Workshop Loading, written by Steve Ham
Workshop Loading
Written By Steve Ham - Group Aftersales Manager, J & J Motors
A lot of Service Departments have trouble getting work for their Technicians to do first thing in the morning and last thing in the afternoon, as some customers will need to get to work and drop their cars off with you before you open, and others will need theirs back by mid afternoon. So why not be proactive and change the way that you load your workshop.
For those people that want to arrive before you open why not make arrangements for them to drop their cars off with you the night before, these cars can then be put onto the technicians ramps along with your pre picked parts (as covered in another article) ready for them to start first thing the following day.
Another way to fill these gaps is to use the internal sales department prep jobs for the late afternoon, if you tell your Sales Manager that you are allocating half your technicians 4 – 5 o’clock slots for his work, this will not only enable him to plan his workloads better but will also save you lost time in the evenings and may even roll over into the following day, depending on the amount of work required.
Obviously you would have to juggle your nightly drop offs with your sales preps, but if your customers that drop off the night before are not collecting until late the next day (this is up to you to organise with them) you still have plenty of le-way to accommodate everybody whilst cutting down on your lost time.
Imagine if you could do away with those first 15 minutes in the morning and last 15 minutes in evening of lost time.
a) Lost time per day 0.5hr (15 min + 15 min)
b) Number of Techs 8
c) Days per week 5
d) Weeks per year 44
e) Labour recovery rate £45.00
f) ADDITIONAL PROFIT £39,600.00
(f = a x b x c x d x e )
Once again this is pure profit straight onto your bottom line, as you are paying your techs already for the time they are not working. So with a little bit of forward planning you can see what affect this may have. The calculation is easy just take a look at your lost time for these periods and substitute with your own figures.
Good Luck.
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Good thinking, Steve. Exactly what I used to do back in the 1970’s. I even found it worth paying taxi fares for customers to get to work in the morning, so that they could leave their car with us the previous evening.