So let's see, you design your pack then send it out to an independent International Safe Transit Association lab to have it tested and certified. The certification means that it has been tested to the most severe handling the package will see consistent with the contractural terms LTL shipping. It passes the test and is rated "Transit Tested". The LTL shipper accepts the package for shipment. The LTL shipper mishandles the package in a manner inconsistent with the general terms of the shipping contract and damages the contents. Damages it in a manner whereby the shipper admits liability for freight damage to your package. The package they accepted and you paid a fee for them to transport.
Now that could be the greatest understatement of the day :~)
I promised myself I would not jump in on another thread that starts out with"Saw Stop". Should have kept that promise. Subject tends to make people crazy (me included?) and usually brings out the trolls and sockpupets in droves.
Frank, I think that some Delta management knew what needed to be done but unfortunately were limited in what they could do by the greater powers above them and their strangle hold on the money needed to fix the problem.
Similarly, GM went through a similar situation back in the mid 80's. They used many different carriers and because of the great variety in sizes and shapes of the parts being shipped there were almost daily claims by any given receiving dealer. The packaging passed Transit Tests but sheet metal/ fenders, hoods etc. were almost always in harms way because of the variety of other goods being loaded in the same trailer. Finally GM took the initiative to admit that this was not working and switched to a dedicated carrier. Trailers were built specifically for and to deliver strictly GM parts. These carriers only delivered GM parts. Claims dropped about 90%. As a parts manager receiving freight from GM daily I was not interested in the least about packaging standards, transit tested standards or why parts were being delivered in damaged condition. To the dismay of my local GM Parts rep and apparently to the dismay of hundreds others, I and a great number of parts managers purchased GM parts from other vendors rather than GM Parts division when ever I could. I did not want excuses as that did not solve the problems. Action by GM switching to dedicated carriers did solve the problems. Sometimes you have to think outside the box and spend extra money to stop the bleeding and unfortunately in many cases managements hands are tied.
But pissing upwind has its place......we have way too many half truths accepted as fact...and often a shortage of critical or logical thinking.....In this case Franks unique insider view sheds a interesting light on a likely errant view..... Even better it is rather interesting to see a glimpse of a companies quality control and/or trouble shooting.....Rod
You would be wrong with that thought. Why would you think that there is some high power that would want to let a reputation damaging problem continue?
Your example is not relevant. Factory to the Distribution Center, dedicated carrier, no problems. DC to the customer (over a thousand distributors, large and small all over the country), LTL. Can't have dedicated carriers for one or two unisaws at a time, have to rely on or force LTL carriers living up to their contract to handle freight responsibly.
First off, please accept my appoligy for accidentally sending this reply directly to you.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Frank Boettcher" Newsgroups: rec.woodworking Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 5:23 PM Subject: Re: Safe Stop
More profit maybe? I once worked for a company that was more concerned with it's good reputation in certain aspects of it's business than pleasing the customer. Yes, top management does think like that some times. They are no longer in business and that was not a suprise or mystery.
So that I am straight on this Frank, what exactly did fix the broken trunion problem? How long were broken trunions a problem that Delta is aware of, keeping in mind that it would not be a stretch of the imagination for there to be some New Old Unisaws with unknown broken trunions that have sat or are sitting in a retailers stock room today. I would like to use your comments when/if this comes up in the future.
I think my example is very relevant. The dedicated carrier delivered to the tens of thousands of individual Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac, and GMC dealerships through out the US, not between the factory and distribution center.
"Daily" GM would deliver a shipment as small as a few dollars or thousands of dollars. This still goes on today. In the old days dealerships got initial stock orders once a week from 3 to 4 different carriers. Starting back in the 80's a single carrier with nothing but GM parts on the truck delivered daily literally 24 hours a day after and during business hours.
In Texas the GM Parts distribution center was in Dallas. Every day dedicated carriers delivered parts to dealerships all over Texas 24 hours a day. Often the freight was delivered and stored inside a safe location at each dealership in the middle of the night.
From there if I shipped to a customer and the freight got damaged, it was MY responsibility. If I had problems with a shipping company, I changed shippers.
Right. ISTA specifications do not always cover real life, nor does the lab testing used to achieve the "transit tested" label. A few hours on the shaker table is nothing compared to one lumper letting go of his two-wheeler while moving your package. If you use the specifications for weight and size, a table saw is subjected only to a small drop or even an incline test. That does not cover real life. Contractual terms of the LTL shipper mean nothing out on the dock at 3:00 AM, or some strange handling at delivery, or rough handling at the distributor's warehouse. .
