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An auto body shop owner or manager might say “we are a process centric shop,” “we stress processes here and focus on efficiency and productivity” or “it’s all about workflow here and everyone knows their role.”
But they are thinking “our processes need to be updated, but is everyone on board,” “we are forgetting about the people part of the equation,” “do we have the right crew to achieve our goals” and “our processes take too long and don’t help our cycle time.”
To achieve consistent results, every successful body shop needs to devise a series of processes that maximize its strengths while coming up with viable solutions for problematic areas. It’s Business Management 101—“strategic alignment,” a mechanism by which an organization uses tools to visualize the relationship between processes and strategies.
Every auto body shop owner and manager is always looking to optimize workflow because they know it’s a critical component that can significantly impact productivity and performance.
Production often gets caught up in the day-to-day roller coaster and managers fail to realize the shop’s processes are outdated, inefficient or no longer in use. Continually changing processes and workflow strategies isn’t a bad thing. In reality, frequently assessing internal operations to ensure they are lean and working efficiently is something every body shop should do.
The rub here is how to take theory and put it into practice while using the technology and tools available. In many cases, body shops devise methods that look good on paper but don’t offer practical solutions for real-world applications.
When a shop is in a rut, it’s time to re-calibrate and update its processes to better coincide with the workplace environment. In many instances, the plan is reliable, but if the crew does not strictly adhere to the strategic policies devised, the department will never realize its full potential.
Rick Selover, industry insider/ consultant, gives a historical perspective on how processes eclipsed the importance of people over the years.
Selover, a former refinish instructor, is a multi-award-winning sales leader, collision industry consultant and advisor, motivational coach and host of a personal and professional development podcast series, “The Mind-Wrench Podcast.”
“Today, you’ll hear things like ‘your people are your business’s greatest asset,’ ‘teamwork makes the dream work’ and ‘your company is only as strong as your weakest link,’” Selover said. “But this wasn’t the credo that body shops lived by back in the 1970s to 1990s, not at all. Back then if you could bump a panel, skin a door and pull a frame or unibodies, or you could DA, paint and rub a car, and didn’t mind hard work, you could work in this industry, or even start your own shop!
“Baby Boomers were probably 90% of the workforce in those days, and just plain old hard work was the standard,” Selover said. “Concepts such as job satisfaction, fulfillment and work-life balance weren’t a thing yet! If a shop owner didn’t like your work, or your attitude, or the fact that you came in late—or hungover—every other day, they would fire you and your replacement would be unloading his toolbox the same time you were rolling yours out the door.
“The technology—or really, lack of—and finish of those vehicles set the talent bar relatively low compared to what is needed to repair today’s vehicles,” Selover continued. “Most shop owners couldn’t swing around a seized-up come-along without hitting eight to 10 body and paint guys looking for work.”
But as car technology started to advance through the 1990s into the 2000s, paint companies started teaching lean concepts, introducing repair processes, MSOs started taking root in the industry and things began to change, Selover said.
“The growing groups of MSO shops started focusing on creating, defining and implementing repair processes and operating procedures that increased the efficiency of their shops and increased production, or the number of cars going out the door each week,” he said.
As this transformation evolved, the focus was really on the processes, not the technicians, Selover said.
“They were treated more as assembly-line workers than craftsmen,” he said. “Remember, techs were easily replaceable in the past. But today, the required talent level has been increasing and the talent pool has shrunk drastically smaller.”
Fast forward a couple decades and vehicle technology and complexity has grown exponentially, Selover said.
“The talent level required to do the work has increased to an unbelievable degree, and meanwhile, insurance company DRPs have ruined the mindset and broken the will of the 90% of the workforce that was the ‘engine’ of collision repair for the past 30 or 40 years,” Selover said. “As the average age of those Boomer techs creeps up on 60, they have been on a steady march right out of this industry at an alarming rate—either aged out, burned out or just grown too tired to fight the fight anymore.
“The collision repair business is highly unique in the service sector of business, as the combination of intelligence, creativity and passion require unique individual men and women,” Selover said. “Finding them is more challenging now than ever in our history. But that is where collision center owners need to engage their own intelligence, creativity and passion to mold their business, create a desirable culture and provide a unique place that appeals to multiple generations.”
If you are currently in a position where you want to re-work your processes and shake things up a little, here are three takeaways to ensure ongoing success.
Get Input from Everyone
If management creates workflow strategies for all employees at every level, there is going to be some disconnect along the way. After all, it’s never easy to ensure the processes being installed without getting
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