Manufacturer Test Procedures

I seriously doubt they test them after receipt in the US, you'd see signs of them being unpacked.  If they get tested, it happens in China.

 

No, I meant in China prior to shipment here.

 

JoeG

I presume there must be some sort of functional check, though I think only the manufacturers could intelligently answer such a query.

Here's a thought for the group. I bought a brand-new MTH Blue Streak set from my local dealer about a year ago. Right out of the box it had a lightbulb that was blown dead short-popped the transformer.

If this set had been track tested by the manufacturer, this would have stuck out! Granted, it was in a coach and not the engine, but still. That suggests that at the least there was no functional test done on the whole set or the cars...

I have seen QA seals on transformers before. I think those they have to check by law.

Banging around in shipping for 8000-9000 miles may have caused the lightbulb to short after the testing...

 

they test nothing, we are the test people, when we send it back, it's because it failed. when enough get sent back they know there is a problem. no other industry could have such a high failure rate and still be in business.. if they made cars, would you ever buy another one from them? we are a captive audience

Gotta Chime In:

 

I have personally seen 3 - 4 elaborate test tracks several years ago when I shared a builder with a big train manufacturer. All importers of trains have requirements of QC tests for their product. It would be lunacy to do otherwise.

 

But perceiving what is and isn't a problem is what makes the difference between a successful QC process and a useless one. I have seen workers run an engine back and forth, put the pilot truck back on the track repeatedly and not think anything of it. Or see the engine lifting on a curve because of a part interfering, but not derailing and again, no reaction by the QC people. I have seen them ignore grinding noises, high current draw, thinking these things must be OK. Also missing burned out lights, bad speakers, malfunctioning shut down sequences, bent or broken detail, are all things that we look for when we do our QC testing but they miss due to just plain laziness. The factory QC people make $300 a month, so you an imagine what you get for that money. I bopped one guy on the head several times for resting his head in his hands while a model ran around the test track. I asked him to be removed from QC several times but I keep finding him there every time I return. It's not my factory, I can only suggest or demand.

 

So I come here and use the DIY method. I watch them testing, I spot check, I hang around looking for anything repetitive going wrong. We do drop testing of the finish product to simulate the Gorilla in the Samsonite commercial. Then we open the box and see if anything broke, came loose, bent. But what we can't find are those things the shake loose after 10 days of vibration and shocks in the UPS and USPS systems, like cold solder joints on wires, or screws working themselves out. That's what customer service is for.

 

We all want what we buy to be perfect when we open it. Why can't this happen with more regularity with our model train purchases?

 

On my last trip home I sat next to a young man who was returning from China. He worked for Google and was in charge of QC of their Cell phone production. He said our experiences are nothing different than anyone elses. In their production they ordered 1,000,000 phones. But they start with batches of 20,000 to 50,000. And make corrections to production as they get feed back from their customers and QC tests at the factory. After the 4th batch the phones have all the bugs worked out and the rest of the production has acceptable quality.

 

In Model Trains, you only get 1 shot, 1 iteration. You correct what you find at the factory in the middle or at the end of production and hope for the best after shipping. Each new model is a different production and a new design and new set of problems. That's why we have extensive customer support.

 

I hope this sheds some light on your experiences. It's a hobby business, designed to give you the biggest happiness for the buck and a big variety. They are expensive to make, packed with engineering and electronics and they are well designed. But there are no iterations in manufacturing these models so we get what is statistically possible, which seems to be about 10-15% defective rate after shipping. To do more would drive the costs up a lot. That's my experience with this.

 

Happy Holidays All,

 

Scott Mann - 1 more day in China.

In most manufacturing if the run is massive,statical process control methods are the most effective and economical. With this method,there is no need to check every piece. Instead random sample are pulled to evaluate a batch. The Japanese used it way back to improve quality of their cars and other goods. I took several class on the method and statistics courses.

 

LINK

 

As far as trains,I have received items painted wrong paint stuck to the packaging, ,wired wrong,broken parts etc. Whatever methods they use,they don't seem to be effective. 

 

Dale H

Thanks for the post, Scott.

 

You have summed up pretty much what seems to make sense.

 

Until the train business can bring in orders in the mass quantities of cell phones/TVs/camcorders/etc, this industry is the low man on the totem pole in terms of how much attention they may pay us. 

 

The guy sleeping or ignoring the defects we would all catch is equivalent to not even having QC as far as I am concerned.  Obviously the factories are going to pay more attention to the larger customers with millions of units.  Our small quantities seemingly gets the lower performers you describe.

 

-Dave

As I work through a batch of repair from various years, I was pondering the quality issues just yesterday.  How it applies to trains and just about everything manufactured.

 

Unfortunately, there has to be pride in what you do beyond just making a buck.

 

That is why I am always amazed at the early MTH stuff that established MTH's reputation with Premier line and the rest.

 

The quality of those designs, material and build, including electronics and wiring amaze me.  It carried into the Lionel Korean phase too.  The original MTH Korean factory's owner clear took pride in his work and probably had a good training program for his workers.