I've been in the protective packaging industry for 37 years. I've seen computers fall off the back of a semi trailer as he pulled away from the dock to close the doors, (not re-tested, just put back on the truck) I've seen packages than meet the ISTA for a 12" drop fall down 4' while being carried up steps. I've seen a major pharmaceutical company have excessive glass breakage in their ISTA approved package solved after they found a UPS terminal sorter used his steel tipped boots for sorting. (this was hundreds of bottle of liquid medicine over about 6 months hit in just the right spot before it was solved) I've seen packages not dropped, but walked on and used as steps to get to others crushing the contents.
OTOH, I had a new engineer at an existing customer call a meeting because the packaging they were using did not meet their testing procedure (DEC 101 if you were in the electronics industry) he recently initiated. In use for two years and tens of thousands of shipments, the company general manager asked him many were damaged in all that time. The engineer said "none" and the meeting was over.
ISTA is a good starting point, but it does not alleviate the need for protective packaging that works under real life every day situations.
FACT: Product was damaged when being shipped to manufacturer to consumer. CAUSE: Improper handling or weak part REMEDY: Better packaging,or stronger parts, or train and monitor every truck driver, fork lift driver, and material handler in the world. .
You can blame whoever you want, but that does not fix the problem at the root. You use the most economical solution for the particular situation. It may be pennies for a stronger part or dollars for a more secure package, or it may be thousands for a redesign of a part versus 15¢ for some cushioning. Every problem has a different solution.
If you are sitting watching TV and getting hit on the head with a hammer, so you put on an "transit tested" and approved helmet or do you stop the hammer from hitting you?
Absolutely correct. For that reason, you must be sure your product is well made and well packed, because you don't have any control over how many people will handle it how many times. See, we do agree.
I'm sorry you had that experience. That was never the case with Delta. Pentair made some long term "strategic" decisions with disastrous results, that I'm sure they would like the opportunity to rethink (or forget now that they have peddled the company), however, operating decisions were never restricted by any corporate entity.
I could ask you to DAGS, however, a post to a thread sometime in 2005 on this subject specifically to comments you made similar to those in this thread.:
Leon,
I have a great deal of respect for you through reading your posts but in this case you have been mislead by someone. I've read the threads on this before and there has been much misinformation.
There has never been a problem with the torque setting at the factory on the trunion bracket bolts or any other improper assembly methods. This comment has been posted a number of times and regardless of the original source, it is not true.
The package design has been ISTA tested with the appropriate inclined plane, straight drop and vibrations tests at an independent lab. It holds a transit tested rating. Even so, trunions would ocasionally break in shipment even when the package looked fine on arrival.
In testing to try to find out why they were breaking the only way the trunions could be broken was to tip the unit over and have it land solidly on the front table edge. When this happened there was no packaging damage, the internal damage was concealed. You can't imagine how many sets I've observed broken during that testing process. It is kind of sickening to keep tipping a saw over just to see if you could get a statistical read on what would break.
Changes made a number of years ago were to specifically address this issue. The red motor strap was removed, not to save money but because it was creating another problem. freight dock drivers would drive up on a running pickup and slam fork lift masts into the relatively unprotected end bell of the motor, breaking the end bell and sometimes the motor bracket. The change was to drop the motor down as far into the cabinet as possible, supporting it on the dust chute, to protect it and also to lower the center of gravity to make tip overs less likely.
A device called a tilt watch was added to the package alerting a distributor to not accept the package from the freight carrier if the device had been activated. The only way it could be activated is if the freight dock person had tipped it over.
The only design change on the trunion brackets and trunions was to increase the cross sections where there was breakage and to increase any radii to eliminate the notch effect on impact. There has been no reduction in the specifications for chemical or mechanical properties of the iron as was suggested in some old threads.
There were a number of other changes to the pack to improve the shippability. And after any change the unit was transit tested again by an independent lab.
A broken internal component is a small percentage of returns. Most are minor (cosmetic) freight damage or internal warehouse damage or distributor resets. Many come in and the refurb diagnosis indicates no apparent reason. However, the refurb process is outstanding. You will get a good saw if you buy refurb. My everyday use unisaw is a reconditioned unit.
Why post now? It was/is a company policy not to respond to posts on unmoderated news groups. I no longer work for the company and I do not represent them with this post. It is, however, the truth.
Frank
Back to the present, I have no idea what specifically eliminated the problem, because the pack passed transit testing before the problem started, at each change during the process of working on the pack, and at the final iteration. Statistically speaking, the process went out of its' control range with no apparent change to the process parameters, and came back in at no point where any one change was apparently causative. If I had to make a guess, I would suspect it was the introduction of the "tilt watch" that caused the shippers to know that they could not get away with dropping a package with concealed damage and just drive off. The distributor would refuse the package and file a freight claim. Terrible thing when that is what is necessary to have shipper handle freight as it was intended to be handled and as they were being paid to handle it.
