SHOPFOX DEALER PLANER QUESTION

[BT98]

I just got a lesson today from a Shopfox dealer. I had checking around to buy a 15 inch planer. I looked at Jet, Delta, Grizzly, Woodtek, Shopfox and Yorkcraft on the internet. Not having catalogs I compared all the specs and decided on a Grizzly GO453. I come to find out that Grizzly and Shopfox are the same parent company and Grizzly is mail order and ShopFox is sold through dealers. Shopfox gave me the name of dealers to call in my area and the shop fox dealer I called did not recommend the Shopfox since it not the quality as some of the other equipment. He suggested Seco, which is another brand he sells and looks the same with same specs and for more money. He said some of their stuff is made in China with soft and poor castings and the Seco is made in Taiwan was better quality. He commented on a Jet Vacuum that a customer had the impeller broke and was not available from Jet anymore for that unit since Jet changed overseas manufactures of that unit and they were not interchangeable. I wonder if anyone else has had this experience.

Should I give up on Shopfox or find a different dealer? What is an ISO manufacture? Bill

[Leon]

An ISO manufacturer is one that subscribes and adheres to an international agreement of set standards.

[Enoch Root]

...of quality assurance.

FWIW, I just got the G0555 BS from grizzly and it is built in an iso9001 factory, and also has a big "made in taiwan" cast into the body.

It has a nice finish and my only complaint is a slight dip on the right rear of the table... don't know if I'm going to raise an issue until I've measured it (it's more than a feeler gauge... :-/)

er

[Enoch Root]

my only complaint is a slight dip on the right

Huh, just measured it and it's gone! Very slight dip in the left rear, I get a little snick sliding a 0.007" gauge under a straight edge. Not worth a complaint...

er

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Under ISO 9000 the standards dictate the manufacturing process. This does not mean it is of high quality, but it is going to be consistent in quality. There are about 20 criteria addressed by the standards including design control, purchasing procedures, specifications, process control, inspection, handling, storage, job training, etc.

One company may set a tolerance on a machined part of .0001, another company making a competitive part may set tolerance at .05. If proper procedure is followed, you can be assured that what you buy will be in the specifications, be that good or bad.

[Enoch Root]

I once heard a story, and it might be apocryphal, of a quality spec. given by (IBM?) to a japanese company they'd tapped for a supply of (stepper?) motors. Although they had misread the intent of the spec., they very diligently included 1.5 defective motors per hundred, and asked why IBM should want that.

er

[Leon]

If you are going to list "an" ISO standard, you might as well list all of the standards. Specific packaging, shipping, billing, to name a few, are required to be ISO certified. A quality standard is but one of many.

[Leon]

OK, I only mentioned the agreement of set standards and no mention of particular degree of quality. :~) Enoch Root mentioned quality assurance.

[Leon]

LOL. Well at least IBM would know which 1.5 motors per hundred would be defective and would not have to allow for the liability quantity of motors to fail. :~)

[CW]

Incorrect.

[CW]

And an ISO standard is not standard. It varies widely from company to company.

[CW]

Finally, someone who knows.

international

[Leon]

I suspect that has a lot to do with which particular ISO certification that they go by.

[Leon]

Well let me rephrase, a company that is ISO "certified" subscribes to.

[CW]

No, it doesn't. ISO is not a set of standards as the advertising (advertising being the only real benefit of certification) would have you believe. In a nutshell, you tell them what your company standards are and they drop by from time to time and make sure that you have the documentation to show that you are fallowing those standards. As long as it is on paper, you have satisfied their inspectors. If your company standards say that every third part is crap, as long as you have the documentation to show that that is the case, you meet standards. They do not, nor are they capable of, dictate any manufacturing process or procedure. We recently had an ISO audit (yes, our shop is certified). At no time did the inspector come into the shop area. They stayed in the office and looked over the documentation. Even if they had come into the shop, they would not have any idea what they were looking at. ISO certification has two benefits. (1) It is good advertising. People don't know what it is but it sounds technical so they think it must mean something. (2) It provides jobs pushing meaningless paper. Our largest customer builds heavy jets. They do not require us or any of their suppliers to have ISO certification. They know it is BS and would never rely on that to ensure quality, they can't afford to be that lax.

"Leon" wrote in message news:gwW%f.68983$ [e-mail]...

[CW]

I've got to hand it to them, they know how to BS.

>

[Edwin Pawlowski]

I wrote the manual for our company. We are not certified, but our QC manual follows the ISO90001 guidelines and is sufficient for our customers. It took me a couple of days following a book I bought for $20. A real ISO certification would probably cost $10k+

I used to buy 90% of our poly bags from one supplier. They became ISO certified and every order after that was botched and I've not bought from them since.

[Enoch Root]

It's not of the quality, but of the quality assurance. How's that?

er

[Leon]

Then either the inspectors are not all consistent or things have changed drastically in the last 4 years. My sister in-law was the operations manager for a high end electronics company that built job specific one of a kind electrical tools and equipment for extreme environment conditions. Their product did not exist until commissioned and they carried no inventory of products ready to be sold. About 7 or 8 years ago they were having to make specific operations changes to become ISO certified. They had apparently been trying to be certified for several months prior to hiring my sister in-law. Any way to make a long story short they had more than office visits.

[Leon]

That very well may be. A relatives experience fit the links description. Perhaps some companies with a more select group of customers that want the whole 9 yards. Some government contracts might require the links description. I also have a friend that worked at NASA in Houston several years ago and ISO standards eliminated a lot of vendors from the list of "qualified" providers.