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Vans hardware packaging

Latech15

Well Known Member
I’m sorry, guys, but packaging 3 different (but very similar) size washers in a bag and labeling the bag, not with the contents, but with a bag number that must be cross referenced, is ridiculous.

I’ve spent days inventorying the three kits that I have received thus far. 95% of the missing/incorrect parts in the kits have been related to this type of packaging.

I’ll gladly pay for the extra bags and the labor to have the bags marked with the bag number and the contents, as well as each type of bolt, nut, washer, etc put in its own separate bag.

Has there ever been any explanation as to why it is done this way? I assume to save money on bags and to be able to use the cheap sale price guns instead of printing labels…..
 
It was that same way in the 90's ..... but, that was nothing compared to what was to follow.

If that is all you have to complain about the assembly process of your RV, be glad you are not building it 25 years ago ........:rolleyes:
Van's designed the process to efficiently ship kits, 100's per year.... You only have to inventory once.
 
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Everything is confusing at first but when you finish the wing kit, you can pick up a AN hardware and know the AN number.
 
AN hardware or NAS?

Everything is confusing at first but when you finish the wing kit, you can pick up a AN hardware and know the AN number.

Yep. Sadly, you may even know the Military Spec number too! I don't know who came up with those numbers, but I suspect it was really funny. No logic. Just numerical sequence. At least AN numbers have meaning!
Like the man said. You only inventory once.
 
I’m sorry, guys, but packaging 3 different (but very similar) size washers in a bag and labeling the bag, not with the contents, but with a bag number that must be cross referenced, is ridiculous.

I’ve spent days inventorying the three kits that I have received thus far. 95% of the missing/incorrect parts in the kits have been related to this type of packaging.

I’ll gladly pay for the extra bags and the labor to have the bags marked with the bag number and the contents, as well as each type of bolt, nut, washer, etc put in its own separate bag.

Has there ever been any explanation as to why it is done this way? I assume to save money on bags and to be able to use the cheap sale price guns instead of printing labels…..

You won’t get a lot of sympathy for your critique on this forum, but I, for one, agree with you. There is definitely room for improvement. Good luck.
 
I feel your pain

Yes, inventory is a PITA...and sometimes it is even difficult to know what a part is called, particularly if you are a new builder. Separate into piles, and you can make it go a little faster just by the "count" on particular screws, bolts, etc.

The 12 I'm building now is much easier than the 7 I built 20 years ago. But still..

Everyone has their mental list of improvements. If I could wave the magic wand, there are 2 things I wish Van's would do:

1) On the plans, a small bold notation for EVERY fastener like "TI25" (Torque to 25 inch pounds) or "TF12" (Torque to 12 foot pounds)...and
2) Some type of special symbol like "##" meaning, yes, you can put this on out of KAI sequence. By doing this job, you won't have to take it off later because it interferes with another structure 6 chapters from now.

Many times, particularly with backorders, there are a lot of jobs you could do now to make the best use of your time. On the 7, it seemed like I took things on and off a dozen times over because of later interference. The KAI says, more or less, to "read everything first", but in reality, it is extremely difficult to envision the whole project part by part.

Rant over...back to building. Good luck.
 
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I only inventoried that said bag was there, I didn't inventory contents of individual bags, I figure in the grand scheme of things, having to buy a washer, or any small piece of hardware, down the road, isn't worth the time. Haven't found anything missing yet.
 
You may find some alignment of hardware with specific subassemblies.

But - I tend to just keep the hardware bags as they are, work the parts then at some point move the rest into the hardware bins.

Carl
 
Inventory issues aside, I actually preferred it that way. You quickly get used to recognizing the most used hardware, and it is nice to have everything you need for one component in one or two bags, rather than having to go to 10 individual bins for different size hardware.

Chris
 
Recognizing a AN426AD3-4 vs an AN470AD3-4 is a completely different animal vs putting 20 washers of one THICKNESS in a bag with 20 washers of a different thickness.

I’ve separated out each kind and type and it wouldn’t take more than about 20-25 extra bags to put each thing in its own bag. Doing so would make labeling the bag with the actual contents make much more sense, as opposed to labeling the bag only since there are 4-5 different, likely very similar, items in the bag.

If you have only checked that the bag is there and not that the contents are correct, then I promise you, you will be buying hardware twice when it comes time to install them. That is where most of the issues have arisen.

