Today we are going to discuss the communication process within the shop. These are subjects that indirectly effect the customer but are focused on the shop operating at a sustainable cadence.
There are several measures that reflect how a shop is operating. These are not limited to just these three, but these are the ones that are commonly used to monitor a shop. It is a common question in the service business to ask, how efficient or productive is your shop? Productivity and efficiency are often used interchangeably. Actually, they are very different measurements. It is important that those in the shop who drive these measures know the difference.
First let’s look at productivity.
Productivity is the measure of how much time a technician spends on a job. If a technician is clocked on a job for 7 out of 8 hours they are at work, then they are 87.5 % productive. This is often thought of as a reflection of the technician. Actually, productivity is a measure of managements ability to keep the work flowing to the technician. This is half the measure of how productive a shop is.
The other half is the efficiency of the technicians.
Efficiency is the true measure of how quickly a technician completes his or her work on a job. Regardless of what labor hour scale you use, the technician’s ability to meet or beat that scale is their efficiency. If they are clocked on a job for 1 hour and complete that job in one hour, then they are 100% efficient. If they take more than an hour the percentage goes down and if they beat the times, they are over 100% efficient. Too much variation in either direction can indicate a problem, too efficient can signal potential quality issues while lower numbers can cause scheduling and profitability concerns.
The third measure to be concerned with is service quality. As I just indicated with too high technician efficiencies, there can be many drivers of low service quality.
Training, parts availability and parts quality, proper tools, and insufficient write-up information are just a few. The crucial part of service quality is that it is monitored and tracked in some consistent manner. Success in the way of targets that the entire shop understands and follows are the key to success. Remember, what gets measured gets done. Quality inspection at the end is just a band-aid. Measuring along the repair process will solve the problem before you must inspect it. These key indicators need to be regularly shared with service personnel. There is no customer satisfaction without proper service repairs.
This video is sponsored by The Group Training Academy.
