Digital Dealer - September 2017 - 38

By Ed Kovalchick
CEO and Founder,
Net Profit Inc.

// Fixed Operations

Make It Happen,
Watch It Happen,
Wonder What the
Hell Happened!
(You do have a choice)
"Learn how to control
and manage service
department work input or
pay the consequences -
don't end every work day
wondering what the hell
happened."
Two of the most
expensive weaknesses
I encounter in dealer
service departments are
pre-loading planning and
dispatch controls. While
this requires a bit of scholarship, just using some
so-called applied common
knowledge and applied
calculations make a huge
difference in the ultimate
financial outcome. Consider that "irreplaceable clock
time" is actually the only
item with which service
(and parts) generates
income. Any minute not
productive cost some $3
in parts and labor sales.
For the repair shop, the
goal is to organize an application where a workplan
is somewhat scientifically
calculated based on
available flat rate capacity,
available technical skills,
38

SEPTEMBER 2017

diagnostic considerations,
typical carryover counts,
applicable recalls and
related parts availability,
ASM staffing, work hours,
shuttle schedules, loaner
counts, and even inevitable walk-ins.
Frankly, I seldom
see much of the above
carefully considered, let
alone managed on a daily
basis. The pressures from
customers and ubiquitous
manufacturer customer satisfaction surveys
usually result in quite a bit
of extra expensive support
staffing, in an attempt to
properly handle the resulting unplanned workflow.
While on the other end,
dispatch is too often more
of a "pull" system than a
"push" system, so that the
ultimate shop output is
not controlled by management, but rather individual
technician desires / attitudes / moods / yada yada
yada, blah blah blah.
THINK SMALL

Let's start with the
smallest of fundamentals - a one-technician

D I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

shop. This would be the
perfect situation to control
efficiently since the entire
pre-load and resulting
output revolved around
one producing individual.
The available skill would
be well understood, the
continually changing
daily capacity would be
obvious, so that which
accomplishment which
could or could not be
done each day would
be easily calculated and
controlled. In fact, while I
was working with Toyota
Japan, their view was that
appointments were to be
made for individual technicians (engineers there),
so that what could and
could not be done could
be calculated to a finer
degree. Guess what - it
worked because planning
was broken down to the
simplest integer - one.
Today, because vehicle
maintenance has morphed from once healthy
packages of upkeep
requirements, into a few
relatively simple and marginally profitable (or not)

processes, many service
operations have wisely
separated their tech preload
into two groups - lower-cost
maintenance techs and
much higher paid repair
techs, with a few necessary
even higher paid diagnosticians thrown in.
CREATE THE PLAN

Scheduling for the individual or teamed maintenance
techs differs greatly from the
repair techs, since their flat
rate operations are predictable, provided the quick
service menu is limited to,
say, a max of 60,000 mile
vehicles. For instance, a
proper schedule might consist of 45-minute intervals
scheduled for 100% of the
available tech attendance
work time.
I recently worked with an
excellent service director revamping his entire appointment shop loading system,
including separating the
quick service department
into 45-minute production
segments. It immediately
made a pronounced difference for the QS assistant
service manager in being
able to grasp the planned
shop load, and the appointment takers were able to do
a much more effective job.
Of course, getting rid of
the no appointment needed
mantra helps with this snug
control in meeting customer
expectations - don't set
them up for predicable failure if you can't make it happen and you know it - DUH.
(Would you like your dentist
to tell you of his / her new
"no appointment needed"
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Digital Dealer - September 2017
