Hunter is not a Micky D's
No excuse for shipping a poor quality product. Hopefully Hunter may understand the true management problem indicated by the description of the day Bernie went to pick up his new Boat. The boat was not ready- understand this is a fabrication facility, it is not a fast food restaurant. When production problems happen, and they always do, the average middle management staff is used to hearing the lost time, loosing money, lost production and other "attitude incentive packages" typically delivered by the upper management of the organization. I have purchased a lot of custom fabrication, and have found that _FOOT TAPPING_ in the front office gets me the worst possible product. Never kid yourself that the management of a sales driven organization, has a clue about the manufacturing methods and requirements it takes to get a product out the door. Sounds a lot like the stories of American car production in the 70's - good market = stressed production management. Lets not be so quick to decide that some new employee made this problem, new employees have the most incentive to do the best possible job. This is so typical of a spreadsheet driven profit per unit mentality, when production supervision lacks the control to override the production schedule the errors and poor workmanship become evident. All of the complaints that Bernie mentioned are items that intermediate quality inspections would have eliminated. While I doubt that Hunter uses a point to point sign off, I would expect that intermediate inspections are made and designed in the process to allow corrections to be made at the least cost to production. The president of Hunter said it all, when he stopped to apologize to Bernie. He allowed his organization to engage in the use of outside fabrications, likely due to production demands, without the methods in place to assure his quality of his product is maintained. Without a doubt he was and knows this is his fault, and I am sure Hunter will be an improved organization for it. The General feeling of this thread is to agree that the ultimate responsibility is the upper management of Hunter, but it is so easy to understand that it is not really their fault. I mean they can't be everywhere, some middle management personnel or lowly production worker must be at fault. This is just another example of how bad American workmanship has become - NOT- Nobody, not the president, not the sales department, not the quality control department, not the production department nobody anywhere wants to do a bad job. I think that if I were Bernie I would put that boat on the trailer, drive it down to the factory and let them fix it. Nothing has more impact the returned product of this magnitude. I doubt that anyone in planning has a slot on there spreadsheet for "boats returned to factory". Two things that he would achieve by this: 1_I am sure hunter would go through that boat in such a fashion that we will all know that hull # &^%&^ is the best 26 Hunter ever released from the factory, instead of one to be avoided. 2_He could proudly sail one of the hunters that made all the other Hunters better
