High-grade sheet keeps an American icon bright and shiny

Staff -- Purchasing, 4/6/2006

Airstream's materials team buys what it takes to make that instantly recognizable line of travel trailers with aircraft-inspired aluminum-clad bodies.

When your company's signature product is on display all day, every day for literally millions of people to see, then the key manufacturing material has to be as close to perfect as possible. And that's what keeps Tom Jessup busy—buying 100,000 lbs every month of high-grade aluminum sheet coils and up to 10,000 lbs of light metal extrusions that help his firm's silver bullets jet around highways across the land in search of a carefree adventure.

Jessup is director of materials for Airstream, the company that has made the world's most-recognizable travel trailers, motor homes and touring coaches since 1931. The three dozen Airstream models built in the Jackson Center, Ohio, factory all meet exacting construction standards. And, since the company assembles as many as 40 vehicles every week, Jessup and his team of four buyer/planners have to stay ahead of the curve in providing materials that pass muster with the company's quality managers, engineering and manufacturing gurus.

"We manufacture a niche product but we are at the very high end of the travel trailer niche market," notes Jessup. So, the purchasing organization works as part of a team with Airstream's design engineers, lean manufacturing personnel, quality control staff and the supply base. "We spend a lot of time with each other because our products all have unique characteristics that often require unique and innovative supply solutions."

The uniqueness of the Airstream product goes back to its creation. During World War II, Airstream founder Wally Byam worked in the aircraft industry. After the war, he started Airstream based on what he learned about aluminum fabrication and design—things like lessening wind resistance and improving strength-to-weight ratio using plentiful post-war aircraft-quality metal.

"The high quality approach to everything we buy also includes products and not just raw materials," says Jessup. That's because his team purchases numerous materials from a small cadre of pre-selected suppliers of aluminum, wood panels for interior walls and cabinetry, textiles and fabrics for furniture and accessories, bed and bath equipment, recreational vehicle appliances (including stoves, refrigerators, air conditioners, ranges, televisions and water filter systems), furnaces, and electric and propane hot water heaters.

Structural integrity is paramount to every Airstream trailer, the company brochures explain, so the exterior and interior skin of the various models must be "as close to perfect quality as can be produced," says Jessup. For example, the aluminum panels and rib structure (made from the extrusions supplied mostly by Indalex Aluminum Solutions Group) are carefully riveted together by hand using hundreds to thousands of rivets. The result is a lightweight, yet strong body that's self-supporting and needs no separate frame. Spacers are then installed to provide for the insulation and the attachment of the interior walls and ceiling.

Also, the high-grade aluminum skin from Alcoa's Engineered Products Group seals the chassis underbelly from beneath. Fiberglass insulation sourced by Jessup's team not only controls interior temperatures, but also helps prevent holding tanks from freezing. They also buy the heating pads that give the tanks added protection. And they source the 5/8-inch tongue-in-groove plywood or oriented strand board, usually from Weyerhaeuser, used as the flooring that seals the chassis from above.

Last year, American Profile magazine featured Airstream on the company's 75th anniversary. The report noted that "quality is among the reasons that demand for Airstream recreational vehicles shows no signs of abating, especially among devoted owners, who put the vehicles through their own rigorous testing." Jessup says that quality begins at the blueprint stage and continues through materials sourcing and manufacturing.

The aluminum sheet, for example, are special-grade value-added 3000 Series products with a special clear-coat paint to insure durability. Airstream had been applying its own see-through protection to enhance the trademark aluminum finish of the trailer, but new environmental regulations restricted the company's use of paints and lacquers because of the chemicals that are typically released. So, the Airstream engineering and purchasing team turned to Alcoa engineers, who already had patented a product for automotive trim parts that could be adapted to meet Airstream's needs for appearance, durability and environmental compliance.

Alcoa partnered with Airstream's design engineering and materials procurement organization to develop a system to apply clear coating to mill-finished aluminum sheet that met the Airstream standards. No wonder what Airstream spends is about double the spot-market price for industrial-grade aluminum sheet. To guarantee control over costs, Jessup opts for annual-contract pricing.

Meanwhile, "the coil's quality is great because it has to be," says Jessup. Reason: The metal is the most visible part of the products, and 65% of them ever made are still in use. "If the supplier doesn't do it right, it loses money because we'll send it back." And to insure the sheet aluminum is correct, a third-party processor inspects the coils for blueprinted quality and then produces cut-to-length panels that are shipped to the Airstream plant.

Interestingly, Jessup's biggest worry lately has been aluminum coil availability. This year, Airstream will produce about 2,000 travel trailers and 600 motor homes. While demand for certain grades of flat-rolled aluminum is lagging, supplies are very tight for high-grade (almost aerospace-class) metal Airstream uses.

"We are buying a special grade of metal for which there is limited manufacturing capacity and that capacity is full," Jessup says. So, should there be a surge in demand for the Airstream products above and beyond projected assembly schedules, it would be hard to get enough sheet quickly.