As an aside - is the inventory list in pdf format somewhere? It would be so much easier if it was searchable. I mark on the inventory which cabinet and shelf that I put the parts on, and often times I have to scan the entire document line by line just to find the item to see where I put it.
 
I hate the packaging. Just send me 20 AN3-10A's in a bag, not 2 in one bag, 3 in another, and 5 (combined) in 3 other bags. Far easier for me to inventory and MUCH cheaper for VAN's to package. The insult to injury here is that the way Van's packages things is horribly labor intensive. And we're paying for it, even though it is a PITA for the builder.
 
Recognizing a AN426AD3-4 vs an AN470AD3-4 is a completely different animal vs putting 20 washers of one THICKNESS in a bag with 20 washers of a different thickness.

I completely agree. Took me hours at my kitchen table sorting and trying to identify washers. And then I found 6 months later that one size was "mislabeled" (such that they're labeled) so I was actually missing the proper size. (The part I received was off by 1 letter, probably from the next drawer.) I'm obsessive, but not to the point of looking up the dimensions of every washer I receive.

As an aside - is the inventory list in pdf format somewhere? It would be so much easier if it was searchable. I mark on the inventory which cabinet and shelf that I put the parts on, and often times I have to scan the entire document line by line just to find the item to see where I put it.

I never found one, so I took the time to make a spreadsheet from my packing list. I used that to generate the labels for my small parts drawers. All told unpacking, inventorying and storing my RV-12 empennage kit with 200 distinct part numbers took about 7 hours. But I spent no time searching for parts during the build.
 
I may be in the minority here but I kind of appreciated it at times. It forced me to learn the differences between hardware. That being said, I did not appreciate it when I was trying to get stuff done while the wife was yelling at me to get inside the house. haha
 
This.

I figured it was just part of the FAA’s 51% rule.

If you play the "Where's Waldo" game to its conclusion, tracking down all the different bags that a particular, specific piece of hardware is found in and corralling each species in its own identifiable and locatable container in your parts bin, you have probably satisfied the 51% rule before driving a single rivet.

You have pinpointed the biggest (often subconscious and therefore unspoken) gripe with how the mothership does its thing. Since they aren't technically an advertiser here, I guess it's allowed to criticize them for this decades-old time-wasting practice.

The other posters are correct; you *will* forget the frustration and wasted time after the plane is done and flying. Decades later your drawers will be awash in random hardware that you long since ordered in duplicate from Spruce - because you couldn't find where the originals were hidden.
 
As someone who has built kits from several different manufacturers, I can honestly say that both Vans system and the system where all hardware is delivered by specific types have their pluses and minuses, both systems will have you find hardware quickly - as well as teach you a new vocabulary of bad words as you figure out where that specific weird clip went…and both systems will lead to finished airplanes.

Build on, and remember that the grass is truly always greener on the other side of the fence - until you rip your pants crossing the fence and discover that where you came from doesn’t look that bad after all….

Paul
 
Does this count....
Vans ad.PNG
 
I don't see why this cannot be fixed, if Vans has to count and inventory everything they package and ship to you it would only make since to group like items in bags. Heck just from an efficiency standpoint on Vans side this would make more sense grouping hardware. If there is a reason for this as the bag being a sub assembly bag and everything in the bag is part of an assembly that is a different story but it doesn't sound like the case here.
I get the no sympathy, which doesn't at all but and even being experimental and not certified but you would think Vans would want this so someone doesn't use the wrong hardware which could ruin something or worse get someone killed.
Various opinions on what makes really good companies great companies but anyways yet just another opinion. Cheers
 
Van's aircraft will have been in business for 50-years since their first visit to Oshkosh with an aircraft. As I type this, they are the largest aircraft kit manufacturer in the world. At least I do not know of any other that has as many flying examples of their kits flying. The present hardware packing system may have been in use for 50-years. I have only been involved with RV aircraft building for the past 31-years.

Van's aircraft has been doing an excellent job attempting to get "supply chain" disruptions under control and reduce the backlog of orders. The new COO/VP and President are approaching one year since they were put into those positions (18 June 2021). They have done an excellent job adjusting to the 'new' market conditions. They have been making efficiency changes to increase throughput. I am sure if a change in hardware packaging is necessary, they will make those changes when the more important stuff is under control.

