Why has QC become so hit and miss?

[JDM]

It seems that over the last 12-18 months or so, the quality control practices in the gun industry have fallen flat, become secondplace to marketing the newest "big" thing and so on. Some examples:

-Generation 4 9mm Glocks.
-M&P front sights
-SIG's untouchable reputation for quality is now "hit and miss"

The industry as a whole seems to be sliding towards mediocre quality products. Why? Is it the growth that the firearms industry is experiencing, particularly the self defense pistol industry, to much to handle at once, and it keeps quality products from being made quickly enough to meet demand? Are serious end users so few and far between that questionable quality is fine for most of the consumer base? Have we as the customer for some reason made it ok to send a gun back to a manufacturer 1,2,3 or more times?

What gives? Is there a solution?

How can the same make and model of gun go from impeccably reliable, and perfectly crafted; to having parts fall off- in just six years of production. (M&P)

The benchmark of reliability is now an exercise in parts fiddling a la 1911. (Glock)

The only good ones are German made? Really? (SIG)

This is killing me.

[gtmtnbiker98]

I agree, too many push to be the first to market. However, HK hasn't slid in the QC department, yet.

[TCinVA]

It seems that over the last 12-18 months or so, the quality control practices in the gun industry have fallen flat,

It's been going on for a lot longer than that. Some people refer to it as the "Glock effect"...the result of Glock having turned the entire firearms market upside down with a cheap, durable, cheap, easy to use, cheap pistol designed to be as simple to make as possible to lower per-unit cost to the bare minimum.

Why?

There are a lot of things responsible.

- people - Making a quality product requires quality people. Getting quality people to work for you and keeping them around is a challenge. This is true in the design, manufacturing, and support of firearms.

- personalities - some executives/managers have some weird notions of how to run a business and what customers will put up with.

- profit - making things properly is expensive and time consuming, which can often bite into the bottom line...especially if you have to pay the quality people mentioned earlier.

- market forces - this is probably the biggie. For the majority of consumers in the firearms market, price is the bottom line. This applies to all sorts of products, including firearms. The drive in the last decade or so has been for lower price points, which means that manufacturers have been pushed to search out every efficiency they can find and to try and eliminate as much expense as possible. Thus the rise of polymer as a major component of handgun construction, more AR manufacturers than you can shake a stick at, etc. Companies are faced with a tough market were a product that is $50.00 more expensive on the dealer's shelf will result in double digit percentages of sales lost to the competition.

It's a very competitive market and the majority of individual purchasers are not what we would define as "sophisticated". Witness the sales of the Taurus Judge. I've seen gun stores sell out of them and people pay as much as $150.00 over the advertised price just to get their hands on one. Meanwhile a Glock 17 or M&P sits on the shelf even at a lower price.

Agency purchases are generally more sophisticated, but are often constrained by resource limitations as well.

Are serious end users so few and far between that questionable quality is fine for most of the consumer base?

There is without question a certain amount of playing the stats. If I'm running Fooberman Handguns and we produce 10,000 9mm pistols in a particular run and we've identified that 10% of the guns will probably have function problems, I now have a choice. Do I take the time and expense of finding the 1,000 problematic guns and then destroy them? That could take a long time and cost a lot of money. I could simply put them out there at random, but if those 1,000 guns end up at a police department then I could get sued or lose a contract.

...or if I know which ones are more likely to be problematic, I can steer those into the consumer market because most consumers are unsophisticated and don't really shoot all that much anyway and so are unlikely to make me deal with the problem like an agency would. That saves me a bundle of money and helps keep the company profitable, which is what the owners of the company want.

What gives? Is there a solution?

Yes...for the market as a whole to stop rewarding bad (for the consumer) decisions by gun companies. This is not likely, however, as we live in a world where S&W copies the Judge. Sooner or later companies that are struggling because people don't want to buy their products will tighten up their operations to regain marketshare.

How can the same make and model of gun go from impeccably reliable, and perfectly crafted; to having parts fall off- in just six years of production. (M&P)

It was never "perfect" in the first place. I'm an M&P fan. I own six of them. That being said, they've had teething problems all along the way from systemic design issues to problems with some individual specimens or defects with some batches of pistols. S&W has tried, generally, to fix problems as they've been made aware of them with good customer support and engineering changes. Sometimes an engineering change to fix one problem causes another you didn't see coming.

