My Friday at NACE

My seminar today started at 7:30, kind of early to begin learning but days are pretty full at NACE.  Ron Kuehn presented Simple Cycle Time Solutions beginning with repair planning.  Seems that is the major theme in our industry right now.  To move vehicles through the shop you must first know what you need to move.  The key function in repair planning is blueprinting, 100% disassembly to locate all the vehicle damage, and itemizing all the items found in a damage appraisal.  There are three main areas of cycle time you can measure, APR; the time between the vehicle arrival and when the vehicle is ready for production, Repair Cycle Time; the actual production time, and Delivery; which is the time between when the repairs are completed until the time the customer picks the vehicle up.  Arrival time to production is a critical area and the time line is determined by the amount of repair.  A repair that is $1500 or less should only spend one day in APR, repairs between $1500 & $4000 should be in APR no more than two days, and repairs over $4000 should not exceed five days.  Now that does not mean you have five days to blueprint a $4000 repair, all vehicles should be disassembled the day they arrive.  The five days accounts for vehicle dissassembly and supplement creation, parts  procurement, pre-pulling, and any part pre-finish work.  There are two important questions to repair planning, where do you do it and who does it?  Do you have a designated area or a non-designated area?  Do you have a specific disassembly technician or do you pull a technician off a job to to disassemble a vehicle?  There are pros and cons to both and generally the pros for one will be the cons for the other.  You will have to look at your shop operation and see what fits the best.  If you are just starting you might pull a technician off a job for disassembly, as you get deeper into repair planning you will probably determine that having a dedicated disassembly technician is best.  But this is a growing pain and the best way to realize what you need is to work through the process.  There are many things to consider when deciding between dedicated and non-dedicated, pay plans, technician buy-in, impact on production flow and space considerations.  All shops are different and there is not one plan that will fit all shops.  Ron suggested you start with the big jobs, the non-drives, and disassemble and blueprint those jobs.  The bigger jobs will show the true benefit of repair planning and is a good way to get employee buy-in.  You can take that one job and follow it thorugh and see how your cycle time changed in comparison to similar jobs that were not repair planned.    As you go through the repair plan process measure how long repairs are staying in the three separate areas, this will help you understand where improvement is needed and what action you need to take to maximize your production potential.

 

At one o'clock today I watched the National Auto Body Council present five Recycled Rides to five very deserving families. Chuck Sulkaka an NABC Past President and the man with the vision for Recycled Rides opened the ceremony followed by Michael Quinn from 911 Collision and the Recycled Rides co-chair described the program.  I watched as each family's story was told and then saw the expression on their faces when they were handed the keys to their new vehicle.  These vehicle were repaired by local collision centers through the coordination of the National Auto Body Council.  If you are a vehicle repairer I encourage you to get involved with this program.  I talked to a couple of technicians that worked on the vehicles and found that they donated their time, suppliers donated parts and paint jobbers provided paint.  We have all heard that it takes a village to raise a child, well that saying is very true in the repair of these recycled vehicles, it was a great team effort.  You can become a part of that team by completing a quick application.