It is my opinion that the present hardware packaging that has been in use for the 31-years that I have been a customer is a good method. It requires that I learn what the different items are that I do not recognize right away. I go from bag to bag doing inventory and do not more on to the next bag till after I have accounted for each item in each bag.
 
“This is the way we have always done it”…….

Pretty much the fist sentence in every explanation as to why things are not done in the easiest and most efficient way.

I did ask in the first post if there had been any explanation as to a “WHY”. The only explanation is that they have always done it that way and it must be good enough. Learning that a L washer is the same size, in the OD and ID, but a different thickness, as the non-L takes one time looking at them both, putting 20 of each in ONE bag and making me use calipers to determine which is which while I separate them isn’t a learning experience, it’s just a bad idea.

I only bring this here to point out that this may be one of the simplest changes that the new regime could implement with nothing but positives all around. Bagging and labeling hardware better is certainly easier than going to final size holes and designing the -15.
 
The bag number system worked well for me. The bags are organized by the specific parts in the kits. For example, there is a specific hardware for the canopy, including rivets, nutplates, screws, even though some of them have the same AN numbers as the bags for the wings. Now 2 years into the build and you need to find a specific rubber washer that is listed in the specific bag, all that you need to search for the bag # and by magic, you have found the washer. If in doubt, I went back to the inventory sheet and proved to myself that I did received the bag since I checked it two years prior. This example was repeated over and over in the almost four years of building my RV8.

In practice, I usually pulled out the most common AN part such as rivets, nutplates, bolts, common screws, and stored them in the part trays. For the specific small parts such as springs, rubber washers, and other odds and ends, I left them in their original bags, or at least re-number the bags when I transferred them to ziplock bags which are more durable than the original paper bags.

These are truly small stuff and as they say, don't sweat the small stuff. There will be a lot of things down the build process that make you lose sleep over.
 
The bag number system worked well for me. The bags are organized by the specific parts in the kits. For example, there is a specific hardware for the canopy, including rivets, nutplates, screws, even though some of them have the same AN numbers as the bags for the wings. Now 2 years into the build and you need to find a specific rubber washer that is listed in the specific bag, all that you need to search for the bag # and by magic, you have found the washer. If in doubt, I went back to the inventory sheet and proved to myself that I did received the bag since I checked it two years prior. This example was repeated over and over in the almost four years of building my RV8.

In practice, I usually pulled out the most common AN part such as rivets, nutplates, bolts, common screws, and stored them in the part trays. For the specific small parts such as springs, rubber washers, and other odds and ends, I left them in their original bags, or at least re-number the bags when I transferred them to ziplock bags which are more durable than the original paper bags.

These are truly small stuff and as they say, don't sweat the small stuff. There will be a lot of things down the build process that make you lose sleep over.

Unfortunately, there is no key telling you that a particular bag is for this chapter/step in the plans. So you have to sort through two dozen bags to figure out which one you need to be working out of at any given time. It is a horrible system and costs Vans and the builder extra labor and money over a system where all of the AN3-5A’s in the fuse kit ( for instance) are in one bag.

Imagine the time necessary to put one AN3-5A in four different bags with a bunch of other stuff vs just bagging all of the like items together.
 
Gentlemen -

I’m sorry that this has turned into a disagreement. My purpose in posting this was I the hopes that someone from vans would see it and maybe step back and take an objective look at the process and see if it could be improved. We all know that vans has taken lots of advice from this board and implemented some of them. I will certainly make it through the process as is, but I’d love to see this issue addressed if the mothership agrees that it is worth the effort. If they do not, we can agree to disagree and move on.

Thank you!
 
It was that same way in the 90's ..... but, that was nothing compared to what was to follow.

If that is all you have to complain about the assembly process of your RV, be glad you are not building it 25 years ago ........:rolleyes:
Van's designed the process to efficiently ship kits, 100's per year.... You only have to inventory once.

Aww man I wish I would have known that all I had to do was assemble, would have saved me a lot of time on the 14 :rolleyes:

Granted, kits are a *lot* better, but it's far from just assembly.
 
Inventory

Gentlemen -

I’m sorry that this has turned into a disagreement. My purpose in posting this was I the hopes that someone from vans would see it and maybe step back and take an objective look at the process and see if it could be improved. We all know that vans has taken lots of advice from this board and implemented some of them. I will certainly make it through the process as is, but I’d love to see this issue addressed if the mothership agrees that it is worth the effort. If they do not, we can agree to disagree and move on.

