My latest theory on CURRENT gun manufacturing

"...a cranky old man..." You sound like you think that's a bad thing. You kind of have to get there to understand it. snicker.
"...QC and final inspection are..." Expensive and are usually the first thing cut back during an economic down turn.
"...the $6 an hour..." That was almost twice the U.S. Federal minimum wage in 1986 of $3.35. Gallon of gas averaged $1.22US. Gallon of milk was $1.92US.
"...Companies would still be producing Colt Python level finishes..." Nobody but Colt ever turned out .357 revolvers with triggers like a Python. S'why Pythons have always been more expensive. The real issue with production quality stuff is the total lack of apprenticeships. All manufacturers think they shouldn't have to bother with training new guys and they refused to do it. They all want workies with 5 to 10 years experience and refuse to hire the new guys too. Those experienced guys are retired now with nobody trained to replace 'em. That's the result of the company's not training.
"...most corporations today are run by accountants and attorneys..." MBA's, not accountants and attorneys.
 
My wife has union folks under her. Can't get the bad ones fired. Every time, they come back, get rehired and start causing the same trouble that got them fired before. Unions don't make good products, people do. If you're good at what you do and have the proper attitude, your company will take care of you - especially if it is a job that requires intricate skills. One of my friends is retired FDNY and lived two blocks from Kimber in Yonkers. He could get all of those he wanted at employee pricing after 9/11. He won't touch them after seeing how they are made and assembled. I have one and haven't had any issues, but I also don't shoot it too much. Maybe I got lucky, maybe I didn't. It seems lately, that once companies are more interested in the next three month Wall Street expectation, things go awry - and that isn't limited to non-union companies or gun companies.
 
$10.00hr was good money in the 70's and that was a union shop making jet engine parts, now its wage of nonunion workers making the "Bic" guns.

The problem is buyers want 1k quality for $500. And thanks to technology the companies can still offer a $500. Gun but it's just $500. Quality.




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From Sevens;

But sorry, QC and final inspection are, let's choose a word: REVOLTING
It's like they almost don't do it at all and they ship it out and let the retailer or the end buyer handle all the final inspection, use warranty to make the product ready for sale.
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Well I don't know if it's the case that the quality of guns being produced today is so much poorer than in decades past. It seems so. To get the real story we'd have to have access to the statistics on returned for repair guns and what those were returned for. Those are generally kept secret by the manufacturers. Then we'd have to compare them with the past. Which will also not be possible.

It does look like the quality of fit and finish is poorer. It may be though that reliability has increased, especially in semis.

The only union shop gunmaker that I'm aware of is Colt. So to say, one way or the other, that changes in the firearms industry are due to unions is way off. This is especially true given that unions today represent less than 7% of the workforce in American industry. No, in general today unions are not a factor in how things are produced in this country, much less the industry we are talking about.

The firearms industry more reflects what has been going on in other sectors of manufacturing industry in the U.S. It has it's own dynamics, (wars, politically driven panic buying, bad gun laws, etc.) but in general it mirrors what has been going on in the rest of international industry.

tipoc
 
Sevens wrote:
And we never ever ever see a post that says "I work there and this is what we ship today because ______"
I think it's an enforced confidentiality order...
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Why would you think that?

How many near-minimum wage jobs do you know that really include a formal confidentiality agreement? I'm not familiar with any. I see confidentiality agreements with people who know the operational and trade secrets of the company, not the guys down on the shop floor stamping out the parts and bolting them together.

My thoery on gun manufacturing today is that I want to guess that every employee hired in this industry must have a hardcore confidentiality clause that they are required to sign and it is being energetically enforced.
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This would be easy to verify. If there is any number of confidentiality agreements being signed and any "energetic enforcement" then it should be easy enough to find the civil court filings (they are public record) in the jurisdictions that the companies reside in looking for the filings of suits against employees. Even if the suits were later settled out of court, the initial filing would still be in the court's records.

Can you point to any?

