wstonehockertv
The Kenmore model I mentioned was most definitely not manufactured by Panasonic, but rather by the Chunju Electric Company of Suzhou, China. Not all Kenmore vacuum cleaners were made by Panasonic and it has always been that way. Even way back in the days when Whirlpool was responsible for the canisters and various other models before Panasonic was in the picture, they had other manufacturers for certain vacuum cleaners such as Ryobi, Eureka, Douglas, and so forth. Other manufacturers during the Panasonic age include but is not limited to Hoover, LG, Samsung, even SEBO, and more. Nowadays, though the structure is a bit different, Cleva still does not fully manufacture all the Kenmore vacuum cleaners in their own factories, so you do have units from different manufacturers in their current lineup, though a lot are fully produced by them such as the canisters, the 31140/31150 and variants of it, the CrossOver uprights, and various others quite like with the Panasonic models. It is a complicated situation, but that is the gist of it. A good way to tell who manufactured an older Kenmore units is to look at the OEM code, which is the first three numbers in the model number. For example, you would see something like 116.31150 and the 116, being the OEM code for Panasonic and previously Whirlpool, means that it was manufactured by Panasonic, whereas if you saw one that said 125.31150, that means it was manufactured by Cleva because 125 is their assigned OEM code.
