Arriving a day early at the Winnebago facility, I spent the previous night camped in places they provide for customers. Today is, therefore, a free day so I took the factory tour offered by their Visitor Center.
The factory in Forest City is the site of the company’s first manufacturing plant where they first began manufacturing travel trailers. Travel trailer production was eventually moved to another location as motorized RVs began to grow in popularity. Today all Winnebago motorhomes and only motorhomes are produced here.
The tour is very interesting but, sadly, photographs are strictly forbidden. Therefore this post won’t be too colorful.
It turns out that the company manufactures nearly every component other than chassis and appliances at this location. In this plant they cut and sew all their own fabric components like upholstery and curtains, manufacture their own custom aluminum extrusions, build cabinetry and weld all the body frames from aluminum stock. All body and roof panels are cut and laminated, slide-outs manufactured, plastic parts are vacuum formed and water and waste tanks are rotomolded.
Most parts are fabricated just in time for a specific order so that, for instance, curtains made today are installed tomorrow. The sheer variety of items is bewildering.
Class-A and Class-C RVs are all built on three parallel lines inside a single building. Class-A, large, bus-like RVs are built on one line and Class-C RVs, like our EKKO, are built on the other two lines. Assembly begins by installing the floor on the bare chassis and installing the main appliances, wiring harnesses and tankage on the floor. At that point the units are hooked on to a conveyor that very slowly pulls them through the rest of the assembly processes. (The building is very long.)
All the main interior components, side panels and roof structures, which are manufactured on other, parallel lines, are installed while on the conveyor. Finally, appliances, interior components and trim are installed. It is absolutely fascinating how all the dissimilar components come together, especially since the sequence of units can vary widely from one unit to the next.
All-in-all a very neat tour!