"The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" so it is certainly true that the lack people coming forward telling about how bad the products they make truly are is no evidence that the products are good, but it certainly is not a justification for an (as yet unsubstantiated) conspiracy theory about confidentiality agreements.
 
Boilerplate

Check that employment agreement, that's where you will find what keeps folks quiet.

TT and HiBC really get it about manufacturing. I've got 40 years in it myself. The last 25 have been as an independent manufacturer's rep.

As such I work with several companies. Over the years have worked with both ISO and non ISO certified. The non ISO manufacturer's are the ones where I will be cleaning up the mess in the field, invariably.

Quality can not be inspected in to a product. Period.
 
Part of the "statistical quality control" game is to calculate whether it will be cheaper to rework, say 0.1% of production on warranty or improve the build quality of !00% so you don't have warranty returns.
 
For someone who makes way more than the Ruger employees, I can say that money isn't an issue, but having a union rep I can go to and say to them, "My company's tool room is disorganized as hell, the tools are in horrible condition because they're not store properly and because of that, my production is suffering and its not my fault. I keep telling supers and managers about it, but they're not doing anything. Think you could talk to them?"
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Turning a substandard tool crib over to the Union steward might be one way to do it.It seems to me indirect triangulation. The Union's first loyalty will not be to quality production.The Union's first loyalty is to Union dues.The same union is willing to strike.

I have lived a far more direct way,via at least two paths. Every time I performed an operation it was first part inspected. As I made my run,if I had a non conforming part,I had to enter a non-conformance report.It included my emp number,time/date,Work order,etc. And the variance.It also asked "Root cause" Failure to follow process was an option. So was bad tool or cutter.There WOULD be follow up.

If there was a systemic or non routine problem,the Manufacturing Engineer's door was open.
The MFG ENG was on my team. The MFG ENG was directly responsible for the mfg process. His butt was on the line,as was the line super.
If a machine,or cutters,or fixtures were root cause of process variation,the MFG ENG will be all over it. We had a great toolcrib. If the toolcrib was a problem,....well,in this shop,action would be taken before it got out of control.
The line super handled the human factor. I temporarily worked Quality on a line that had problems. A certain amount of that was aforementioned undermotivated,underskilled "monkeys" Three Supers in one year failed to correct the problem.They were replaced.

Like I said,this operation has been successful over 100 yrs.They know how.

The whole plant has a perimeter and cross pathways 10 feet wide made of chipped flint terrazzo,ground and polished flat and smooth. Heavy baskets of steel parts could be dragged easily station to station.

Once a week the entire plant was scrubbed and mopped.

At any moment,the parts for WO 6750382 could be located via computer,"OP 5,OD grinder station 47" in about 30 seconds.
And every machine had a maintenance schedule. Every Mic and plug guage,a calibration schedule.

We made good stuff
 
Ricklin said:
Check that employment agreement, that's where you will find what keeps folks quiet.
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This... Go ask your boss if you can start a blog about items that you feel are material quality control issues regarding your employer. Best case scenario is you will be laughed out of the room
 
Part of the "statistical quality control" game is to calculate whether it will be cheaper to rework, say 0.1% of production on warranty or improve the build quality of !00% so you don't have warranty returns.
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Jim,in some cases,yes.

What is the acceptable failure rate for critical parts an a GE turbine aircraft engine?

Lookup "Six Sigma Quality" It is achievable.
 
Good god, it'll be a miracle if non-stop UNION/anti-UNION chatter doesn't get this thread locked down, what a mess.

Again, my basic point...

In these forums (here and other places, especially gun forums that also host a non-gun, "open" or lounge/general discussion area) we find that folks from all walks of employment take part -- many of them offering experience or help in their area of trade. Including gunsmiths.

When do we ever see someone post anything at all (I mean anything, even the vending machine selection) from inside a known American gunmaker within the last 10 years?

In my experience-- these people do not exist. And certainly there are folks who work at say, S&W who are just there for employment and har no passion for guns/shooting... but ALL employees of ALL American gun makers?

