Industry Leaders Team Up to Create a Single Shop Performance Value (SPV™ Rating)

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Comment by Bill Fowler on February 24, 2010 at 1:09pm

Doug, It certainly is not my intention to kick you in the shins for developing a system to rate shop performance but as a shop owner, I grow tired of constantly reading all the suggestions as to how I can improve my cycle time, control severities, write more accurate estimates and implement "lean" cost control measures, apparently to squeeze some glimmer of profitability out of my business. I presume these suggestions come with the assumption that most viable shop operations are DRP "partners" and these measures are supposed to concern me because I need to keep my "partners" on the insurance side happy with my performance. Why is there never any suggestion that insurance company performance be evaluated in the same way as repair shops?
I view this business from a totally different perspective and think it would also be productive if the suggestions you offer were applied to insurance company performance. I can tell you honestly that 99.9% of the insurance generated estimates I see in my shop require supplements, many of them substantial and create unnecessary and preventable delays in the process. It becomes a scheduling nightmare. I can also tell you that cycle time calculations are artifically short because they are calculated under the premise that ALL necessary labor operations are acknowledged and paid for. With the dramatic shortfalls in actual time calculations from our software providers and the "we don't pay for that" factor, the cycle time calculations are necessarily deficient as well and in no way reflect reasonable cycle time, insurance company created delays notwithstanding.
I oftentimes spend more time waiting on insurance companies to do handle their own business, like getting an estimate in hand that reasonably reflects what actually has to be done to a vehicle, than I do repairing the automobile, so evaluating their cycle and response time would be productive in decreasing cycle duration. It also continues to amaze me that I can repair an $8,000 dollar wreck, with all the aforementioned delays, more quickly than a check can be issued to pay for the repairs. And I'm expected to deliver vehicles on the "we'll catch you later" plan, hoping that the same person who didn't have the time to write the check in the first place doesn't send the money to the vehicle owner instead on me. (It happens all to often.)
Last but not least, the ridiculous requirement by most insurance companies that vehicles can only be left at the shop on Monday really confounds me. I typically take in 15 to 20 cars every Monday, with the cycle time on each one being calculated by an insurance company as though it is the one and only car I must be concerned with. How many of those vehicles do you believe actually enter the repair process on Monday? In a futile attempt to avoid paying a rental bill over a week-end, this silly requirement along with deficient estimates insure that the rental will encompass a week-end anyway. If insurance companies had a better grasp of the situation, vehicles would be left mid-week, parts would be ordered and deficient estimates could be corrected. Monday morning some vehicles would enter the workstream while others waited to have their deficient estimates corrected so they could also enter the workstream in a more seamless progression.
I refuse to burden myself with assuming all the responsibility for streamling a process over which I have so little control and I am unwilling to take on the responsibility, without compensation, that should be that of the insurance company that has delegated so much control of the process to themselves. Responsibility and accountability is a two way street.