The art of scheduling: A starting point

With proper and structured repair scheduling, collision repair facility staff will be able to plan the work through the production process.

There are many factors necessary to managing a successful collision facility, but some aspects are more important than others in determining just how successful a shop can be. Is repair scheduling an important component of being successful?

When talking about being a "successful" collision repair facility, it doesn't mean just being busy, having high customer satisfaction index (CSI) ratings, or turning a profit. A successful facility is all of these things and more. This includes steady work for continuous productivity, quality repairs completed in a timely manner, high customer and employee CSI, and profitability. Now let's ask the question again: Is repair scheduling important to being successful? I hope you answered yes.Without scheduling your repairs, you cannot be successful to your potential.You must be able to plan the work through the production process; this cannot be done if you are not scheduling repairs properly.

This is not to say that you aren't able to run a collision repair facility without proper repair scheduling. However, you may not be truly successful or reach the potential of which the facility is capable. I have seen many shops that do not have a consistent process of scheduling repairs that are doing well. But they haven't reached their full potential. How well can you run your business if you tell customers to bring in their vehicles on Monday or Tuesday and pick them up on Friday? This type of "scheduling" results in increased cycle time, low CSI scores, poor use of capital, equipment and employees, bottlenecks, reduced productivity, quality issues, and reduced profitability.

What it doesn't lead to is continuous production flow-which is the goal of all collision repair facilities.

Proper repair scheduling takes planning and understanding of your current business structure. Scheduling repairs doesn't mean just giving a customer a date to bring in his or her vehicle. It also means planning the completion date. Repair scheduling should be done for all vehicles: both drivable and non-drivable. Many shops schedule their repairs based on what they think a vehicle owner wants to hear or under pressure from an insurance company. But this only results in not meeting a customer's expectations or poor quality when you try and meet the promised delivery date. What happens when you sell a job and explain to the customer that it is a three-day repair?You offer Tuesday or Wednesday as possible appointment days, but they want to drop it off on Monday and you agree. Monday is already fully scheduled, but you do not want to tell the customer no.You receive the vehicle on Monday morning, but it doesn't get into production until Tuesday morning and the vehicle is completed Thursday afternoon. Have you met the customer's expectations by operating this way?You completed the repairs in three days.You must be honest with your customers when scheduling repairs, if you cannot start the repairs on the day the customer wants to bring in the vehicle. Advise him or her that the repairs will not be started that day. Remember, you manage your shop-not the customer or insurance company. Think of your shop as a doctor's or dentist's office, which requires appointments to be scheduled.

One thing that must be done consistently at the collision repair facility is determining the number of repair days. There are many different formulas shops use. However, to effectively schedule vehicles, you must make sure that everyone uses the same method of calculating days to repair. Determine the way you calculate repair days and then implement that as a standard procedure to your staff.

Communicate the days to repair with the customer, determine the target delivery date, and advise the customer of what may affect meeting this date.

The art of scheduling may be as complex as managing your business-or not. When scheduling repair appointments, there are many things to consider other than just attended and flagged hours. Technician productivity, utilization, overall efficiency, facility capacity, equipment, skill level, production process and staffing are all things to account for when scheduling repairs. Repair scheduling may be as basic or detailed as you would like. Of course, the more detailed your scheduling process, the more tracking you need to do. But you will be able to plan where the vehicle will be in the production process more accurately, which will help control cycle time. If the facility has a management system in place, or takes advantage of spreadsheets, the repair scheduling can be much more exact. The ultimate goal when scheduling repairs is to be able to plan the repair through each production stage.

I recommend using a very basic process for repair scheduling as a starting point.This method is easy to implement and will help all employees begin to see the benefits of scheduling.

Before you are able to assess the available hours, you must have some data from tracked Key Performance Indicators (KPI). At a minimum, you should have at least four weeks of attended hours and flagged hours for each productive technician. With these data you will be able to determine the average of what the facility has been producing. Remember, a collision facility sells hours. This average does not limit you to the number of hours you should sell and produce, but gives you a starting point to determine the minimum you will need to schedule. From the attended and flagged hours you will be able to determine the overall efficiency of each technician. Once you know each technician s efficiency, you may begin to look at how to increase efficiency, which will then allow you to increase the number of hours you schedule each day into the facility.

