Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Brian Bernard on September 11, 2009 at 3:55pm

Sounds like batching to me. Batching = Bad :-(

Permalink Reply by John Sweigart on September 12, 2009 at 8:56am

Here's what we've measured. All in on Monday can potentially reduce the rental days... for drivable cars. with a parking lot estimate, and a little luck, these vehicles can be expedited through the shop fairly quick. This pleases those who measure rental days on drivable cars. The non drives... or those that "become" non drives, (by "become" I mean the ones that can't make a target date before Friday and a reason is created to declare it non drive), .... those vehicles have a much greater cycle time. Clearly these vehicles are put on the back burner ( they have to be so people can focus on the measured drivable cars ) but that's O.K. with the insurers who measure these days. All you need to do is give an acceptable reason for a delay... "discovered damage", Parts delay....and all is forgiven. I guess these insurers only care about their customers with drivable wrecks. Maybe they are more profitable to insure...

The facts are... If all customers matter, then the "all in on Monday" delivers a greatly extended cycle time (rental expense) . It clearly would have to, as in this model, vehicles would have to queue up at each step, as the levels of inventory would not allow for continuous work. Unfortunately, those who measure rental expense either don't get it, aren't empowered to examine reality, or realize they can't control outcomes at the shop level so justify their own expense by measuring a small segment, dictating activities, changing a portion of results ( by swapping performance) and declaring victory.

Before I get hammered here.. I know, less bitterness.. more facts. Sorry, it's just getting harder to deal with policy makers who have less and less focus on the customer and more and more on their personal advancement. All customers matter... someone will figure this out.

Permalink Reply by Les Blizzard on September 12, 2009 at 10:30am

If you want to focus on just the average number of rental days per repair, the in on Monday out on Friday does reduce rental charges for the repairs that would have been brought in on the later part of the week. One reason is that most shops track the repairs that involve a rental and assign priority to these repairs, because they know that the insurance involved will also be tracking with the help of the rental company. Some insurance companies are even asking the shops to pay the rental charges that are involved with the repair taking longer than they think it should and especially if the charges are extended through the weekend because the shop didn't schedule the repair early enough in the week to allow for a delay of some kind.
Our shop has experienced instances where we were dealing with a non DRP insurance company asking for a supplement and how quickly the insurance responded was determined by whether or not the customer was in a rental vehicle. This is hard for us to understand, because the customer that is most often given the worst service and care is the insured. {the one that sends the insurance monthly premium payments} simply because the claimant has the rental.
The much more important question to ask should be. Is the in on Monday out on Friday schedule the best for the customer.
Admittedly the customer most often chooses Monday when given the choice without any guidence to what is best for the flow of work through the shop and even parts availability. Many even demand that they bring the car in first thing next week {Monday} or they will find another shop that can accomodate their needs.
Proper scheduling is probably the single most important aspect to having good flow or through put and there are many forces pulling in different directions for different reasons that make it also one of the most difficult.

Permalink Reply by Bob Sanford on September 16, 2009 at 7:09am

What I have found is that bringing in all work in on Mondays tends to create a bottle neck with the size of our shop, scheduling plays a major roll in the flow of work in our shop. Weekend rentals is sometimes unavoidable but I feel that keeping the rental within the scheduled repair time or even shortening the rental time by scheduling work properly saves rental costs, makes the customer happier and its a win-win for all involved.

Permalink Reply by Les Blizzard on September 16, 2009 at 10:39am

So...everyone seems to think that the in on Monday try for out on Friday is not a good thing.
The next question is, who is going to fix this situation? Who has the ability to fix it? Who stands to gain the most from fixing this situation?
I feel that the fix will have to come from the repair industry.
Now how are we as repair shops going to fix the causes of the in on Monday out on Friday situation?
Do you see more shops being open on Saturday?
Do you think the shop should pay rental over the weekend making up the cost in increased production?
Do you think shops should have loaner cars available and how should that program be funded?
Do you think the repair industry needs to try and educate the car owners and / or the insurance industry about this situation?
Do you see the repair industy going to work hours of 24 / 7 like a lot of other industries?
What other ideas or thoughts are out there?

Permalink Reply by Kent Carlson on September 23, 2009 at 2:42pm

Collision Resources researched this issue back in 2002 when we launched CR Auto Scheduler. By enabling collision centers to balance the work coming into their facilities with their production capacity we knew we could significantly improve cycle times...and we did to the tune of increasing the hours produced per day per vehicle by about 33% and reducing the average cycle time by 2 days. What we did not know for certain was how this would impact the need for rental vehicles. By scheduling repairs to begin and vehicles to be delivered every weekday, would we also be driving up the number of vehicles in process that carried over the weekend and, thereby, increase the number of rental days?

The short answer was a emphatic 'No'. Not only did we not drive up the number of days vehicles were 'in process' over the weekend, controlling the workflow (in these cases through the use of CR Auto Scheduler) led to about a 30% decrease in vehicles carried over the weekend.