 

As time marches on, and the train prices can't really rise like other commodities, the model relies on reducing cost to build the item to gain profit.  So less skilled works, less training, less oversight, shortcuts on materials and such ultimately lower the quality of the item.  I am sure the Chinese were aggressive with quality as they were trying to get market share from the Koreans.  Now that they have, and capitalism slips into the equation.  Rising wages, the pressure to reduce cost in other areas, can really mess with the quality of the product.  It is a shame, but unfortunately, not much can be done.  If you are in a small market where you can't really raise the price of your product, without drastic reduction in sales volume, your kind of stuck, allowing the product to be produced as the builder chooses to meet your contract price.  Hence where we seem to be in today's slowly dwindling toy train hobby.   G

I believe you answered your own question. Starter sets clearly represent a low end high volume product. I would guess the test rate is somewhere between 1-10%.

 

High-end BTO product an entirely different scenario.

Not every person who buys toy trains is capable of fixing them themselves. So most rely on MTH and Lionel or their repair stations to finish the trains when quality is poor. But in today's world of expensive shipping the buyer looses in having to ship his train back and forth to get it repaired. It seems that, according to some that report here, often train repairs take multiple iteration and multiple shipping costs. Today's enthusiast for toy trains from MTH, Lionel, and others will be gone in the future and there may not be younger enthusiast because they remember 'DAD" having to always fix his trains.

 

I am a retired aerospace electronics engineer. The first time I opened up an MTH engine I was aghast. The wiring was chaotic with wire nuts for some connections. This is not what I expected after having opened up more than one computer and at the price point of these trains. Then there was the constant of something wrong with the engines either initially or later. You really have to want to be in this hobby to accept all the problems with MTH products in particular. The next generation may not be so forgiving. Poor quality just may destroy toy trains as a hobby.

 

LDBennett

Tom, starter sets would be closer to 1% testing I'd bet.

 

the problem I see is that some train manufacture's customers send them back the to the  company and when I hear that some trains are sent back for repairs of new or used engines for repairs and then I hear the original  company did not repair the train but later find out the a hobby shop repairs the engine in question where as the original company repaired the same engine in question but was not truly repaired, where in fact a hobby shop finds the actual problem and is fixed permanently. why won't the original company's that sold the engine repair it in the first place , instead of having a hobby shop do the correct repair.

Hard for me to comprehend, any thoughts from anyone on this issue!

Alan   

 

 

I recently browsed the Lionel catalog. They sure have no qualms about raising prices over the years. $1000+ engines and rolling stock approaching $80. Perhaps a bit of than can go into quality control.  Prices for electronic components and manufacturing have held steady or declined over the years I think.

 

The high prices are why I buy a lot of used stuff.

 

Dale H

Perhaps MTH, Lionel, Atlas and the other OEMs will post a video on this forum showing the inspections and bench testing that is done during the manufacturing cycle, and at their facilities. So lets make this a formal request to MTH, Lionel, Atlas et al.

In the last 6 months I have purchased 3 electronic items:

 

1)  Samsung S6 phone.  Had to replace it because it got so hot during charging you could not touch it.

 

2)  Garmin Edge Touring GPS bicycle computer.  Would not download map update. After reset it no longer worked.  Waiting for replacement.

 

3)  Lionel LionChief Plus NYC RS-3.  Used at one train show and an extended run time at a friend's house.  Operates perfectly.

 

ADDED:  I told my wife about this post and she reminded me that we bought a 4th electronic device, a ZAP on/off controller for 3 electrical outlets. It came with 2 controllers.  One controller has an off button that does not work.  Since we are using it to control only 2 lights we are keeping it.

Dale, This may not be apple to apple comparison except for the rolling stock.  Can't compare a TMCC Bigboy or Hudson to a Vision Line.  That is like comparing a base mustang to a SVT Cobra.  Whole different animal.

 

But considering you paid about $1200 MSRP for a scale MTH Bigboy PS-1, look at what you get now a days 15 years later.  Same with Lionel when comparing same type.  They really have not gone up significantly.  G

George,

Maybe this is why all of the early MTH Std Gauge Tinplate holds it's value. Sure they were all Traditional (no electronics). Isn't that what tinplate is all about?

You suggest that as if they owned the factories and had the authority to do so.

 

I suspect most of the companies they are working with would not allow such a video to be made.  This isn't Michigan.  

 

Most subcontractors for anything actually still made stateside (not restricting to trains) would probably also not allow their customers to make videos of the process.  The proprietary magic of how things are accomplished may be compromised.  There very well may be photo or video documentation for QA purposes for some items(but they would not permit posting to the internet for all to see), but I'm thinking along the line of high reliability electronic units for government customers.  We don't want our trains to cost that much!

 

We are also assuming such testing/inspecting takes place. 

 

I believe Scott Mann when he states he does testing (and obviously inspections), but I am suspicious of most of the others (I am certainly suspicious of any claim of "100% testing", though it may have been quite a few years now since that fantasy was regularly tossed about). 

 

Inspection may simply consist of : a) it's a train, and b) nothing is actually falling off as you wrap it in the box (if we are lucky).  Whether the paint is dry, not bubbling/peeling/chipped, etc won't get caught most times it seems.

 

-Dave

Scott ET all,

 

Thanks for all your input, and basically noting things that i had not thought of. All excellent input. I also like the idea, about manufacturers sharing videos of their test area.

 

I have always enjoys any article or video showing the steps taken to produce and engine or car. I wish that TMBV would do a video on the making of a conventional tinplate engine. However, I am sure there would be some reservations there about giving away too much info.

 

JoeG