KA stopped making their own a while ago.

KA was selling rebadged Fisher and Paykel units.

F&P was purchased by Chinese Haier.

I think neither Whirlpool/KA nor Haier want to do business together, at least not in the premium market.

BTW If you want to wash dishes efficiently you are better off with a good full size dishwasher with a half load option(Bosch). And better yet a full size dishwasher with a good load and turbidity sensor(Miele). If you were looking at KA because you thought they were made in the USA then all but the 800 Plus Series Bosch dishwashers are made in North Carolina.

The first-generation KA drawer models (KUDD01) were sourced from F&P.

The second-generation models (KUDD03, there was no KUDD02) were not F&P, they were a different design Whirlpool obtained with the purchase of the Maytag company, and had Fulgor produce them. This change occurred long before Haier had anything to do with F&P.

KA was still using the F&P design on the European market last time I checked (after their drawer units had been discontinued on the U.S. market for some time), can't say if that's still the case.

Thanks for your responses. We are replacing our old F&P 603s. We thought we'd check out other drawers before we committed to F&P again. We loved them until we started having some repair issues (water softener wasn't working, causing a hose to burst and now a mystery leak). We love the convenience of them and they do a great job of getting our dishes clean, even on the 38 minute cycle. Just ordered the new ones to be installed in a couple days.

My DD603 will be 10 years in August, no repairs thus far.

dadoes, do yours have the water softener? Our new ones don't. Not available on the model we ordered. It is only available on the singles and the tall drawer model. We are 3/8" too short for the talls. We live in a very hard water area, so I'm going to have to add vinegar or something every so often to keep the calcium and lime deposits at bay. We got almost 8 years out of ours.

No softener. There's no reference to it in my instruction book, so I'm assuming there wasn't yet a softener option at that time. The 603 series was marketed for several years, with a few engineering changes but no change in the model designation until the 605 series. There were major design changed from 602 to 603.

601, 602, 603 (there was no 604), 605 briefly, then DD24/DD36 when the Tall and Wide models were introduced.

Removal of phosphates from dishwasher detergents has largely thrown performance of all machines to h3ll. I add phosphate powder (STPP) myself (also to laundry). I also bought a case of institutional Cascade which still is allowed to have phosphates and also has chlorine bleach which works great on stained plasticware (enzymes are incompatible with chlorine bleach, so it's a choice of one or the other).

Correct, ”The second-generation models … KUDD03” were a Fulgor Milano (Italy) design rebaged as KA. There were three varients that were invisible to the consumer (01/02/03). The last is easy to verify because both drawers merged into one drain hose vs. a longer 2 into 1 plus adapter piece. Our 1st Gen F&P badged as a KA was destroyed by a techbician. The Fulgor model that replaced it is like going from a Toyota to Humvee. It’s overbuilt compared to the F&P.

We purchased the Fulgor as a reconditioned unit from Best Buy for $900. It’s 2022 now and been in flawless operation for a decade. Sadlly Fulgor no longer makes them. It’s a F&P niche item. For a while Viking had a set of drawers but it was likely a F&P rebadge too.