Thank you!

Actually I have an idea that might save Vans money and save builders time. Personally, I'm way too organized so all those bags got inventoried into mini drawer organizers. Bolts, nuts, washers, misc. All labeled. Easy to find fasteners.
So here's the idea.
Someone at Vans knows exactly how many of each fastener are in those bags. It's gotta be in an inventory spreadsheet. Sort the spreadsheet by model, kit and part number. It would be far easier and faster to package a model/kit fastener kit than fill bags with mixed hardware. They must be sorted somewhere or they wouldn't be able to put bags together. Simply change the packaging. The builder would receive a fastener kit with bags of each size fastener and bags of all the rivets needed by size and type. It takes a bit of work up front but the end result should benefit all parties. Easier to package. Less labor. More profit. Easier to inventory. They could even sell the mini drawer organizer as a kit with a long tape of preprinted labels.
I bet builders would pay to have that step done.
If Vans needs help, I spent a career working with Excel. :D
 
I'm with the OP on this. Maybe the empennage kit could stay the same, with the bags of mixed hardware, but after that...what's the point? I ended up sorting all the hardware into individual bins of parts anyway. Why not simply sort their inventory list by hardware number and put *that* number of fasteners or whatever into a bag, labelled "AN3-8A" or whatever? That's how my bins are labelled, and it made it *much* easier simply open the bin for AN960-3 or what have you and get what I needed per the plans, instead of digging through a bunch of paper sacks. What's the point of putting 6 AN426-3s and 4 AN426-4s etc in one bag, and 10 of one plus 2 of the other in *another* bag, etc.? Silly, if you ask me.
 
Can anyone explain the reason behind the bag numbering methodology? Are they packaged to try and apply across the widest population of model types? What's the optimization routine at play here? I'm very curious to know the total number of bags of hardware that come with each model type and what percentage are common across models.

I break all my bags down and store the hardware like a hardware store and It works for me. For those that keep the bags intact after inventory, do you find yourself using up the contents of a bag as your complete build steps? I have a feeling that if I left everything in baggies that I'd have a lot of half full bags lying around until the very end.
 
For those that keep the bags intact after inventory, do you find yourself using up the contents of a bag as your complete build steps?
It depends on the bag. Sometimes I use the entire bag for one step, sometimes I don't. However, I do put rivets, washers, screws, and other stuff that can be used in multiple places into storage trays. The stuff I leave in the bags are typically small parts made by Van's and other components that can only be used in one place on the plane.
 
It does seem like the numbering system started out as 1 bag for each related group of items per chapter, then they realized they could consolidate all the rivets and screws together, and now we have to grab hardware from 5 different bags for 1 step.

I think it would be nice if Van's provided a XREF of what bag they intend for the hardware to come out of. A BOW at the start of the chapter would work even so we could just go and grab all the hardware needed into a working pile.

As far as searchable goes, I just scanned the inventory list into PDF and ran OCR on it, then upload to your cloud drive of your choice. Easily searchable on your phone.
 
I found it easier to get the XL spreadsheet for the parts list from Van's, sort by bags, bag number, the hardware common nomenclature, find all those with common nomenclature and bag number and put in a plastic bin system. Everything sorted by AN or common nomenclature. I started with rivets first, then up to the speciality part. Much easier to find when building.

I have the spreadsheets for RV7 and RV10.

Keith Rhea RV-7
2022 donation
 
I like the way they do it now. When do you ever need just a bolt? When you are installing a bolt, you need a washer or two or three and a nut, makes it easy when they are all in the same bag. Like others have said, learn the hardware, you don't need a caliper to distinguish a thin washer from a thick one, just set them on the table next to each other, it's obvious which is which. I honestly can't see the point in changing to save 5 minutes of searching on a 1, 2, 3 year, or usually longer build. Just my $.02
 
Recognizing a AN426AD3-4 vs an AN470AD3-4 is a completely different animal vs putting 20 washers of one THICKNESS in a bag with 20 washers of a different thickness.

There are different thickness washers?!? :eek:

Just kidding ;)

And I feel your pain - my empennage kit was delivered today so I'll be doing the baggie shuffle for a little while ;)

My preference, for what it's worth, would be that "all the same" per bag was the packaging method too. But, being that I'm usually low man on the totem pole...
 
