What does implementing lean mean for your shop?

I have been in the collision Industry for most of my adult life. Not having worked in other fields, I wasn’t exposed to some of the buzzwords that are part of daily life in those fields. I think generally, all of us share this same industry-specific ignorance. It is true that if you watch the news, or read at all, you will be exposed to some of the terminology used in other industries, and have a general understanding of it, but not like the understanding you would have by working in those fields daily. Obviously, the same would hold true for people that do not work in the automotive field.

One such term is the word lean. We have all heard of it, and have a general understanding of it. Lean manufacturing is where we generally categorize, or associate the term, but lean principals can and have been applied to many other industries with success.

In recent years, many shop owners and managers have been trying to find ways to apply lean principles in the collision Industry. Some have been very successful in improving their operations and others have failed miserably. I am pretty sure most shops that have experimented with lean give up too early and fall back into what they believe are their tried and true methods.

Why? Because implementing lean is hard and takes a commitment from every person in the shop. It will not happen overnight, and it requires real discipline. What I want to describe to you here is what lean truly is and what it attempts to do. You should digest this information, and consider how to implement lean into your shop. Contrary to popular belief, there is no “cookie cutter” implementation method for this process. Implementation depends on your shop, shop management and your shop personnel.

In the past, I felt that if you were to implement lean in your shop, you had to jump in with both feet and go in all the way. I feel slightly different now, and think that small bites of the process added gradually can be beneficial and less painful. Even small parts of a lean process should improve your overall processes.

In order to implement a lean process in your shop, you will first have to implement what is called 5S. Last September, I wrote an article detailing 5S that you can read here.

Without question, any lean process has to start with 5S first. Basically 5S stands for sort, set in order, shine, standardize and sustain. In plain English, clean and organize your shop and keep it that way. This part of the process is one of the most time consuming, since many shops aren’t very clean.

Not following 5S basics will lead to certain failure if you attempt to implement any other lean ideas. In fact, merely by implementing 5S methods, you will actually be implementing many facets of lean.

Buy in

In addition, you have to understand that you cannot implement true change without the help, and buy in of your staff and fellow managers. They must feel part of the solution, not the problem, so when starting the process, you have to ask for feedback from them.

Every person in the shop, no matter what position they occupy in your organization, has an idea that will help make their jobs, or others’ jobs easier. Ask for their feedback about problems as they are identified in your current process, and with their help and suggestions, try implementing their solutions to these problems.

You will be amazed at what creative ideas your people come up with. Set up a series of meetings and gather the entire shop together. Have an open discussion of what issues they see and what their solutions might be. Once you start this program, don’t ever stop. This process is part of Kaizen, or continuous improvement, another important aspect of lean.

These two simple ideas, common sense ideas, will really provide a great benefit going forward. They are impossible to implement alone, but as a team, your shop can do it with less effort than you might think. Make every person in your shop an important part of your growth.

The generally accepted father of lean is Toyota, and the Toyota Production System (TPS) is the model followed by most companies implementing lean processes into their operations. Lean processes are really common sense based, and were developed in the 1930s and 1940s by the future Toyota automotive executives in their loom operations. Lean processes seek to reduce waste and increase productivity by utilizing only value-added processes and disposing of the non-valuable ones.

One of the key steps in lean and TPS is to identify which steps in your current process add value and which do not. Once value-adding work has been separated from waste, then waste can be subdivided into work that needs to be done but is non-value adding waste and pure waste. In every system, there will ultimately be some work that has to be done that adds little value. This is just a fact.

The clear identification of non-value adding work is critical to identifying the flaws in your current work process and to finding ways to challenge them as you move forward. Toyota in TPS identified seven specific areas of waste in their production model and set out to improve them. These seven areas can be applied in the collision environment as well.

These areas are:

Transportation: Each time a vehicle is moved through your facility, it stands the risk of being damaged or delayed in the repair process. Remember, excessive movement adds a cost for no added value. In your shop, is your work flow or shop layout conducive to repairs through each department with minimal movement? I have seen many shops where cars have to be moved repeatedly before being worked on in each department or between departments.