If you think comparing distribution options for GM one of the largest corporations in the world, and Delta, a very small company is relevant, so be it. I would disagree.
What I said before stands. If you think that some jerk on a shipping dock who throws a load off his forks creating concealed damage of the product is a reflection of product quality then so be it. I would respectfully disagree.
If you choose to believe the "respected" poster who claimed that the broken trunnions were a result of "improper torque settings in the factory" then it is your right to do so. I know that not to be true and will challenge the comment whenever I see it publicly stated.
Thank you, Frank, for verifying what I said about inadequate packaging.. ISTA standards just don't always hold up to real life situations that occur every day.
Delta evidently was, smart enough to find and correct the problem. It is a shame they had to take so many "hits" on reputation from customers in the meantime. They did both, improve the package and the product. Good for them. Tipping is a problem with high center of gravity products. Forklifts do slam into the side of pallets. Changing he orientation or a larger pallet fixes that in most cases.
Thank you Frank, I'll again try and word any future comments about the trunions in a less damning way.
If indicating that the Delta Trunion problem was short lived and believed to be damage caused by improper handling with no visible signs of abuse, I'll do my best to try remember to state that.
You're welcome, however, It was not my intention to nor did I verify that. Your original post stated:
"It has *nothing* to do with LTL shippers,...... but everything to do with inadequate packaging or poor design".
ISTA means that if a shipper handles a package as they have been contracted to do, then the package will arrive damage free. If they handle it in a way that is improper, an ISTA transit tested rating does not indicate anything. I continue to believe that the general public should not have to pay for "improvements" over and above ISTA transit tested just because the shipper(s) is irrisponsible.
What we found in this investigative process is that many shippers have remote terminals where the terminal manager does not provide a forklift or in some cases even an adequately functional hydraulic hand truck ($500?). So dock workers are pushing pallets across the floor manually. Now with your premise, I guess we should add $20 of $30 bucks to the pack (many thousands of them) so that they can continue to not live up to their contracted responsiblity and the terminal manager can "control" his expenses.
As mentioned, it was not a structural improvement to the pack or the unit that I believe led to the moderation of the problem, but a rather expensive "tattletale" device. To one who spent most of his days looking for a few cents of unit cost here or there to keep the product world class but still reasonably priced, that hurts.
So, if the premise for your position is that "It has nothing to do with the LTL shipper"...we have no starting position for debate on the matter and I am through with the thread.
OK. I concede the LTL shipper has "something" to do with the situation and my wording was incorrect, but it is still the responsibility of Delta to find a way to get the product from assembly line to customer. If you cannot do that, you don't have a viable business. Does not matter if we are talking about tables saws, computers, beer, apples, etc. If the product is damaged, the packaging is wrong for that design. Either change the design, change the package, change the shipping environment. One big problem is that you have no control over the shipping environment as discovered by Delta.
The customer does not care how you solve the problem. He does care that his new tool does not work and he does not care who handled it. He wants Delta to fix it. Does it take $30 per package? Maybe, but maybe it takes 10¢ for a beefier part. Maybe it takes a part that is 20¢ cheaper but of a different design or material. Still comes back to the manufacturer.
No matter how you proclaim the package meets the ISTA standards, it did not work in the real world. Fact is, you did make changes to accommodate the real world handling. My opinion is that ISTA is a starting point but not a guarantee of performance. You can write book, write standards, make drawing, procedures, pretty colored boxes, but the fact is, dock workers are still going to push pallets when they want to. Contracts are written by desk drivers, packages are delivered by truck drivers. You found a solution that was outside the ISTA standard because that is what was needed to make it work.
If a company in the same situation actively investigated and changed something to correct the problem, good for them. If they sat back and kept saying "we meet ISTA standards so it is not our problem" then they are wrong.
My premise is still that the manufacturer has ultimate responsibility to get his product to his customer in good condition. He has the responsibility to make a product that is safe, meets the standards as advertised, and makes a profit so the company can pay its employees, suppliers, etc.
That is exactly right. Unless a business realizes that and takes charge if it's own destiny it could go down the tubes. If the competition is not having the same problems the company with the problems suffers the consequences. What you do with the data reports and "in the field findings" determines whether you remain competitive or not. Ultimately, loose money if you have to if that is what it takes to quickly make things right and then figure out how to get the profit back. You do not want your customer to suffer in any way as a result of buying your product no mater where the fault falls.
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