V2 Campers Built per Week 1/17-1/31: 5
Remember when we announced that lead times were shortening and we gave you updated timelines? If you happened to be keeping track you might have noticed that we were building a lot more than 5 units a week before the v2 launch. So are we screwed? Well, I sure hope not.
The truth is that things are going great, with expected levels of difficulty to be sure.
A little background. There are over 600 components in every V2 GFC camper, and only 21 of them are carried over from the V1 camper. That means that 579 of these parts are brand new and involve all-new manufacturing/procuring, communication, and assembly systems to result in a complete camper.
But building more campers is primarily a function of… well… building more campers. Right? So what makes building it more harder?You’d be right at the most basic level. But that doesn’t do service to everything around the assembly process. We need tools to make sure that time in our machine and sew shops are being properly utilized. We need to make sure that parts are getting QC’d in process, and that everyone at every level has the directive and tools they need in order to hit the numbers we are shooting for. Not just for targets in the coming week, but building systems strong enough to not break when we quadruple output in Q2 2021. And then to hit those same numbers and peak quality week after week after week.
We could go into the weeds here on how these best practices are developed, but you have a weekend to get back to.
- For those of you that are interested, a great resource that we are taking inspiration from is the Toyota Production System (TPS).
An area where implementation of TPS is most readily obvious is in the final assembly department. In TPS, the term “Jidoka” means to make the equipment or operation stop whenever an abnormal or defective condition arises. The intentional rate of 5 units per week allows us to stop for every possible Jidoka and step back to resolve problems at the level they arise. Because these processes are all new at this scale, we are able to determine what might even constitute a defective or abnormal condition, and work to solve it at the base level.
Dan Binder
August 01, 2022
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