If you want to improve your cycle time...either by reducing the average number of repair days or by increasing the hours produced per day per repair...one of your very first steps should be to balance your workflow throughout the week and match it to your capacity. In the Theory of Constraints this would be referred to as creating a Drum-Buffer-Rope system. In lean, it would be creating Heijunka (i.e., level workload). And the mother of lean thinking, Toyota, "has found it can create the leanest operation and ultimately give customers better service and better quality by leveling out the production schedule..." {From The Toyota Way}

Permalink Reply by Megan Erickson on December 18, 2009 at 7:31am

Flat scheduling draws feedback
By: Camille Eber

http://abrn.search-autoparts.com/abrn/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=...

Permalink Reply by Les Blizzard on December 20, 2009 at 2:44pm

My opinion, Flat Scheduling is a good example of something that is much easier in theory than in practice.
Even with the use of some great scheduling tools, there are many forces that are working against those systems. Just one of them, but one you don't hear mentioned very often, is technition efficiency.

Shops have tried to maximize cycle time for years, but with a different view.
Shops measured and tried to improve technition efficiency ratios instead of vehicle cycle times.
You would think that if you improve technition efficiency then vehicle cycle time would also improve, and it does, to a point, but there is also a third dimension to this. That third dimension is profitability. For the shop to be profitable,the shop must be at full capacity to maximize technition efficiency. Another vehicle (with all the parts) waiting for the tech as soon as the tech is at a stopping point on the vehicle he is working on.
Cycle time of the vehicle is dependent on a technition being free to work on the vehicle as soon as it comes into the shop. (It would be nice if customers were reliable enough to count on exactly when they would drop off their vehicle,but they are not)
As you can see. Cycle time and technition efficiency can at some point be opposable forces, that require a delicate ballancing act.
Many shops would rather eror on the side of having to much work and letting cycle time suffer as opposed to not scheduling enough work and letting technition efficiency suffer.

As a shop we try very hard to have a tech getting close to finished with the current vehicle so as to be available soon for the vehicle that is scheduled to be droped off.
Also we schedule all jobs that will take longer than a week, if at all possible, away from the first of the week when the medium size jobs come in and the middle of the week when the smaller jobs come in.
Every once in a while, we hit the scheduling nail square on the head and no variables disturb it that week. It is amazing how well things things flow and how little management is needed in that flow.
That is when I say. Wow this is the way it should be every week.
And then the next week....... Parts problems, eight tow ins, people in transit needing our services to help get home, two technitions sick, the air compressor breaks down.........
But, when you get it right, it makes you realize how important it is to keep striving for that balance of perfect sheduling.

Scheduling is one of the most important aspects of cycle and efficiency ratios and also the one that has the most variables working against it.

Les

Permalink Reply by Jon Parker on January 7, 2010 at 12:54pm

I hope this can shed some additional light on the subject from across the pond over here in the UK.

Pressures on repairers are higher in the UK than just about anywhere else in the world (I have been to shops as far flung as the USA, Thailand and Australia as well as most of Europe), which means that productivity needs to be at its highest to in order for a shop to survive, so this is stuff we do here with clients all the time.

In very simple terms, a bodyshop is a box - you load cars in the front, and repaired vehicles come out of the other end. You profit is based upon a huge number of factors, but the fundamental one is the ability increase production capacity. Your capacity is defined by your biggest constraint - fact!

If the constraint is the spray booth, which can (say) process 5 cars per day, irrespective of how well any other part of your operation performs, you can't output more than 5 cars average per day. In fact, your work in progress (WIP) hinders your flow. If all of your staff (except those working within the constraint) are busy, you are not working efficiently.

This leads onto working a Monday to Friday to reduce rental/courtesy car costs - this is a complete fallacy. Work should only be loaded into your shop based upon the ability of the constraint (bottleneck) to consume it, not based on what day of the week it is. If you load more, your create jams, queues and of course more WIP - your enemy. WIP and parts stocks are your inventory, and that kills your business.

If your spray booth is your constraint (it normally is because it can't have what we call sprint capability) then for every hour in a 25 car per week average bobyshop that your oven isn't productive it will cost you in the region of $400. If you repair 50 cars per week, then every lost hour in the oven costs about $700 !! This figure is unrecoverable.

Now when you consider this one small fact, the rental costs pale into insignificance.

Using Constraint Management (Theory of Constraints) and some of our other solutions, you can achieve the following in just 2-3 months:

Halve cycle time (typical key-to-key times of 2-3 days average)(based on an average estimated labour time of 16.5 hours)
Deliver on-time 97% of the time
Increase Net profitability to 10-20%
Increase throughput by 30% +
Produce just over 100 vehicles per week from 10,000 sqft of workspace
then... Implement Lean/Six Sigma after this, as much of your waste and CTQ's will be already dealt with.

Not sure whether this helps, but I am always concerned when I see bodyshops focusing on Lean first (which often incorporates TOC), rather than doing TOC first - it deals with 80% of the problems in 20% of the time.

Finally, there is so much focus on all of the peripheral stuff, yet most shop owners don't deal with the fundamental principles - how to increase production by 30%-80% from their current position.