Five steps to build a more effective quality assurance system

Jan. 1, 2020
Use these five steps to build a solid foundation for a quality assurance program to ensure top quality in everything your shop does.

In November, ABRN published "Avoid redos, bump up your sales with these tips" (see bit.ly/WbFkS9) detailing some of the most troublesome and overlooked repair issues that can send customers racing back to a shop demanding satisfaction or dialing up the business manager to complain.

These issues typically involved problems that fell outside the actual repair areas – leaks, suspension and braking problems, and previous damage. The message here was that shops could best serve their customers and themselves by taking the entire vehicle into consideration and spending a little extra time addressing any potential issues that could impact the customer service experience.

An estimator speaks with a technician. Consider making your estimators your chief quality inspectors. IMAGE / G&C AUTO BODY

One of the presumptions of focusing on areas outside the immediate repair is that the repair itself was handled as thoroughly and completely as possible. Shops keep quality inspection or assurance systems in place to handle this task. The number of issues outside the repair that can affect a shop's business makes the tasks performed by quality inspectors more important than ever.

It's time to review your shop's quality assurance program and to consider instituting some changes to ensure it provides the best possible results. Use these five steps to build a solid foundation for a system that will ensure top quality is part of everything your shops does.

Step 1: Proper foundation

Upgrading quality assurance is like improving other areas of your business, such as customer service. Certain standards apply industry-wide, but because every shop is different, every assurance program will be as well. As you assess yours, you'll need to look at factors such as industry standards, employee capabilities and talent, and how to most efficiently and effectively implement a system in your operations.

Handling the human factor is the wild card. Determining repair quality is a subjective act that will vary, even if slightly, from shop to shop and employee to employee. Based on their training and experience, employees can set different standards and "judging" guidelines. Also, some employees just have a better eye for assessing work. How do you best manage all these factors?

Start by creating and documenting a set of quality standards. Include input from all of your employees. Note that the goal here is establishing uniform guidelines for your entire operation.

Next, make your quality program specific to the challenges that most affect your shop. Ask employees what problems they see most often or get the most feedback on from customers.

You'll also face the fact that upgrading your system could be a long-term project.

"We had no idea how badly we had fallen off the mark on quality until we started looking at what we were doing," says Mike Bilderbury, owner of WC Automasters, a three-shop MSO near Sacramento, Calif. "We faced almost as many difficulties with our quality program as we did going lean."

Bilderbury recommends getting outside assistance from a consultant and suggests shops seek help from their paint vendors.

"It really helps to look outside your business," he says. "When you get used to looking at everything from the inside, you end up getting some bad habits. I thought we had a terrific, modern operation, and then I was shocked at how far we had strayed from industry best practices."

Those practices include multiple quality checks (with a minimum of two checks) as a vehicle passes through the repair process, new paint assessments under artificial and natural lighting, and an audit of each estimate or repair order to verify that all work was performed.

All these reviews and checks potentially can impact cycle time. Bilderbury says this issue can be addressed through continuous efforts to efficiently incorporate quality checks into the repair process. This goes back to setting the proper foundation for a quality assurance program.

Creating clear repair standards and inspection guidelines and training employees on them makes for a quality program that can be smoothly incorporated. With that done, Bilderbury says employees can work these tasks in with their other chores with minimal impact on work times.

"Like going lean, inspecting for quality is a mindset everyone needs to buy into," he explains. "It becomes a normal part of doing your job."

Step 2: Keep a list

No doubt your quality program involves the use of a checklist where quality inspectors can carefully record their work and "check off" all the areas they inspect. Bilderbury says shops can make these lists highly effective by keeping them fluid – continually modifying them to address changing quality challenges that a shop experiences.

"We keep a form template that the estimator can add to or modify for each repair," he explains. "Keeping the form fresh helps us make sure that we're actually using it the best we can instead of just casually marking off inspection points just to finish the form."

Step 3: Get everyone involved

A repairer recently told ABRN that with shops focused more than ever on processes and compartmentalizing tasks, they risk pushing their employees into a mindset of focusing solely on their tasks and not the total repair. This use of resources runs counter to some quality assurance best practices because it removes potential inspectors from the quality program. In the best possible quality programs, everyone involved with repairing a vehicle performs inspection duties.

Bilderbury calls this practice putting as "many eyeballs on the work" as possible.

Brian Guerrero, manager of Tucson, Ariz.'s O'Rielly Collision Center (named an ABRN Top Shop four years in a row) embraces this approach. Several years ago his shop adopted a process by which technicians and painters examined each other's work as a vehicle was passed off to them. Today, the shop touts its success of inspecting each vehicle that passes through its operation a minimum of four times.

Having workers examine each other's work for flaws may seem problematic and a recipe for conflict, but Guerrero said this hasn't been the case at his shop.

"Everyone understands that the point is to provide our customers with a better repair," he explains. "They realize they all benefit from checking each other's work."

Bilderbury says a philosophy like this is a cornerstone of an effective assurance program. Quality is everyone's business, he says.

"You can never truly change something at a business unless everyone takes responsibility," he adds.

Step 4: Name a chief inspector

Even with every employee playing a role in quality inspection, shops still need a chief inspector. Bilderbury says the employee taking this role assumes responsibility for the completeness of the entire inspection process. He explains that a chief inspector performs a separate check to ensure that all other inspectors have done their jobs.

An estimator speaks with a technician. Consider making your estimators your chief quality inspectors. IMAGE O'RIELLY COLLISION CENTER

Ideally, the chief inspector works off of the shop's quality checklists and the repair order. "This is where shops really should see why it's so important to have multiple employees performing quality checks," says Bilderbury. "With multiple cars being pushed through a shop, it's going to be overwhelming for any one person to do all the quality checking and be effective at it."

In fact, he suggests – based on the size of a shop and whether it can afford to dedicate employees solely to inspection work – that managers, estimators and other employees all take turns as chief inspector.

At the very least, he recommends that estimators take on this role for those vehicles whose repair orders they prepare. Based on information ABRN received during its most recent Top Shops contest, shops increasingly are turning to estimators to oversee quality checks largely due to the increased responsibility many have in steering vehicles through the repair process.

Along with coordinating quality checks, chief inspectors have one other role – overseeing the continual evolution and improvement of the quality system itself.

Step 5: Final check

Arguably, the single most important spot for evolution and improvement is the final quality check. Bilderbury says shops should approach the final check like students should when studying for a final – performing the vast majority of their preparation in the time leading up to a test instead of cramming the night before. To him, this means catching at least 99 percent of all potential problems during the repair and before the final detailing. The final check mostly should entail looking for relatively minor cosmetic details that may have been overlooked.

Bilderbury said that there are a number of products and procedures shops can use to check everything from the frame to how well parts fit. The time to use these tools is after the body work is performed and before a vehicle is painted.

"If your quality checks are forcing you to put a vehicle back through the repair process, it's time to change your quality system," he says. "When you do body work at this time, you risk damaging the finish, along with creating a bunch of other problems."

The final inspection, ultimately, is best used to judge a shop's quality assurance process. If quality is built in, as it should be, vehicles should sail through the final inspection with very few, if any, issues. When problems do arise, it's time to revamp the system and re-focus the folks responsible for making it work properly.

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