As builders, we’ve all felt that sensation of simply moving too fast. “One more row of rivets before dinner time, I can do it.” That’s when pushing harder actually makes you go slower, a frustrating experience to say the least.
If you were an observer at Van’s for the last few months, and in December especially, you’d recognize that situation in a heartbeat. Everyone from engineering through manufacturing on the factory floor to those moving parts in the warehouse and providing customer service have been running at 100% power. In the last quarter of the year alone, we stood up an entirely new production line for the RV-15’s integral fuel tanks, refined the wing from a manufacturing standpoint, and worked tirelessly with suppliers to get the hundreds of RV-15 wing parts to be in one place at the same time—and at a high level of quality RV builders expect.
Now the confession: We didn’t quite make our shipment goals on the RV-15, and in striving to do so we stretched ourselves to the point where overall parts availability and customer support slipped. On RV-15 shipments, while we were able to support a handful of will-call customers in the last week of December, as hard as we pushed, we didn’t achieve our targets.
Why? A combination of factors. Examples include unexpected supply chain disruptions and delay, continued small changes to improve the fit of parts, incorporating new ideas to take the kit instructions and the new “RV Tackle Box” method of supplying small parts to the next level, etc. Because the fuel tank assembly process is new to us, we wanted to take extra time to ensure the product was right and to incorporate lessons learned into the kits and documentation. These are among the factors that caused us to miss our admittedly ambitious goals.
As a result, we’re going to do the sensible thing and institute a brief delay of early RV-15 deliveries that will allow us to take a breath and focus on the details that will help make the 15 the best and easiest RV to build. Ever. Based upon how quickly the prototype and beta-build examples have come together, we are confident that we are on track.
How long of a delay? Not long. Shipments scheduled for December 31 will be pushed back to January 9. Other shipments will resume on January 23. We want to spend the first part of January better organizing our warehouse, firming up the crating process, and taking another stab at the final processes that bring the RV-15’s parts from manufacturing to their handmade crates. This brief delay will allow customers to receive kits with fewer backorders, too.
It’s worth mentioning that the RV-15 is the first all-new design from Van’s in a long while, with unprecedented early demand. We are on pace to deliver significantly more RV-15 wing kits in the first several months than the entire first year of production on the RV-14. That makes the RV-15 a big undertaking, even for a company as experienced as Van’s. Plus, the RV-15 will introduce significantly improved kit instructions for Van’s, samples of which we will soon post on the RV-15 page at vansaircraft.com. Our engineering team worked long, long hours to make them a reality.
We recognize the push to deliver the RV-15 wing kits has impacted the rest of the business, from fulfilling parts orders placed on our website to deliveries of kit components for other models. We’re taking steps to get this back in balance. In the short term, we’re slightly revising (lengthening) lead times for empennage kits so we can spend more time on parts orders and better meet customer expectations. We are also redoubling our efforts to keep the kit-status portal up to date with estimated crating dates—builders can expect to see updated estimated crating dates appear by January 5, when the entire kit-sales staff is returns from the New Year's break. We are not delaying any non-RV-15 orders.
Bottom line: We need to take a moment, slow down, get things back in order, and then proceed at a healthy pace for our employees and customers so everyone has an improved experience.
Thank you, as always, for supporting us. There are 137 people in Aurora, Oregon, who appreciate the special bond you create as that dream airplane takes shape in front of you, with your own hands. We understand the eagerness to get started. The wait won’t be long. The results will be worth it.
If you were an observer at Van’s for the last few months, and in December especially, you’d recognize that situation in a heartbeat. Everyone from engineering through manufacturing on the factory floor to those moving parts in the warehouse and providing customer service have been running at 100% power. In the last quarter of the year alone, we stood up an entirely new production line for the RV-15’s integral fuel tanks, refined the wing from a manufacturing standpoint, and worked tirelessly with suppliers to get the hundreds of RV-15 wing parts to be in one place at the same time—and at a high level of quality RV builders expect.
Now the confession: We didn’t quite make our shipment goals on the RV-15, and in striving to do so we stretched ourselves to the point where overall parts availability and customer support slipped. On RV-15 shipments, while we were able to support a handful of will-call customers in the last week of December, as hard as we pushed, we didn’t achieve our targets.
Why? A combination of factors. Examples include unexpected supply chain disruptions and delay, continued small changes to improve the fit of parts, incorporating new ideas to take the kit instructions and the new “RV Tackle Box” method of supplying small parts to the next level, etc. Because the fuel tank assembly process is new to us, we wanted to take extra time to ensure the product was right and to incorporate lessons learned into the kits and documentation. These are among the factors that caused us to miss our admittedly ambitious goals.
As a result, we’re going to do the sensible thing and institute a brief delay of early RV-15 deliveries that will allow us to take a breath and focus on the details that will help make the 15 the best and easiest RV to build. Ever. Based upon how quickly the prototype and beta-build examples have come together, we are confident that we are on track.
How long of a delay? Not long. Shipments scheduled for December 31 will be pushed back to January 9. Other shipments will resume on January 23. We want to spend the first part of January better organizing our warehouse, firming up the crating process, and taking another stab at the final processes that bring the RV-15’s parts from manufacturing to their handmade crates. This brief delay will allow customers to receive kits with fewer backorders, too.
It’s worth mentioning that the RV-15 is the first all-new design from Van’s in a long while, with unprecedented early demand. We are on pace to deliver significantly more RV-15 wing kits in the first several months than the entire first year of production on the RV-14. That makes the RV-15 a big undertaking, even for a company as experienced as Van’s. Plus, the RV-15 will introduce significantly improved kit instructions for Van’s, samples of which we will soon post on the RV-15 page at vansaircraft.com. Our engineering team worked long, long hours to make them a reality.
We recognize the push to deliver the RV-15 wing kits has impacted the rest of the business, from fulfilling parts orders placed on our website to deliveries of kit components for other models. We’re taking steps to get this back in balance. In the short term, we’re slightly revising (lengthening) lead times for empennage kits so we can spend more time on parts orders and better meet customer expectations. We are also redoubling our efforts to keep the kit-status portal up to date with estimated crating dates—builders can expect to see updated estimated crating dates appear by January 5, when the entire kit-sales staff is returns from the New Year's break. We are not delaying any non-RV-15 orders.
Bottom line: We need to take a moment, slow down, get things back in order, and then proceed at a healthy pace for our employees and customers so everyone has an improved experience.
Thank you, as always, for supporting us. There are 137 people in Aurora, Oregon, who appreciate the special bond you create as that dream airplane takes shape in front of you, with your own hands. We understand the eagerness to get started. The wait won’t be long. The results will be worth it.
