Page 48 - Australasian Paint & Panel Magazine Sep-Oct 2020

Bodyshop Efficiencies
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PAINT&PANEL SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2020
WWW.PAINTANDPANEL.COM.AU
5 PLANNING MISTAKES
INEFFECTIVE PLANNING IS THE BEST WAY TO SEEM LIKE YOU ARE IN OVER YOUR HEAD SAYS PLANNING PLUS.
so why have loan vehicles if you are not going to use them? Check if you have any loan vehicles idle over the weekend, if you do, loan them out! You could get a cus- tomer’s car in on a Thursday or Friday and have it finished and in the paint shop for Monday morning instead of painters wait- ing for the panel shop to filter jobs through sometime Monday afternoon.
PLANNING PLUS SOFTWARE
Use workflow scheduling and manage- ment software, which is visual, secure and intuitive. Stop wasting time with a white board and install a simple yet highly effective planning system which will immediately improve workflow, gen- erate more jobs per week and increase gross profit. Planning Plus has been de- signed to work seamlessly on its own or when importing information from other software products such as IBodyshop, Auto-Quote, Flexiquote, Car Quote, VQS, Quotimation, etc. Some of the features that Planning Plus offers include:
• Highly visual touch capable workflow planning
• Automated task breakdowns that con- vert the labour dollars authorised to target hours per task for the employee
• Labour budget calculator that calcu- lates the number of hours each em- ployee needs to produce each day
• Labour budget vs actual labour pro- duced for each employee
• Employee performance reports
• Track My Car 1 click checking for
customers
• eForms for Quality Assurance.
RUNNING A BODY SHOP CAN BE TOUGH,
it may seem like you have not enough hours in the day to get your jobs done. Avoid these basic mistakes and you’ll be more efficient and profitable and less stressed.
1OVERLOADING THE PARKING AREA
This is something we are all guilty of, a customer comes in, they need their bumper painted, you are really busy but you know you’ll have time later in the week to get it done. “Yeah, sure, give me the keys I’ll have it for a day or two and ring you when it’s finished.” One week later you see that car lying idle in the car park as if it has just arrived. Schedule the car in and stick to the time frame.
2STAFFING
Our staff are our bread and butter, re- liable and skilled staff are as valuable as the best equipment you can buy. A major issue than can impact planning is not actually having enough qualified tech- nicians to deal with the workload and job cycle demands. If so, you will never meet your deadlines. Managing your employees and working to their skills base is key for good productivity. You cannot pull technicians from one job to
the other, allow them to finish one job before they move to the next. Also, have a look at the vehicle’s cycle through the shop. Do you know what your produc- tive hours per day per vehicle KPI is?
3BOOKINGS AND PARTS
You have to ensure that your parts are available before you book the vehicle in. There is no point in having a car booked in and no parts to enable continuous flow – that is just wasting valuable time.
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ly gut feel scheduling times can lead to much longer cycle times. Planning Plus software helps with planning work cycle times for your technicians and gives everyone a visual representation of your workflow. Not sticking to planned and scheduled times will really mess up your workflow. If a car is scheduled in for a one day cycle and it ends up being three that lowers your productive hours per vehicle per day KPI and puts you be- hind with all your other jobs.
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SCHEDULE TIMES
There are two main issues here. First-
. LOAN VEHICLES
Some repairers still provide loan cars,