Managing those Tenths

In his article “Productivity vs. Efficiency, Which One Matter the Most?” Chris Frederick says “Technician efficiency could be a cause of low productivity, so what hinders efficiency in technicians? Technician skill level could stand in the way of our being productive. Are we dispatching the correct skill level work to the correctly skilled technicians? Do we have a training issue or even a retraining issue? Are technicians being pulled on and off of vehicles and that prevents them from being productive? Are the technicians standing around waiting for parts, or could they possibly be standing around waiting for okays on the work they have already checked out (the result of a backlog at the front counter)? Are they waiting for someone to direct them to what to work on next, or have we set expectations so they already know which jobs to work on next?”

Good read and well stated. Service is about time and comes down to managing those tenths. That’s right how well you can manage every six minutes available by every technician across your service department; after all, labor is sold in 6-minute chunks. Tick, tick, tick the clock is running and it affects your profitability, your paycheck, and your CSI scores. Every time the technicians leave their bay for the parts counter – tick, tick, tick – standing in line waiting for parts attention – tick, tick, tick – walking up to the service advisor to hand them an RO so they can consult the service guest – tick, tick, tick – walk back to their bay and restart where they left off – tick, tick, tick. Just in that simple process performed every day how much time is lost across your service department. We don’t have to even get into all of the other functions from used cars to car washing to management questions to making contact with the service guest – tick, tick, tick. The company workflowsolutions360° and the product workflow360° have been built with this concept at heart. Service is about time and the better you can manage time and the better you use time the better life is for everyone involved. Take away those needless steps, remove roadblocks, and communicate with everyone in real-time. People, process, communication! workflow360°!

Rob Peart 
Founding Partner 
Workflow Solutions360