For example, you might have cars in body that move to paint for edging and back to body afterwards, wasting time. One way I have found recently to minimize some movement from body to paint departments is to utilize roll-on primers. By using this product, we can actually prime a vehicle while it sits in body without overspray.

This system saves waste in several areas, first in time and second in material. Obviously, the primed vehicle does not need to be masked twice, and less thinner or reducers are used in the primer, providing a greater film build, and fewer VOCs are produced as well. Roll- on primer is a great example of a value-added product/process that can be implemented in your shop.

Inventory, be it in the form of materials, work in progress (WIP) or finished vehicles, represents a capital expense that has not yet produced an income. In your shop, this could be materials and painting supplies, parts, completed cars not picked up or cars in various stages of repair as WIP.

Many shops keep large inventories of material on hand in their shops. The supplies are strewn around the shop everywhere, all over body and paint carts, on shelves and often on the floor. Materials are very expensive. Why is it then that so many shops do not monitor them well? Implementing, with the help of your jobber, a streamlined system to track your paint and materials is very important. Do you know how much material you are using on each vehicle? Do you know how much you have on hand?

Most shop owners or operators do not, but there are systems available that will help you maintain a minimum inventory of material and related supplies, and still get maximum production. Maximizing production with a minimum amount of supplies is a lean concept. Again, use your paint suppliers or jobber’s expertise in this area, and ask them to help implement a system where these expenses can be tracked and better controlled.

Motion: Different than transportation, which refers to damage to products and all the costs associated with moving them, motion refers to the damage that the production process inflicts on the entity that performs the repair over time, in the form of wear and tear on equipment. It also refers to wasted motion and wear and tear on your staff.

When it is really hot in the shop, or at any time for that matter, wasted movement means less productivity from your shop and office staff. It also refers to wasted motion inherent in the process. Does your best tech grab a wrench and walk all the way across the shop, tighten a bolt and then walk back to his box and grab another tool for the next operation? I doubt it.

Wasted motion is one of the greatest areas you will want to address in the lean process. Everything in your shop should be located where it will be the most useful with the least amount of wasted motion — again common sense. Think about your kitchen at home. Your refrigerator is right in the room, easily accessible when needed. You wouldn’t even think of putting in another room and walking to it every time you need something while cooking would you?

Waiting is what happens when repairs are not being performed. In traditional repair processes, a large part of an individual repair’s “life” is spent waiting to be worked on. Much waiting inherent in the collision repair process can be eliminated by writing a proper and accurate damage assessment, not an estimate, up front.

I have discussed this much in the past, but I can never stress just how important this aspect of lean is. An accurate estimate insures minimal, if any, delays in the repair process by insuring proper parts have been listed, sourced and procured before repairs begin. By fully planning out the repair, supplements can be avoided and the proper mix of work can be brought into the shop.

Over processing is a term used in TPS that applies more literally to a manufacturing environment than a collision shop. I think in the collision shop, simple is better. Keep your repair process steps to a minimum, keeping only the ones that provide benefit. If part of your current process is redundant, eliminate it if it adds no value.

Over production occurs when more products are produced than is required at that time by your customers. In a manufacturing environment, over production of a product adds expense in additional unsold inventory, and the cost to store it.

Sometimes body shops “store” work by bringing in too much at a specific time. In this scenario, they are storing parts too. I think a good analogy is not scheduling correctly, including work mix, based on your shop’s capacity and the experience and expertise of your staff. Too much or too little work brought into a shop can wreak havoc with delivery dates, parts inventory and CSI.

What if, for example, you have only one tech that can do heavy hits? You, without really thinking, schedule three heavy hits in one week. Each one is scheduled to be in the shop for five days. How likely is it that all three will be done in time? Not very. Before you even start the repairs, you have inadvertently created a customer complaint and a CSI problem.

Defects: Whenever defects occur, extra costs are incurred reworking the repair, paying for rentals and repairing poor CSI. Every process that you initiate should focus on eliminating defects throughout the repair process, not at the end. Again common sense, but that is what lean is all about — common sense solutions to production problems that your staff sees every day.

Lean is not complicated. There is a misconception that it has to be. Simple, common sense solutions are what lean processes provide. Once your people understand that, they will be happy to join your “lean team.”