INDUSTRY ADVICE: ASK MIKE
Why Aren’t People Pulling OEM Procedures?
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This month, we “ASK MIKE” to share his thoughts on the industry’s lack of adherence to OEM repair procedures. We at New Jersey Automotive hope you find this following exchange useful, and we encourage you to reach out to us if you have a question for Mike on this or any industry-related matter that he can answer in a subsequent issue.
New Jersey Automotive: Obviously, vehicle technology is not going to stop advancing. As a result, repairers need to stay on top of what’s going on with these cars, and pulling the OEM repair procedures is the main part of that. I’ve heard feedback from some shops that are still not enforcing this; they tell me, ‘Our technicians know what to do.’ I’d imagine you’ve been encountering similar statements. How do you respond to that mindset?
Mike Anderson: You’re right – most people are not pulling OEM repair procedures, and I’m very concerned about that. Let me start by sharing a short story. My friend’s son went into the Marines several years ago. He got off the bus at Parris Island, and the drill instructor ran up and started delivering shock and awe. He yelled, ‘Single file! Single file!’ Then, he said, ‘Pick up your suitcase! Put it down! Pick it up! Put it down!’ All of a sudden, my friend’s son laughed. That is the worst thing you can do on your first day of boot camp with a Marine drill instructor! The drill inspector grabbed my son’s friend by the ear and pulled him in front of a mirror. He made him point at the mirror and say, ‘I’m not stupid!’ Then, the drill instructor made him point the finger back at his own chest in front the mirror and say, ‘You’re stupid.’ I’m not saying that collision repairers are stupid, but this isn’t a joke – it all starts with us. We all have to take personal responsibility. When somebody doesn’t pull the OEM procedures, it’s usually due to a few things. One, they don’t have access to them. In that case, shame on the shop owner or manager. Number
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two, they think they’re smarter than an engineer. Number three, they say they don’t have the time because the company they work for chooses to be a DRP and says they have to upload an estimate within two hours. That’s just ludicrous. I do training for several OEMs as well as training through Collision Advice. We show people photos of a vehicle that needs a quarter panel replaced and say, ‘We want you to write an estimate on this.’ I understand it’s a photo, but it’s done as an exercise to see how well they can identify the OEM repair procedures as well as notincluded operations. When we do that, we have 385 lines on our estimate, but the top 10 percent of trainees might have 190 to 200 lines on their estimate. The average shop has fewer than 100 lines. I can tell you that just for that one estimate – just replacing a quarter panel on a Toyota – we had 133 pages of information to research, pull, review and read. It’s very, very time-consuming. This wasn’t a 30-minute process – it was a five-hour process. I realize there are some challenges, but to not do it is unacceptable. The other thing that troubles me is that everybody is looking for an ‘easy’ button. You can’t just say, ‘I’ve fixed 20 of these cars; I know them inside and out and don’t have to pull the procedures.’ Things change. I’ve seen sectioning procedures change, and I’ve seen something was a one-time-use part one day but wasn’t the next day. We just can’t assume that because we fixed 20 cars last week that we don’t have to research them today.
NJA: Of course, we have a huge elephant in the room. I’ve had readers tell me that if they don’t get paid for something, they won’t do it. MA: That’s insane! How would you like it if a doctor, a surgeon or someone who works on an airplane said, ‘I don’t get paid for it, so I’m not going to do it’? Don’t forget that the consumer signs an authorization for us to fix their car. If we take that car in under a premise that
there’s a signed authorization, we’re saying, ‘You can trust me to do a safe and proper repair.’ You’re liable for that vehicle even if it changes ownership. You’d like to believe that the John Eagle case was a wake-up call, but obviously it wasn’t. People just think they’re too smart for their own good. I teach factory training for OEMs, and I still research every single vehicle that I write an estimate on. If you’re saying you don’t have the time, then you need to have a conversation with your boss. If you’re saying you don’t know how to use the websites – gosh, man, we have free webinars and videos on my website that teach people how to do it. If you’re a Nissan/Infiniti-certified shop, you actually have free access – free access – to Nissan/Infiniti’s TechInfo. Toyota offers free access to its OEM procedures to its certified shops. There are resources available; people just need to want to use them. The two percent who are actually doing it right get pushback from third-party payers who say, ‘You’re the only one.’ Well, they are the only one! NJA: What do you think it’s going to take to get that number up to a respectable amount? We’ve already had the John Eagle case, and there have already been multiple conversations on this topic. It’s being stressed at the Collision Industry Conference (CIC) and elsewhere. What else needs to be done here? MA: Education, number one. We need to educate people on how to navigate the OEM websites, because they’re all different. Number two, people need to have the time to do it. The days of expecting an estimator to handle x amount of sales volume every month are over. The expectations need to be lowered. There’s no way they can achieve that and be thorough in what they’re doing. Body shop owners and managers need to give their employees the right amount of time to do it. Also, insurance companies need to recognize that they’re part of the problem, especially when they want an estimate
