Chinese QC on Intermountain Cars


Reminds me of that car company that went bankrupt due to poor
QA, poor product and unable to compete. of course the Goverment bailed out GM ..
 
As far as the damage to the cars, well you are all wrong :p:p;)


From the Horse Mouth (at that other forum)

All,

Guess I got to this thread a little late....

To me, the majority of the issue shown in the pictures is caused by shipping damage. Why would I say that, even after there is no damage to the outside of the box? Two reasons: 1) the box was dropped flat on its side, 2) InterMountain hand inspects every HO car before it leaves our warehouse.

The box being dropped is not uncommon. Oddly enough, the products are not nearly as damaged if the box is damaged, than if the box is undamaged. There is probably some rules of physics in play here that I do not understand, but experience tells us that if a box is dropped from no more that 3 or 4 feet, and it lands flat, products can be damaged extensively. Looking at the pictures, to me, it is clear that it landed flat and the cars were punched into the blister ends creating the damage they experienced.

As we have all seen, the market has demanded more and more detail, with more and more accuracy. This has led to very fragile details, that do not survive mishandling very well. Because of this, InterMountain hand inspects every piece of HO rolling stock we receive from manufacturing. Yea, I've been called a liar about this, but it is true, and we do have open tours for anyone who would like to come by and see the operation.

Lastly, InterMountain does stand behind every product we produce. We aren't perfect but if you have an issue, let us know, we will do everything we can to make it right.


Thank you for your support of InterMountain Railway Company products.

Richard Frazier
intermountain@intermountain-railway.com
Click to expand...
 
And as I stated on the Atlas forum where the IM reply came from, That doesnt explain the crooked parts that are glued on and the glue haze on the cars. Yes parts can fall off, but on 19 out of 26 cars? And then IM says they inspect each car, Well then how do the ones with crooked parts or Haze get through, I guess they hvae really good inspectors. LOL
 
I commented on that too. No amount of dropping or smashing would create a glue haze. I told them that they should really look into it before it becomes a widespread problem.
 
maybe the inspectors are the ones who glued the pieces BACK ON with alot of glue. This way they can say it was shipping damage and it wasn't like that when we inspected them.
 
I was shocked by the broken and bent parts shown in the photos. I expect far better from Intermountain. I have cheap Bachmann cars that look better than those do. The quality needs to come way up.
 
I've met the team that runs Intermountain. They are honest folks. Pack the lot up and send it back to them. They'll take care of it. I've seen tons of their stuff come through with no issues. This kind of thing happens, especially with some of the shakeup over there in China. New vendors coming up the learning curve. If you don't have problems at some point, you aren't doing business.
 
In America, I think, the way it worked was, a manufacturing firm built a factory and started making its own stuff. In China, I think (though this is NOT universal), they frequently open factories, and then go get customers, whoever they may be, and start making runs of their stuff, then someone else's stuff, and so on. That does not sound like a recipe for quality from me.
 
Silvermansteve that is exactly right in many cases. Your stuff gets scheduled in with a bunch of other US and Euro company's production-runs.

Very often your biggest competition has his junk built at the same factory! Sounds like an open invitation for your engineering drawings to be sold off behind your back -- does it not?

Even if a US company owns its own China factory, many of the fabricated items in your product are sub-ed out to smaller plants in the area. Examples would be sheet metal parts, printed circuit boards and molded items.

This explains why we increasingly have to preorder new items in advance of actual production. If a US company designs an item and contracts for, let's say, 5000 pieces, they can't call back and increase the order -- even a week after signing the deal.

The reason is that the Chinese plant (and its subcontractors) already has its time blocked out. And your parts are on order for just the original order-size. Sorry, no changes unless you go to the bottom of the list - with a cancelation penalty too. :D
 
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The production run contracts have always been like that. In the past, when manufacturers didn't use the preorder system, they were making a somewhat educated guess as to how many units to make. As a result, some items were busts, costing the company money by not selling very well and taking up shelf space in the warehouse. They put in the preorder system for financial stability so that for example, if 4800 units are preordered, they'd do a run for 5000 and no more. That drives prices up especially if the demand is high, but if the demand is low, they only have 200 units to get rid of at a discount.

Freight cars are a different story. For example, Athearn sends out the Athearn News newsletter with item numbers and descriptions of upcoming items. You can either preorder and pay MSRP or close to it, or you can wait until Athearn is tired of holding onto them and has a 50% off sale. This drives up the prices of the cars (for example, Athearn RTR freight cars are in excess of $30 MSRP right now) but when they get rid of them at 50% off (the LHS likes to order the 50% off stuff because it moves quickly) Athearn makes less of a profit, the LHS makes less of a profit (both offset by volume), and the consumer gets a good deal ($13.99 for Athearn RTR tank cars! They have etched metal walkways and grabs, Intermountain style metal wheels, and have prototype specific details). For items such as the Athearn 33K gal tank cars, which have a MSRP of $35.98, I wasn't able to get them for less than $25. They sold like hotcakes at the LHS (and I was smart enough to grab a couple) and I wasn't able to find any more for that price. In that case, Athearn made quite a bit of money. So, manufacturers are still "gambling" with freight cars, but I don't think they lose very much money if any on them.
 
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