I found it easier to get the XL spreadsheet for the parts list from Van's, sort by bags, bag number, the hardware common nomenclature, find all those with common nomenclature and bag number and put in a plastic bin system. Everything sorted by AN or common nomenclature. I started with rivets first, then up to the speciality part. Much easier to find when building.

I have the spreadsheets for RV7 and RV10.

Keith Rhea RV-7
2022 donation

Hey Keith, That sounds like the Mac daddy way to sort - where'd you find the spreadsheets on Van's? I poked around and couldn't find it(them) - or did I misunderstand your post?
 
I found it easier to get the XL spreadsheet for the parts list from Van's, sort by bags, bag number, the hardware common nomenclature, find all those with common nomenclature and bag number and put in a plastic bin system. Everything sorted by AN or common nomenclature. I started with rivets first, then up to the speciality part. Much easier to find when building.

I have the spreadsheets for RV7 and RV10.

Keith Rhea RV-7
2022 donation

You have them ALL? Can you send me the -7 list? 10 yrs ago I had to make a list from invoices. YUCK. I'm sure it is not compete or correct.

lanewsjr at gmail dot duh
 
I like the way they do it now. When do you ever need just a bolt? When you are installing a bolt, you need a washer or two or three and a nut, makes it easy when they are all in the same bag. Like others have said, learn the hardware, you don't need a caliper to distinguish a thin washer from a thick one, just set them on the table next to each other, it's obvious which is which. I honestly can't see the point in changing to save 5 minutes of searching on a 1, 2, 3 year, or usually longer build. Just my $.02

If that were the case we wouldn’t be here. They do not package all the nuts bolts and washers for a single step in a single bag. As far as I can tell the bag combos are pretty random. Sure, you can set washers in the table to distinguish them, but wouldn’t it be better if they were just separated from the get go? As someone pointed out, they are separated at vans, then they put them in the bags together.

And it is certainly not a 5 minute time difference. It’s more like days of inventorying per kit OR a constant search of the inventory sheet every time you need to pull a component just to find out which bag it’s in and then sorting out the bag contents to see which one is the one you are after.
 
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I’m sorry, guys, but packaging 3 different (but very similar) size washers in a bag and labeling the bag, not with the contents, but with a bag number that must be cross referenced, is ridiculous.

I’ve spent days inventorying the three kits that I have received thus far. 95% of the missing/incorrect parts in the kits have been related to this type of packaging.

I’ll gladly pay for the extra bags and the labor to have the bags marked with the bag number and the contents, as well as each type of bolt, nut, washer, etc put in its own separate bag.

Has there ever been any explanation as to why it is done this way? I assume to save money on bags and to be able to use the cheap sale price guns instead of printing labels…..

I too found this initially but I bought a bunch of small zip lock bags and labelled them with the part number and where they go then put them all in a plastic container with the main assembly they go on. The empennage didn’t take half an hour to do that with the small bags so I get what you are saying but it would be more work intensive to separate out everything , more cost and more lead time delays. My take on it. Was actually kinda fun to go plus I learned a lot during that time what the parts actually were called and I think that’s the main time hog.
 
Van's needs to do the hardware like Sling does. See the photo towards the end of the article: https://www.kitplanes.com/how-they-build-them-in-south-africa/

I suppose...but I followed others who said to get hardware bins and put all the hardware in them labeled by AN#. When done this way, the drawing calls for a AN3-6 bolt, all the AN3-6 bolts are in the same bin...easy...
This way takes a little extra work up front by there is no searching for bags or packages, just the hardware as described in the drawing.
 
I emailed Van's and asked for the spreadsheets for the 7 and later the 10 for a friend. Would be nice if we had an easy way to post those files to this forum so others could have access.
 
Van's needs to do the hardware like Sling does. See the photo towards the end of the article: https://www.kitplanes.com/how-they-build-them-in-south-africa/

This is how the larger, more sophisticated kit companies have ben doing it since the days of the Christen Eagle, and essentially the way that Van does it - hardware is packaged by sub-assembly or sub-kit (yes….with a few bewildering deviations….). This allows them to package individual kits, like Tail, Fuselage, Finishing, etc.

If you bought every single part of the aircraft at one time, like I did with my Subsonex, then it makes sense to have all the hardware sorted by typos. But if the business model is to sell sub-kits, then packaging by submit is the norm across the industry.

In the end, some people’s brains work one way, while others work an other, and you won’t satisfy everyone….just like EFIS user interfaces.

Paul
 
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