Why its important to implement
Traditional Monday-Tuesday drop-off, Thursday-Friday delivery creates pressure on reception, VDA, production managers, parts, and technicians. Causes parking issues and departmental imbalances.
Body Technician Pressure
Body technicians – under pressure to finalise repairs and get them to the paint shop
Production Manager Challenges
Production Manager – If most jobs arrive on Mondays the only people busy for at least the 4 hours of the productive week will be the remove and body repair teams. It will also make it difficult for the production manager to easily deliver cars to each technician and interrupt plans
Parking and Staff Pressure
This causes pressures on parking, administration and production staff in the business early in the week and again later in the week
VDA Pressure
VDA – The production manager and technical staff will be anxious to get started on the jobs, adding pressure to the VDA carrying out vehicle mapping, placing the job card, repair methods and other documents with each vehicle
Reception Overload
Reception – overloaded with customers all wanting to drop their car off not allowing time to finalise all correct steps correctly and allowing them to be missed and the same problem again at the end of the week for delivery
Traditional Industry Problem
Traditionally the body repair industry has booked all or most vehicles to be dropped off on Monday and Tuesday with most being delivered back to the customer on Thursday and Friday
Paint Technician Idle Time
Preparation and Paint technicians – very little to do for a number of hours until vehicles filter through to them from the body shop
Parts Manager Pressure
Parts Manager – Additional pressure placed on the parts manager to deliver the parts trolleys on time to each technician in advance of starting repair and cause vehicles to enter the shop before all parts have arrived
Business Impact
Maximizes total throughput potential. Prevents staff idle periods and departmental bottlenecks. Improves customer satisfaction and reduces operational stress across all departments.
Profit
If the business does not plan its incoming vehicles evenly through the week it will minimise the total throughput that can be achieved
Throughput, general, body and paint productivity
All departments productivity will be affected with some staff having regular periods each week with nothing to do costing the business time and money
Idle time
If scheduling is not done or done correctly the time each vehicles sits and waits between departments is increased
Key to key time
If scheduling is not done or done correctly the time each vehicles is onsite will be affected due to the vehicle sitting waiting for departments to have time to work on the vehicle
Customer satisfaction
If the body shop has the vehicle for a longer period than agreed or needed this will inconvenience the customer and if the work provider is paying for a rental vehicle it cost them more money
Overall Business Impact
Even weekly scheduling eliminates the traditional Monday-Friday bottleneck that creates operational chaos and inefficiency. By distributing workload evenly, all departments maintain consistent productivity levels, reducing costly idle time and staff underutilization. This approach maximizes total throughput potential, improves customer satisfaction through predictable delivery times, and reduces stress on reception, VDA, production managers, and technicians. The systematic workflow prevents parking congestion, parts delivery issues, and ensures optimal resource utilization throughout the week
action steps
Invest in BMS software. Implement even weekly scheduling system. Stop Monday-Friday booking mentality. Train staff in planning principles. Regular monitoring with warnings.
Regular Monitoring and Maintenance
Regularly check that this is being carried out for every job, strong internal warnings if policy not followed once established
Policy Implementation and Staff Training
Implement and train administration staff and production manager to use the scheduling systems and understand planning principles
Policy Implementation and Staff Training
Following this system will also stop the Monday to Friday booking mentality and have jobs split evenly over the weeks
Technology and Systems Implementation
Implement a BMS or electronic scheduling system into the business that integrates with estimating systems to draw the hours and divides them into departments
Technology and Systems Implementation
If the business does not have a BMS it should invest in this software
Related tasks
Milestone:
01: Elevate Your Customer Experience