Flat scheduling draws feedback

Jan. 1, 2020
Flat scheduling creates challenges and opportunities.
Eber flat scheduling

Several months ago in a column about scheduling, I asked for input on what was working for your shop. Do you use (or try to use) "flat scheduling," bringing in about an equal amount of work every day of the week? How has that affected your overall cycle time, and how have customers, technicians and insurers responded?

I received some interesting feedback. In Waukesha, Wis., Aaron Marshall of Marshall Auto Body has been among the most successful I've seen at implementing a "lean" operation. He said that other than improvements to the parts chain, the biggest roadblock to even more efficiencies is insurers. Their "get every car into the shop on Monday" philosophy might have made some sense in the past, he said, but it's only adding to their costs – and hurting shop productivity – for today's most efficient shops.

The best solution he's found until insurers change, he said, is to bring the cars in on Mondays and Tuesdays that will be finished by the weekend.

"Things that aren't going to finish by the weekend anyway, we bring in on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday," he said.

Tony Garris, general manager of Fred Beans Collision Center in Doylestown, Pa., also agrees that the industry needs to move toward flat scheduling. His shop, which repairs about 300 cars a month, has implemented a scheduling system that Garris said has "dramatically" improved the shop's touch time and cycle time.

The shop categorizes each job as small (less than 20 total hours), medium (20 to 40 total hours) or large (40+ total hours). No more than one large job can be scheduled in on any given day, along with up to three medium jobs and 10 small jobs. A customer service rep controls the scheduling and regularly updates the estimators on the next available date for which they can schedule in a particular sized job.

Chris Sheehy of Autobody Consulting Group in Rumford, R.I., believes that some in the insurance industry understand that flat scheduling is the way to go. Unfortunately, he said, too often they aren't the decision-makers within the company.

"The industry needs to publish more hard-core studies on process efficiencies in order for the insurers to grasp the benefits," he said. "I'm confident insurers will eventually see the advantages of how efficient processes such as flat scheduling will benefit their claimants. But don't hold your breath – it could be a while."

Not everyone who responded to my column had a positive experience with "flat scheduling." Posting on the ABRN Web site from Adrian, Mich., W. Coffey said he tried such scheduling in 1996 as the manager of a dealership body shop. As a former technician himself, he would have loved a more even workload throughout the week, and he will never believe that having a nearly empty paint shop for several days each week is a profitable or efficient way to operate. But the technicians, he said, wanted to finish by noon on Friday, and didn't seem to want to change from the "mad dash of Monday mornings or the hard push to empty the shop by Friday afternoon."

I'll let Mark Livingston, who posted a comment to the ABRN Web site all the way from the Caribbean island nation of Dominica (where replacement parts can be three months away by sea freight), have the last word on scheduling.

Too often, he said, shops can't get away from a "get the keys" mentality, even if they know they won't be able to get to the job right away. In a rhetorical question Livingston asks, "Do we (shops and insurers) truly make a good business decision to get the keys when we know we cannot meet the expectation of the customer?"

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