The story behind touch and cycle times

June 1, 2019
Generally, low touch time creates high cycle time, so I will show you how those two numbers relate to each other.

Steady production is what makes a collision center successful. When I am called into a shop to help with production, the first thing I look at is the shop’s touch and cycle times. While shop managers know that touch time is a metric they need to hit, getting there is sometimes evasive for them. For me, a shop’s touch and cycle times tells a story about how effective a manager is in running their business. Low touch time can be caused by poor estimating, poor production management (technicians working on multiple vehicles) or poor scheduling. Generally, low touch time creates high cycle time, so I will show you how those two numbers relate to each other. 

To define the relation, I dive into other Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to see how their sales per RO and paint hours per RO match up to the benchmarks. If those two numbers are low, I head to the office to review initial estimates and the number of supplements per RO. If I see low initial estimates and multiple supplements, it tells me a poor estimate was written and the repair was probably put into production without a complete disassembly. Putting a repair into production without a complete disassembly creates situations where technicians work on a repair until more damage is found. That repair is then idled until a supplement is approved and repairs can proceed all while adding to the touch and cycle time.

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If sales per RO and paint hours per RO are at benchmark, I start looking at the production side of the shop reviewing the following: productivity – overall, booth cycle time and vehicles per day per booth, looking for an indication of a choke point. I always explain to shop managers that you can have high productivity overall yet still have low touch time and high cycle time. This is because a technician can account for hours on several vehicles to stay productive, all while not moving any one vehicle completely through the production process. A technician works on a vehicle until a repair issue creates a stopping point and then to ensure he stays productive, he will pull in another vehicle to start the cycle all over again.

When that happens, you will see higher booth cycle time and lower vehicles per day per booth because work flow to the paint shop is not steady. When a technician works on multiple vehicles at once, generally they will all move to the paint shop one right after another, causing ebbs and flows in paint shop production. If all those KPIs look good, I turn to scheduling.

Poor scheduling can create too high of volume, which results in repairs not started on the day the vehicle arrives, adversely affecting touch and cycle time. This also causes the next day’s input to be delayed which leads to a choke point in body repair. To illustrate how poor scheduling can affect touch and cycle time, I’ll use a chart from BASF Vision+ Online (Figure 1).

Severity Breakdown — Last 30 Days
Before
Severity Description % of ROs RO Count Net Sales Cycle Time (keys to keys) Touch Time (keys to keys) Cycle Time (start-comp) Touch Time (start-comp) Labor Hours/
RO
Parts to Labor Ratio
Severity 0-1500 43% 69 $60,159 7.2 1.7 8.4 1.6 12.1 40%
Figure 1

Reviewing the report, you will see that only repairs $0-$1,500 were focused on because it accounted for 43 percent of this shop’s workload, which was also their highest category. You will notice that touch and cycle times were both off target on these repairs, according to the national average of 4.0 hours per day for touch time and 6 days for cycle time.

To understand the problem, I scheduled a visit arriving at the shop at 8 a.m. on a Monday morning to watch the vehicle intake process. There were 15 repairs scheduled for the day and those repairs were being processed by one person; at the end of the day only 11 of the 15 repairs were processed leaving four to be held over until the next day. This automatically added one day to the touch and cycle time calculations.

To help with this, I coached them on scheduling and identifying Fast Track repairs. Together we decided to bring the Fast Track repairs in on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to prevent them from getting mixed in with the larger repairs being dropped off on Monday. This allowed for faster processing for both categories of repair. Some simple process changes initiated by checking the shops touch and cycle times resulted in the improvement shown in FIGURE 2.

Severity Breakdown — Last 30 Days
After
Severity Description % of ROs RO Count Net Sales Cycle Time (keys to keys) Touch Time (keys to keys) Cycle Time (start-comp) Touch Time (start-comp) Labor Hours/
RO
Parts to Labor Ratio
Severity 0-1500 37% 55 $43,563 4.3 2.5 5.5 2.3 10.7 44%

The numbers above reflect an increase of almost one full day in touch time and a reduction in cycle time by almost three days, moving them closer to the national average. This was accomplished over a 90-day period where the corrective actions were employed. Additionally, with the improvements made in the $0 -$1500 repair category — nearing half of the shops volume — it created a positive ripple effect on their total touch and cycle time production. 

Examining your shop processes like I did will tell you the story behind your touch and cycle times. Understanding the pieces of your shop operations that affect steady shop production is a major step in resolving low touch time and high cycle time. As you walk through your shop, ask yourself why as many times as necessary to learn what is causing production to stop on a particular repair.  Doing that will allow you to drill down to the root cause and determine if it is poor estimating, lack of production control or inefficient scheduling that is causing you to miss the touch and cycle time metrics.

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