When thinking about a concept like “flow,” I like to look of the definition of the word. Webster defines "flow" as “to move in a continuous and smooth way.” How does flow relate to body shop operations? My next research step was to look up the “Lean definition” of flow: “Flow means to move along in a steady, continuous stream. The ability to visualize and manage flow is essential to achieving faster and more consistent delivery. It allows you to understand your capacity, easily identify problems and improve that flow.”
I am an old technician. For me to understand these concepts I have to be able to visualize the process. Several years ago I attended a NACE seminar on the subject. The instructor described flow as a river that ran through the shop carrying the customer and the vehicle through the repair process. That image gave me the visual that I needed to understand the concept and really made sense to me.
When we look at rivers there are two types: controlled and uncontrolled. Uncontrolled rivers have rapids, snags, sandbars, fast flow, slow flow and natural dams where flow stops.
The controlled river flows consistently in as straight a line as possible. Rapids have been channeled around. Sandbars are marked or dredged. Snags have been removed. Dams are in place, but they have locks so that travel is not impeded.
Now let’s picture your current shop river from front to back. How do the customers and vehicles flow through the process? Do you have a controlled or uncontrolled river? Where are your sandbars? Can you eliminate them or at least identify and mark? Where are your dams? Do they have locks so that you can move the vehicles and customers through the repair process with the least delay?
Sand bars and dams are the easiest to identify and eliminate or control. The tough ones are snags as they can pop up anywhere and tear the bottom out of your process. If you have good systems and processes in place then snags can be identified quickly and removed.
There are a couple of key areas where lakes and sandbars form. If there aren’t good processes in place, they will take over your production river.
The first lake is scheduling. By not having a good, consistent scheduling process you will have an uncontrolled lake full of customer vehicles.
Scheduling affects all aspects of the business. Without good best practices in this area, sandbars will form and the customer and vehicle stops moving.
If estimates aren’t scheduled, then the customer can get hung up on the waiting room sandbar. This negative customer experience will affect your CSI. By not scheduling drop offs, the customer can get stuck on the waiting room sandbar or the waiting for a rental car sandbar. Unscheduled drop offs also affects the CSR and appraisers’ capacity to check in the customer and follow all check-in procedures correctly. If scheduling procedures aren’t followed then a snag could come up later, negatively affecting the downstream flow. Scheduling drops also controls flow into the next lake, which is the disassembly or blueprinting lake.
The disassembly or blueprinting lake is critical to maintaining flow, as there has to be a place for the vehicle to wait after blueprinting is complete. All parts need to be ordered and received and insurance approvals need to be documented before the vehicle can leave the blueprint lake. The blueprint lake has to be highly controlled on input and output. If it isn’t, then the blueprint lake will be empty or overflow.
All vehicles need to be disassembled until the damage stops. This also means blend panels and assemblies. Every nut, bolt and clip that is broken and damaged needs to be identified, ordered and placed in the reassembly kit. All fluids and accessories also need to be in the kit. All departments involved in the repair process also need to review the blueprint to make sure all of the questions have been asked and answered. Once this is complete, then the vehicle can leave the blueprint lake and move downstream. The blueprinting process is critical to downstream flow once the vehicle leaves the lake.
If the blueprint disassembly process is not followed 100 percent of the time, then snags will appear downstream in other departments and the vehicle will get hung up. Don’t stress when this happens. Identify where the process broke down and repair it with the help of the whole team.
Here are some key items to remember about shop rivers:
- Shop rivers don’t flow backwards. If your vehicles are going backwards in the process, then you have problems in the blueprint process. Identify them and fix them ASAP.
- Interdependency is critical. If a vehicle is slowing the river, then you need to shift staff to make sure that vehicle moves forward. All departments have to work together!
- First in-first out. Once the vehicle enters the shop river, it must keep moving. Another reason 100 percent disassembly in the blueprint lake is critical!
- Pass no defects. In-process quality control is critical and internal rework is a huge snag in the shop river.
Catastrophe events will definitely stress your stream. However, if you have a healthy controlled river built on solid processes and best practices then it will be much easier to get control of your stream.
Production flow also affects another key area of the business and that is cash flow. Vehicles stuck on sandbars or snags can’t be delivered on time. If they are not delivered on time, then payment can’t be collected in a timely fashion. If they are sitting in an uncontrolled lake and there are costs accruing, then cash flow once again is affected.
How do you get control of your shop river? First you need to understand what it looks like. The best way to do that is map it out. Tape some masking paper on your break room wall or anywhere else that you have room. Work together to map out your current river. Cook some burgers or bring in pizza and have an all-shop meeting. Be as detailed as possible, but don’t try to start fixing it. Understanding your current state is critical to getting to your desired state. It may take a couple of meetings to get a good picture in mind. It’s also good to allow some time for thought and allow staff to add to the map over some time. Once you have your current river mapped out, start identifying the undesirable lakes, sandbars and snags and determine new processes or edit current processes to remove them.
If this seems like a daunting task, then there are people who can help. Contact your jobber to see if they can help. Most of the material and paint manufacturers have staff trained in this process and can help you improve your shop flow.
One key item to remember — as with any improvement process — this is not something you set up and then forget about. As you get control of your river in one area, it will dam up or break out the main channel elsewhere. That is why it is called continuous improvement!