We had a guy active here a couple years ago that was consulting with the current iteration of Coonan as he had been on the original Coonan crew. Extremely nice and helpful poster here at TFL and I cannot for the life of me remember even one other poster that ever claimed to work for a major (even minor) American gun maker in any recent past and I've been active on this site for nearly a decade I think.

All I'm saying is that in a gun forum, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting an electrician, cop, accountant, chef, realtor, lawyer, teacher, snow plow driver, musician, pilot and 300 other known occupations but we NEVER see anyone that enjoys guns/shooting and also happens to work for a known gunmaker.

You guys can continue to detail your version of "American decline", I'm merely saying that we never see employees or recent employees that make guns in all of our gun forums.

Maybe Reddit has 'em.
 
HiBC said:
Turning a substandard tool crib over to the Union steward might be one way to do it.It seems to me indirect triangulation. The Union's first loyalty will not be to quality production.The Union's first loyalty is to Union dues.The same union is willing to strike.

I have lived a far more direct way,via at least two paths. Every time I performed an operation it was first part inspected. As I made my run,if I had a non conforming part,I had to enter a non-conformance report.It included my emp number,time/date,Work order,etc. And the variance.It also asked "Root cause" Failure to follow process was an option. So was bad tool or cutter.There WOULD be follow up.

If there was a systemic or non routine problem,the Manufacturing Engineer's door was open.
The MFG ENG was on my team. The MFG ENG was directly responsible for the mfg process. His butt was on the line,as was the line super.
If a machine,or cutters,or fixtures were root cause of process variation,the MFG ENG will be all over it. We had a great toolcrib. If the toolcrib was a problem,....well,in this shop,action would be taken before it got out of control.
The line super handled the human factor. I temporarily worked Quality on a line that had problems. A certain amount of that was aforementioned undermotivated,underskilled "monkeys" Three Supers in one year failed to correct the problem.They were replaced.

Like I said,this operation has been successful over 100 yrs.They know how.

The whole plant has a perimeter and cross pathways 10 feet wide made of chipped flint terrazzo,ground and polished flat and smooth. Heavy baskets of steel parts could be dragged easily station to station.

Once a week the entire plant was scrubbed and mopped.

At any moment,the parts for WO 6750382 could be located via computer,"OP 5,OD grinder station 47" in about 30 seconds.
And every machine had a maintenance schedule. Every Mic and plug guage,a calibration schedule.

We made good stuff
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The tool crib is just one example of a ISO 9000 or 9001 company I just recently parted with. They also had this "L3 Continuous Improvement" lean manufacturing operation thing going too, but I had the feeling that the only reason they had a placard on the wall about L3 was to snowball investors when they gave them a tour of the facility and make them believe all we ever did was continuous improvement.

In over a year of being there, I rarely saw any improvement. Anytime I, a former manufacturing/process engineer and CNC Programmer, saw a process that didn't make sense or outright led to lost production, I didn't bother bringing it up to supervisors or go back to the office and tell engineers because I always got the same answer, "That's the way we've been making it for 20 years."

If the only response was going to be the "20 years" deal, then clearly the company didn't care about continuous improvement and that doesn't come from the employees, that comes from management.

Like you, the company did first part inspection. The part would get submitted to QC, they'd inspect it and give the ok if it was good.

If there was scrap, we were supposed to fill out a non-conformance ticket and put red dykem on the part. Usually no follow up unless there was a lot of bad or possibly bad parts.

The Manufacturing Engineer was one of the worst I've ever seen. We were mostly a production shop running the same stuff every couple months, but when there was a new product that was just recently programmed, the engineer didn't bother with making a setup sheet or tool list. He'd just print out the program and that was your setup sheet. No pictures, no wireframe printouts of the setup, just a phyiscal copy of the program and some chicken scratches detailing (poorly) where the zero's were.

It got to the point he would setup the machine, dial in the feeds/speeds down to where the noise didn't sound like a passing freight train, and then try and hit dimensions before submitting to QC.

Glad to not work there anymore.

