When a technician is working in the shop, he or she isn’t likely to stop, walk to the front counter and ask a technical question. Realizing this information is needed in the shop, I-CAR at NACE announced its new Repairability Technical Support Portal.
The new website, which is optimized for mobile devices, is one of the tools that the industry can use to ensure complete and safe repairs to benefit the driving community, says Jason Bartanen, director, industry technical relations with I-CAR.
“We really want to put this in the technicians’ hands. We recognize they aren’t going to walk up to the front of the shop to ask a technical inquiry, but if they have it in their pockets” they can look it up, Bartanen states.
One of the new features are the OEM webpages. Bartanen says they have been providing a conduit to the OEMs to reach the independents and the insurers through the website. For example, the Honda/Acura pages include links to the Honda collision repair website. Beyond that, I-CAR has put together videos that include how to find information on the various automaker websites.
Bartanen walked through the new portal at a conference at NACE 2014. It includes links to OEM partial part replacement searches and repair news publications for each OEM that illustrate specific techniques for repairers to utilize on certain vehicles, such as MIG welding instead of spot welding.
“It gives us a good place to start and see if I go into the manual and start to look, am I going to find what I’m looking for,” Bartanen says.
In addition to the OEM information, the Collision Repair News is going under a revamp, putting out three to four articles a week, he states. For example, Kia now will offer collision repair manuals for most of their vehicles, news I-CAR reported through the news section of the Repairability Technical Support Portal. Bartanen adds that you can find out when there are new articles by following @Tech_Briefs, the I-CAR Tech Briefs Twitter handle.
Users can find the I-CAR Uniform Procedures for Collision Repair in the portal, as well as the Ask I-CAR Search. This helps streamline answers to questions technicians have asked the I-CAR technical helpline. During the announcement at NACE 2014, Bartanen called the I-CAR hotline with a question on the 2014 Dodge Dart. While there was no information on the portal when he called the hotline, by the time the news conference wrapped up, the question and answer was added to the database of information tied into the website.
“We will continue to refine this, we will continue to add information to this,” he explains.
The Repairability Technical Support Portal is designed to enhance the overall repair process for the collision repair Inter-Industry, including frontline technicians, shop owners, estimators, insurance specialists and field educators. It will provide the professionals with a centralized information hub.
