the whole time it's on the line you're testing the electricity in different systems in the coach why it's being built yes we can validate all that stuff the operator that installs it validates it works so it's immediate we know if it don't work we know right then that he can troubleshoot it himself instead of getting everything to the end of the line and then having to deal with all the issues yeah that's a really big deal so we keep talking about all the testing that happens while they're actually on the assembly line so you do another quality check after it's all completed being built we do what we do is as the unit goes down the assembly line we test and validate everything we possibly can test on that vehicle until they go out the door there's testing going on once they go off the end of the line they then come back around for a complete water electrical 12 volt and 110 in a visual inspection of all the sealants and all that stuff everything gets retested again before it goes out so we double test everything which is fantastic and then your coach gets to national indoor rv centers and we have a 223 pdi checklist that we are going to then test them again since these things are hand built and not robotic where everything's just you know um there's always a chance i'm sure that's that's why you do the double testing just to make them as you're gonna minimize the chance of something getting to our end user you know you gotta minimize all those chances and try to make sure they're getting the best experience we can now do we get to see that water testing bay i hear that's pretty cool yes we do all right so we're here at the ship out facility this is one of the last steps before our coach is shipped off to national indoor rv centers so they do a full pdi which is a pre-delivery inspection part of that pdi is a water test so i think that's what i was most impressed with so the coach goes into a water bay you have over 200 jets that are spraying from all different directions it simulates 50 inches of rainfall per hour they test every corner compartment so while it's in the rain bay there is a individual inside the coach with a flashlight looking for any water to seep in and if the coach does not pass the water test it does not move on so they'll keep retesting until they see no leaks all right so we've come to winnebago's class b manufacturing plant here in lake mills iowa and to my understanding winnebago now does makes more than 40 of the class fees out there on the market which is pretty impressive so tell me about that and tell me about this facility here yeah so we kind of are dominating the class b segment right now we're having really great success our product engineers product designers have created some really cool stuff that's been very well accepted in the marketplace as a result we just needed more space for production capabilities to try and keep up with with that demand and even with that we're still really we're doing the very best we can but the demand as you know is through the roof right now oh yeah if i can get a rebel i make a lot of people very happy and i see that we're running like two lines of rebels i see a couple trovatos in here um yeah so i think we've been here six or seven years now something like that we've got two lines going through and as you said most of it is rebel production right at the moment we have i see a travato like you said rebel and travato are the current products that are built here and that we can modify that from time to time based on demand but right now we're just humbling in fact i said to you earlier i haven't seen it quite this active in here in a long time i'm not here all the time but it's pretty busy kind of fun to come in you see the blank rebel come in with nothing on the inside then we've seen it with the water tanks going in holding tanks the batteries the lithium batteries this year for 2021 but it's just exciting to see how quickly you're creating you're making the product and then it's going straight into the product it doesn't sit around on the shelf we move it into get it into production very very quickly well this is exciting i'm glad that we got to see this just because i know this is such a hot product and i know that everyone out there is wanting to know where their class ski is so it's here somewhere so all of our national indoor rv customers that are waiting for your rebels just know they are working hard to get them done and i know you're as excited as i am to see them pull onto the lot thank you so much for joining me today for the factory tour of winnebago and special thanks to winnebago for allowing us access to the factory and getting to see this incredible company that they have built now we happen to be in winnebago's visitor center so if you come to visit winnebago this is where your factory tour will start once they've started doing tours again and i'd have to say you've got to come because seeing it in person isn't quite the same as in video doesn't replace it but hopefully this gives you a little taste and maybe um what's your appetite to see more of winnebago now i want to tell you winnebago's been around for 62 years i want to take you back to the year 1967. so let's see the beetles and the monkeys were big it was the first super bowl between the kansas city chiefs and the green bay packers and all the athletes stood with their hand over heart for our american flag it was the first atm if you can believe that or not also the first heart transplant and the average income was 7300 nothing speaks to winnebago's quality more so than the coach behind me coach behind me is an original coach it's 53 years old and you are going to be so surprised as we walk inside and see the innovation that they had 53 years ago msrp on this is 4995. so you can see that this would have been a luxury vehicle for its time check out the overhead bed the bed over the dinette that groovy dinette gotta love the interior and a bed in the back so you could take your home family or a bunch of friends with you and have a great time as you can see winnebago has a legacy of quality from 1958 till today i hope you've enjoyed this tour i have certainly enjoyed it it's been fascinating to be here and walk through the plants and see how they build quality into their product thank you so much for spending this time with me today if you've enjoyed this video please hit the like and subscribe also go and check out my rving 101 videos and if you ever happen to hurt your coach and you need a little repair go watch my collision and repair video and then come join us at one of our aim rallies our all-inclusive motorhome club check out that video if you have any questions about this video or if there's anything else i could help you with please contact me at angie nirvc.com and have a great day you

Channel: National Indoor RV Centers

Views: 84,786

Keywords: Angie, NIRVC, 2020, Class B, Tour, Walkthrough, Motorhome, Motorcoach, RV lIfestyle, 2021 Winnebago products, Winnebago, Mercedes, Sprinter, Van Life, Class A, Winnebago industries, Factory, How it's made, education, Dodge RAM, Revel, chassis, Ford, Promaster

Id: 8x7Q4t_u7DA

Length: 57min 41sec (3461 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 12 2020