Even MacGyver can't fix shop inefficiency

March 2, 2016
Relying on the MacGyver bucket is telltale of a repair process that wasn't planned out correctly from the start. And because of that, your tech is now scrambling to meet the pressure of on-time delivery. 

Remember "MacGyver," that TV genius who saved the world every week using little more than the paper clip and duct tape he carried in his pocket?  That guy had a solution for everything.

The collision repair industry immortalizes MacGyver in nearly every repair job. Armed with boxes, drawers and pails of leftover clips, fasteners and other items saved from past jobs, repair technicians consistently turn to their "MacGyver buckets" when small hardware isn’t readily available and they're in a time crunch to complete the job.

It may seem minuscule in the whole scheme of things, but that MacGyver bucket is a security blanket that is keeping your business from vast improvement.

Relying on the MacGyver bucket is telltale of a repair process that wasn't planned out correctly from the start. And because of that, your tech is now scrambling to meet the pressure of on-time delivery. That small act is symptomatic of a faulty production process that is unfair to the customer, while masking the inefficiencies in your business that result in wasted time and missed revenue related to the new hardware that the vehicle deserved.

Simply put, if you're not accurately preparing that vehicle up front, you risk adding a boatload of additional variables down the pike and piling on even more randomness to an already highly random work environment. If you're not planning up front, then everything else in the repair process is affected and you end up working in a reactive, supplement-consuming mode.

The diagnostic and planning process enables a shop to create an accurate, complete work order which involves a dead-on parts order, a fully-constructed repair kit, a detailed reconstruction plan and a properly planned refinish strategy, all fueled by proper support documentation. 

Now this may sound like simple "makes sense" stuff, but you wouldn't believe the percentage of shops around the country that fail to properly prepare a work order for a vehicle repair on the first go-around. According to my colleague Bob Gilbert, a noted process consultant for AkzoNobel Automotive and Aerospace Coatings, not too many shops in the industry get that planning piece 100 percent accurate.

"I would say that there are only a handful of shops — maybe two dozen — across the country that get it close to 90 percent accurate up front," he tells me.  "And in return, their work process is much faster."

Bob says all he has to do is check out a repair folder to measure how accurate a shop is pre-planning. "I'll look at a closed job file and see if there are multiple orders to the same vendor on different days," he says. "Typically, less than one out of 10 times the shop has an accurate repair assessment."

Collision shops that are interested in boosting their pre-planning process need to start by getting buy-in from technicians working on the shop floor. Get your techs together in a room to start a dialogue on pre-work diagnosis.  Host a lunch-and-learn pizza session and bring out the whiteboard to map out the definition of a stellar preparation process.

Challenge your team to think about what it takes to achieve an accurate estimate and the resources needed to attain that accuracy. What are the job folders telling you about weak points in the pre-planning process? What about parts? What will it take to achieve a 100 percent correct verified parts order? What are all the components needed to construct a fully prepared repair kit? Is it possible utilizing your current work plan?

I'm always amazed by shops in Hawaii and how they operate. There are no parts warehouses remotely close to these shops, so planning is critical. If they miss a component up front, that repair process could wait several days or even weeks for the supplement order to arrive.

If your shop didn't have ready-access to parts, how would you change your up-front process? My guess is that you'd put a lot of time into accurate preparation up front and attack that task with a mindset that you'll exhaust every effort to get the work order perfect before the vehicle enters the workflow.

I'd bet that you'd stop making assumptions or judgment calls up front that we all know normally lead to waste downstream. 

That's what the up-front planning stage means to a process-centered environment. And if it's done correctly — if you throw away those MacGyver buckets — you'll reduce supplements, improve cycle times and touch time, boost customer satisfaction and achieve great results in your overall performance.

Next month we'll talk about the two critical factors that are keeping you from achieving 100% accuracy in your shop.

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