Improve your process efficiency and profitability

Feb. 13, 2014
Collision shops are held to a high standard when it comes to time and quality. How fast can we get a car completed without sacrificing quality?
In today’s world of auto body repair the collision shops are held to a high standard when it comes to time and quality. How fast can we get your car completed without sacrificing quality? The industry standards compared to the industry average are differing greatly. So the question is how can I be faster without losing my quality or profit? And can I actually be faster and improve quality and profit simultaneously? The answer is yes you can, and if you don’t, you likely will not have any DRPs. If you are of the mindset that DRPs are not part of your business model, then you are likely a dealership body shop or connected to a dealership for work and all the same applies — better, faster and more profitable with less stress is a possibility.

The most successful shops in the country have already implemented the following:

Take pride
First and foremost, be proud of your business. Clean up the shop, throw away all the trash and useless junk and remove the old parts and cars that take up space. Sell off your old equipment that you don’t use any longer. Organize your tools and service the ones that are still viable. Put good lighting in the shop, and have a space for everything. Get your new and used parts off the floor. Use parts racks, one for each RO. Make your shop inviting to the consumer, front to back.

Complete and thorough estimate
The first step in writing a complete and comprehensive estimate is to use an electronic measuring system for documentation of all damaged areas. A lack of measuring can lead to secondary and induced damage being initially overlooked, only to be found when the vehicle is already in the repair process. A great deal of time is wasted with preparing supplements that need approval, stalling jobs in progress. Oftentimes, a technician will do a quick repair of an area not listed on the estimate just to keep the car moving, meaning the technician and the shop worked for free. Remember the 2 percent rule. If you can get 2 percent more gross sales out of each vehicle, how much does that equate to you?

Writing a thorough complete estimate the first time reduces the time a crashed vehicle sits in your shop. Measure every car, lower and upper body. Make a set of rules for your shop for when it is appropriate and necessary to measure the car. Here is an example:

  • Measure and assess all the damage before writing an estimate
    • If the vehicle requires a hood, fender or bumper replaced = measure the vehicle before writing the estimate
  • Measure the entire vehicle from front to back
  • Measure suspension components if your system has that ability
  • Measure upper body as well, considering every part of the car is structural

Find the hidden damage now instead of day 3, improve your cycle time, reduce supplements and improve cash flow.  

Scheduling
I often see most jobs come in on Monday and Tuesday, with a push to get cars out on Friday. If the vehicle is drivable, schedule customers to bring their cars in throughout the week. Many successful shops are already doing this, and it works well. You cannot work on a vehicle if you don’t have an open bay, so why create havoc? And if you already did step one — measure and assess all the damage — you can have the customer sign the repair order, order the parts in advance and keep the vehicle in your shop the minimum amount of time. This makes the repair process smoother, improving cycle time and reducing costly rental car costs. Delivering cars throughout the week frees up space and keeps the shop moving and flowing. 
WIP (Work In Process) If you have five body technicians and 30 cars in body waiting for repair, your hands-on time for each car is very low and your cash gets tied up in parts for jobs you can’t possible finish in a reasonable amount of time. Only start jobs when you can actually finish without interruption. Don’t bring cars through the door if you are still waiting for parts or approvals. The customer is in a rental longer and the insurance company applies unnecessary pressure on you and your team.

Flow
How do the cars move in your shop? Do the vehicles move forward into the stall, back out in reverse to paint prep, then forward to the other side to paint, outside for reassembly, then to the side of the shop for detailing? Consider how the cars move in your shop. Keep vehicles moving in one pattern, rather than zigzagging, to improve your cycle time. Keep the movement fluid as much as possible and consider the amount of time it takes to move your WIP.

Quality control
Someone in your shop must be in charge of quality control, and it has to be someone that knows how to repair vehicles. We often see production managers or the estimator quality controlling. They have an interest in getting the car out the door and may not be so concerned with the details. An unbiased inspector that has no monetary connection to productivity should be the inspector. If your shop is not in the volume range to have an individual assigned to this task, then it falls on the manager or owner to do the job. A simple inspection check sheet can give a systematic approach to the inspection process.

When a team concept is in place, then each member of the team quality controls the other team members. The team leader quality controls the entire team. This is not a trust issue but a quality issue; you want to provide your customer with 110 percent satisfaction, so be thorough.

Hiring the right team The people that make the wheels turn in your business are just as important as the work coming through the door. We have met a lot of estimators and managers that treat their position as an average 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. job and don’t understand the value of teamwork. If you don’t have team mentalities, you just have a bunch of self-interested employees. Every member of the organization is important, otherwise you would not have them there. So empower your employee, give them latitude to make decisions and benefit from the correct decisions made and allow them to learn from their mistakes. Too many mistakes or repeating the same ones and that team member is out. Employees that feel a part of the process do a much better job than employees just doing a job.   

Equipment
The unibody vehicle of today is not the same unibody of two or three years ago. With the implementation of various high-strength steels and aluminum, you can’t repair these new vehicles with equipment technology that was designed for older vehicles. You must get on board with electronic measuring that can measure the entire vehicle, including suspension and upper body. You must have a high-pressure 10,000 amp inverter spot welder, and you absolutely must have fixtures for holding while pulling and holding to specification for part replacement. Every European car manufacture requires fixtures of either the dedicated or universal type. And now Japanese and American car manufacturers are requiring multiple-point anchoring of five or more positions. That means your old frame machine with four point anchoring is now obsolete if you are repairing late-model unibodies.

Consider staying ahead of the curve and have a dedicated clean room area for you shop. Domestic vehicles are soon coming out with aluminum frames and structural components. Do you want a piece of that market, or do you want your competitor down the street to handle that?

Training
Let’s consider energy management, meaning we must repair vehicles and restore them to perform in subsequent collisions as if new. We are not engineers redesigning vehicles and implementing our own repair procedures based on experience repairing vehicles of yesteryear. Collision damage repair is now very matter of fact. OEM repair procedures are the only way to repair a vehicle, without exception, and that means you must be trained, skilled and equipped with the proper tools and tooling. Toyota, Lexus, Honda, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Porsche, Volkswagen, Audi, General Motors and others have specific training courses available either through the OEM themselves or ICAR. Estimators and technicians should be taking every single course available. There is no excuse for ignorance.

The body shop business is complex and very technical. In order to succeed, you have to be a smarter business owner and not take anything for granted. Be organized, clean, thorough, plan ahead, think from your customers’ perspective, re-educate yourself and re-equip your shop to be lean, fast and quality conscious. Learn to crunch the numbers, watch your vehicle flow and most importantly, love what you do and you will do what you love.

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