We made stuff that could have been made better, but... "We been makin it dat way fa 20 yeeers" really hampers the ability to continuously improve.

I assume at companies that have been making the GP100 or Model 686 the same way for X years, the mentality is similar. If production is lost, it's because of that non-union employee that's paid the generous wage of $10/hr.
 
Ricklin said:
Check that employment agreement, that's where you will find what keeps folks quiet.

TT and HiBC really get it about manufacturing. I've got 40 years in it myself. The last 25 have been as an independent manufacturer's rep.

As such I work with several companies. Over the years have worked with both ISO and non ISO certified. The non ISO manufacturer's are the ones where I will be cleaning up the mess in the field, invariably.

Quality can not be inspected in to a product. Period.
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It's always nice to hear from somebody in their 50's and 60's that a guy not even 30 "gets it" about manufacturing. Thanks, I'll try not to let it go to my head.

It's been my experience the ISO companies are where there's so much improvement that can be made, but it's not done because... they're already ISO certified. What more do they or should they do?

I'm of the opinion that ISO certification is one of the worst things a company seeks to be. People believe it's the ISO that improves quality. No, all ISO is is a documentation system that can show that quality sucks, but once that's found, it's how to improve the quality that matters.

You don't need to spend half a million dollars on consultants and other nonsense when all it takes is a little COMMON sense and some creativity.

All I've seen is once a company gets ISO, they stop being creative, they stop trying to continually improve because they have the ISO marketing gimmick they can feed their dumb, college educated customers.

Then the non-ISO companies I've worked for... they'd been around almost 100 years and their quality was top notch. Union machinists, skilled process engineers, almost never made scrap unless there was a... monkey who messed up. Had several baboons, but mistakes weren't often. Not nearly as often as the ISO companies I've been.

Anyway, Kel Tec is a company that got ISO certification. Doesn't mean squat. All I hear is Kel Tec's quality is poor and they still can't meet demand.
 
I'm with RedDog81 in this....I think a lot of it can be blamed on consumers that want absolutely the lowest cost.../ ....and companies are reacting to that trend ../..and too many consumers seen to think they should get Wilson Combat quality and reliability out of a $ 300 gun ( but this trend is in clothing, cars, tools, etc as well as guns ).

The pressure on price in my view drives quality down...because well trained people, quality parts, quality assembly and good QC cost money. If companies have to meet that low ball cost standard, they have to cut corners.

There are plenty of quality mfg's out there...( Wilson Combat, Freedom Arms, etc ...with very good people, good parts, good QC and very good warranty service, if you need it ). But the entry price level for those guns is closer to $3,000 not $ 300...

I don't think every gun at a low cost is a terrible gun either...I talk to a lot of happy customers from S&W, Glock, Springfield, etc...that are not spending over $ 800 for a gun ever...they don't want, or can't, spend $3K on a gun so they find what suits them for value. A guy next to me at range yesterday was evaluating a number of 9mm's...tried all the popular models, and he excluded HK because of the price even though he liked it better than one of the XD models he decided on.

It was his belief that price was the primary issue ( in his words, especially in a 9mm )...and I know he had money, I watched him drive in - in a brand new BMW SUV - and he was wearing his employee badge from Microsoft.../....he isn't going to change his approach and buy a Wilson Combat in 9mm for
$3,000 - $4,000 ...its not worth it to him.

Low price is a trend...and it gives us some decent guns...and some junk...but its not going away in my view.

Employees, union or not, will make better guns, or products in general, if the companies will train and educate them and focus on quality and fit and finish as a priority ....they don't want to turn out junk / but its not up to them, the companies have to decide what market segment they want to compete in - low end or high end ( both are full of competition !).

Its my personal belief that Wilson Combat makes the finest guns in the industry...and I think they're worth every penny / just like I prefer my vehicles from Lexus.../ ...my hand power tools from Festool ....( they each provide long term value, in my view )...and I am happy to pay for what I want.
 
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IBTL

My VW sucks. I'm not kidding. I have a 2016 jetta made in Mexico, its a POS. Sorry I bought it... hopefully this January I can trade it in.