The first step, as shown in Table 1, is an easy method of tracking a technician's time.This information will give you a starting point to schedule repairs properly. Table 2 is an example of how you can determine the average sold or flagged hours. Based on the sample data, this facility must schedule at least 401.6 hours a week. The next step is to break out the percentage of work you schedule each day of the week. Table 3 shows the number of hours needed to schedule if you were to distribute the work evenly throughout each workday.You may plan your work by bringing in 30 percent on Monday and Tuesday, 15 percent on Wednesday and Thursday, and 10 percent on Friday. Base your scheduling profile to ensure continuous productivity and use of equipment and employees. No matter how you plan the work, you must schedule work for Friday, as this is necessary to your overall productivity, and starts your Monday without any downtime. Do not forget that all repairs must be scheduled, including vehicles that are towed in. Based on parts availability, the towed-in vehicles are great candidates to be scheduled for Thursdays and Fridays, as are those drivable vehicles that have repair days exceeding five working days.

If you were to be scheduling based on the data in Table 3, you will plan to bring in 80.32 hours per day. Of course, you may not get the exact hours each day, so you may carry over or lower the hours for the next day. This is a very basic and manual starting point for repair scheduling. When scheduling, record the customer name and total repair hours as per the estimate (see Table 4).You may also want to record the vehicle and insurance company if applicable. This information will be a great value as you get more detailed in scheduling and tracking cycle times. As you place a new job on the schedule, begin to deduct the hours scheduled from those available. As you can see from Table 4, this facility should have scheduled more vehicles/hours in on Wednesday and less on Thursday. Overall, for the week the shop did well. The goal is to keep all technicians productive throughout the week.

This starting point will provide the structure and habit of what is required for proper repair scheduling. Once you begin with the basics of bringing in the hours needed to keep all technicians productive, you can then being to look more in depth to improve the whole production process. By this I mean you will plan the repair based on hours for each production department. Knowing the utilization and actual hours worked during attended hours of your technicians will ensure more accurate repair scheduling. The data needed to properly schedule repairs into a collision repair facility are available when you are tracking your KPIs. The only variable left unaccounted for after this process implementation is the "human factor" of your employees. When I figure this out, I will pass on the information to you.

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SCHEDULING EFFECTIVELY

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There are guiding principles necessary to effectively schedule work in a collision repair center. These will facilitate maximum productive efficiency while using existing facility layout and technician head count. It will also help ensure predictable repair cycle time and the managing and meeting of customers' expectations.

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Repair scheduling guiding principles are as follows:

* WRITE A COMPLETE ESTIMATE, REFLECTING THE ACTUAL DAMAGE: Writing a complete estimate will allow for allocations of the correct number of hours relevant to each of the production departments. The estimate must reflect the actual damage a vehicle has sustained due to the loss.

* ASSESS THE AVAILABLE HOURS TO FACILITATE THE REPAIR: The available hours are based on the actual technician's hours that are worked (attended) during a given period and the sold (flagged) hours during the same period. The hours will change based on the technician's efficiency and skill set.

* DO NOT SCHEDULE A REPAIR WITHOUT THE AVAILABLE TIME: Scheduling without hours available will result in huge inefficiencies in the production area and significantly impact cycle time.

* DO NOT PROMISE WHAT CANNOT BE DELIVERED: If you cannot start on a drivable vehicle on the day a customer requests for an appointment date, be honest. If it is a four-day repair and you cannot start on it until Tuesday, explain this to the customer. Also, always explain to your customers what may affect the completion of a repair on the "promised" delivery date.

* OVER-DELIVER ON CUSTOMERS' EXPECTATIONS: If that four-day repair happens to be complete in three, you now have a very happy customer. Remember, you set customers' expectations.

[Author Affiliation]

Stacy Bartnik is an automotive industry consultant and trainer for Carter & Carter International. She is also a Gold Pin member of CIC and currently is co-chair of the Public Affairs/Marketing Committee. She also is on the Board of Directors for the National Auto Body Council (NABC) and serves as the chair for both the Collision Repair Industry PRIDE Awards committee and Collision Repair Industry PRIDE Month Committee.