Feature > RV MANUFACTURER
Winnebago Industries President and CEO Mike Happe welcomes attendees to the event in Orlando, Florida. became North America’s top-selling Type A diesel in 2021, according to Statistical Surveys Inc. Newmar built more than 15% of all Type A motorhomes sold, equating to the industry’s second-highest Type A market share. “As we began to work with the Newmar team on a day-to-day basis, we gathered a mutual respect for how each company has done things through the years, and our eyes were opened to some of the constraints in the business,” Happe said. “From an operations standpoint, this business produces incredibly beautiful products that customers generally become passionate about, but Newmar’s operational complexity is higher than it needs to be.” Leadership and Investments
Besides millions in facility improvements, Happe said Winnebago Industries is sharing resources such as its enterprise manufacturing and supply chain Center of Excellence. He said by sharing resources and best practices, Winnebago Industries hopes to remove Newmar’s operational limitations to reach new milestones. 12
RV News | June 2022
“Certainly, we will remove those constraints without doing any harm to Newmar’s quality reputation,” Happe said. “We hope that we can even raise the quality and fit and finish to an even higher level in the future.”
We are supremely confident in the leadership team that we have in place at Newmar that is running the business today.” – Mike Happe
Happe said Matt McQuown, Newmar’s vice president of supply chain, continues to improve the manufacturer’s supply-chain processes. “The last 24 months really exposed significant improvement opportunities in how we work with our supplier partners. Unfortunately for our suppliers, a lot of attention gets cast their way for shortages we are experiencing,” Happe said. “There is plenty
of room for us to improve as well, to partner with the suppliers to make sure high-quality components get here on time. A lot of effort is being spent in that area with Matt McQuown, but Matt also can learn from other businesses in the Winnebago Industries portfolio. He has tremendous resources at Winnebago Industries as well.” Evolving for the Future
In Happe’s opening remarks to the Newmar dealer body, he said Winnebago Industries was reviewing the product development process to integrate evolving technology. Technology would prepare Newmar for generational RV ownership transitions, particularly in comfort and electrification. “All of our businesses will apply new and emerging technology, in their own ways, to meet the changing customer demographic, and Newmar will be no different,” he said. “We look forward to navigating that generational change. These things do not happen overnight, but we need to build more and different capabilities….” rvnews.com