[SLG]

Unfortunately, it's not the last 12-18 months. Sig since 2006 or so, though many of their guns were imperfect from the start. Anyone remember the 220's? M&P's from the day they came out had problems, then got much better, now the .40's and .45's seem to be good, but maybe not the 9's. Glock 9's have had plenty of problems in the past (NYPD, anyone), but never like this. Glock 40's have always been bad, and, ATF aside, don't seem to be much better yet.

As far as HK, well, Gabe Suarez once reported that a USP had been put into a ruck in the box in one piece, and when the hiker opened his ruck up, the pistol was in two pieces, broken through the frame and slide

Back on track now, I think one of the issues is that as a group, shooters in the U.S. are putting more rounds through their guns then ever before, and are expecting them to run forever. It used to be said that once you had a good gun, you didn't need another one, because it wasn't going to wear out. Only true if you shoot modest amounts of ammo.

Revolver QC has gone down, because the demand is pretty limited these days, and they cost a lot to do right.

Todd has often pointed out to me that gun manufacturers are almost constantly changing parts/vendors/specs on their guns, and to worry about it is pointless. The old rule that you should wait 5 years before buying a new gun on the market is true to a certain extent, but 5 years after it came out, who knows what it's made out of.

One bright spot is that Freedom Arms still makes some of the nicest handguns ever.

Any gun you really like, you should buy at least a second one.

[LittleLebowski]

One bright spot is that Freedom Arms still makes some of the nicest handguns ever.

Of course. Made in the greatest state in the Union.

I have one of their discontinued belt buckle derringers.

[ToddG]

The quality of guns has dropped because the expectation from the market has dropped. More people are buying guns that will be shot little (or not at all). The odds than any particular handgun will see 1,000 rounds is so slight as to be meaningless to manufacturers.

Glock drives the market and Glocks are inexpensive. If you want to be successful you either figure out a way to spend less to build your gun (as I saw first hand at Beretta and SIG), or you redefine "successful" to mean "a whole lot less guns than Glock sells" and accept that fewer people are willing to pay for top quality materials and QC (a la HK).

We're also seeing more new designs come out each year than ever before, by a big margin. Contrary to what gun companies want you to believe, the amount of internal testing they do before releasing new designs into the wild is often minimal. Anyone who thinks gun companies figure out how the guns work when they're dry fired, when they're wet, when they're cold, etc. is kidding himself. Most of that stuff is just assumed based on the engineering. I've been part of tests where we (the gun company) submitted pistols to an agency and had nothing but faith to rely on in terms of some of the test protocols they were going to use.

At the same time, people at the far end of the shooting bell curve are shooting far more rounds per year than they did 20-30 years ago. I remember calling S&W in the 90's because I wanted a Shorty Forty but was concerned about the durability of the aluminum frame. This was long before I worked at Beretta and SIG, obviously. The person at Smith told me the pistol would be good for about 10,000 rounds given proper maintenance, etc. To him, that was a lifetime. To me, that was one or two years at best given how much I shot back then.

Finally, we're far more connected these days to problems. Ten years ago, someone whose SIG had a bad finish called SIG and got it fixed. Now, he goes to SIG Forum and complains. Ten other people look at their SIGs and notice finish problems, too, and they all complain. Now, eleven people have turned what may be a bad production run or some minor production issue into "SIGs' finish sucks!" So while 98% of the customer base may be perfectly happy, everyone with access to Google thinks there's a life-threatening problem.

[JDM]

Eye opening information gentlemen. Thank you.

[JV_]

This thread is kind of a downer....

[Tamara]

Any gun you really like, you should buy at least a second one.

This sentence is truth.

A friend of mine always put it "Find a gun you like, and buy five copies: One on your hip, one in the safe, one at the shop, one at the manufacturer, and one stored off-site at a friend's house, just in case."

[Kyle Reese]

Ever since breaking a Glock 19 at a TLG class in 2010, I'm always bringing 2 guns to the range. 2 M&Ps, Glocks, etc. When my Apex trigger spring broke about a month ago while shooting a 3-2-1 Drill in my M&P, I simply carried on with my spare.

Excellent post with lots of great information.