My Smith and Wesson 442 is rock solid - well built, awesome gun - if I pull the trigger, it is going to fire. I trust it with my life.

Modern gun manufacturing, my theory? Don't buy a cheap gun, buy a well known brand.

I also like what guy said earlier in this thread about the Colt Python - yes, people don't want expensive guns right now. Plastic and aluminum guns rain supreme.

That said.. Very likely the new Colt Cobra is my next gun. Notice, its not a cheap gun.
 
I'm of the opinion that ISO certification is one of the worst things a company seeks to be. People believe it's the ISO that improves quality. No, all ISO is is a documentation system that can show that quality sucks, but once that's found, it's how to improve the quality that matters.
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I somewhat agree with you.A company can win the Malcom Baldridge award and go bankrupt.
I agree that in and of itself,ISO certification won't do much.It depends on what your company does. You simply cannot do business in the euro market without ISO cert.
I'm not positive,but I believe most government contracts are out of reach if you are not ISO cert.
And any company that requires ISO cert to do business cannot farm work out to you if you are not ISO cert.

But agreed,its a mistake to make any quality cert your mission statement.

Now,continuous improvement. Good stuff. But you don't want somebody who monkeys with the thermostat because they feel cold.Thats what Deming calls "Tampering" Your ideas might be excellent.

Improvement costs money,and it must not be chaotic.There IS something to "If it ain't broke,don't fix it"

A company needs to prioritize improvement projects. It has to dedicate resources to the project,with an objective. There is a process,the Shewhert process,that describes what is next..and I forget.
But you first study the process.Figure out a plan for improvement. And measure your system. Like 16 failures per 1000.Then implement the change,and measure the effect.Then start over till desired results are achieved A company may have 5 of those projects running.
If your very good idea is not about an identified hemorrhage ,it is chaotic to pursue unstudied changes.It must wait on the back burner till it is a top priority.
It might very well be that getting ISO spent a lot of money and your cad and other doc services are catching up for some time.
Getting everyone on board the processes and using the doc systems takes time.
30 ish,huh? How is your patience? You might cozy up to learning the grand strategy.Its the folks with positive attitudes that get drafted to the teams.How are you doing?
Maybe instead of trying to steer,help push.With a smile.
You might have had some mediocre management,scared of change and trying to CYA. Time can sort that out,too.
Too bad a mentor did not step in....
But its also true a mentor usually selects you.Next time....as Odball might say "Enough with the negative waves,Moriarity!"(Kelly's Heros)
 
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All I'm saying is that in a gun forum, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting an electrician, cop, accountant, chef, realtor, lawyer, teacher, snow plow driver, musician, pilot and 300 other known occupations but we NEVER see anyone that enjoys guns/shooting and also happens to work for a known gunmaker.

You guys can continue to detail your version of "American decline", I'm merely saying that we never see employees or recent employees that make guns in all of our gun forums.
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Occasionally I see folks who work for gun manufacturers on other forums. Not often though. I think it has more to do with being hounded off the forums than anything else.

I have a friend who works for Glock in Ga. He said as far as he knows folks avoid the gun forums because they take the heat for things they have no control over or any knowledge of. For awhile he had one job then another, then another after that with more to come. He stamped serial numbers on barrels, he placed the sights on slides, Moved parts from one place to another and more. He told me some workers go onto the forums but talk about shooting and not about where they work.

Most wage workers don't ever see any "employment agreement". Those are for salaried employees generally. Confidentiality agreements usually cover prints or photos of parts either relating to military contracts or contract work where fear of industrial espionage is a factor. Those do effect workers on the floor. They do not cover casual conversation about the quality of their products overall though.

But any plant with contracts with law enforcement or the government would provide warnings to their workers and salaried personnel both to not discuss any issues regarding specifics of this.

Finally any thinking that it's unions, one way or another, that have an influence on the quality of firearms produced in the U.S. is dealing with the metaphysical. It's just not the case.

tipoc
 
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