Process #3: Effective Management of Your Inventory

What is our objective, “To be the Repairer of Choice,” in our community. In order to achieve our objective we must deliver the vehicle when promised, repair it right the first time and without unexpected delays.

This is where effective management of our inventory is critical. What is our current staffing and productive power? Are we segmenting our repairs into express, medium and heavy hits?  We will use an X Ray Estimating process for scheduling and estimating of driveable vehicles, and a stringent process for our blueprinting process.

All of these issues require continual evaluation and adjustments in order to meet our objective.

Our Commitments;

• Mandatory production meetings held 2 times per day each and every day. First meeting 7:30 Am and second meeting every afternoon by 2PM.
• Review vehicle list for the day, drop off’s and delivery, along with app. Paint schedule. We need to know if technicians are on schedule and able to accept their new cars and meet their deliveries for today and what the time lines are. Do we have technicians doing re-assemble in their stalls or have designated areas to do this?  CSR’s need to have delivery list and order of delivery so all appropriate paper work is in ready prior to customers being called for pickup. Time line for all finished car calls needs to be determined.
• All vehicle status needs to be updated twice per day and mandatory update of all vehicles by conclusion of day.
• All express repairs need special attention in that we need to consider if we can combine these with other repairs. Bumper jobs can be coordinated for two runs per day depending on the shop.
• Review and update ARMs management system 2 times daily. Make immediate phone calls to correct any errors. We want to effectively schedule cars whenever possible so as to allow 8-10 cars through the booth per day.
• Schedule all repairs in the scheduling system; if possible, categorize them as to size of repair and also hours of repair.
• In your scheduling system allow adequate time with each customer so that they get your full attention.
• Center manager needs to know current facility capacity in total and by technician. He needs to be able to evaluate future needs prior to it becoming an issue. What are the opportunities of shift and teams working together to benefit our metrics and the technicians time off. Evaluate the effectiveness of four day work weeks with ten hours per day and working nights weekends etc.  Remember this is a factory and every hour closed down or out of production is the loss of free money.
• Do we need to load level to exceed insurer expectations, even if we are a standalone operation is there another good repair provider in our community that we could load level vehicles to in order to maintain our metrics. The bigger good is served even though we may have lost profit in the present. (Something to Think About; look at the long term perspective.)

How do We Measure Our Success?

Cycle Time Top 20%. 7 days or less ERAC, Goal 5 Days or Less

DRP Upload time top 20%, Drivable 4 hours or less, non-drives  24 hours or less. Our goal driveable 4 hours, non drive 24 hours.

Delivered on Time top 20%, 94% or better. Our Goal 98% or better

Net promoter Score Top 20%, 86% or better.  Our Goal 90% or better