Ten Tips for Improving Your Collision Repair Operations During This Downtime

Facility Maintenance and Spring Cleaning – With a lower car count, now is a good time for a thorough cleaning of the entire facility. Clean and sanitize all walls, counters, surfaces and floors. Consider interior and exterior painting to give everything an updated, fresh look – a project your team members may tackle while they aren’t as busy repairing vehicles. And now that the shop is clean, it’s an ideal time to explore opportunities to keep it that way, such as a dustless sanding system.

1. Equipment Maintenance – This is an ideal time to perform the annual maintenance on equipment and tools and make needed repairs. If it’s time to replace equipment, now is a good time to negotiate with equipment suppliers to make those purchases. It is imperative that you research and purchase equipment and tools that are OEM approved based on the mix of vehicles your facility repairs.

2. Inventory Management – Conduct physical inventory of all of the supplies, parts and materials you have in stock and determine how to order and use more efficiently. Make sure equipment is correctly inventoried so you can accurately depreciate on your financials.

3. Organize Parts and Supplies – Tired of searching for parts or looking at a messy supply room? There are a variety of shelving, rack and cabinet system that make finding the products needed for each job easy and efficient. It’s important to add a tracking system so as parts and supplies are consumed, they are re-ordered promptly, thus reducing delays on repairs.

4. Paint Department Improvement and Cleaning – The paint booth is the vital part of the body shop, but if it isn’t taken care of, breakdowns can be costly. Deep clean the booth and remove overspray, change filters, clean pits and update lighting. Reapply booth coating or sand down and repaint inside and out. Consider adding a booth wrap on the inside walls and floors to make future cleanup easier. Also look at improving air movement for waterborne paint conversion. This may be the time to consider upgrading from your current booth to one that is more efficient to operate.

5. Shop Process Improvements – Are there bottlenecks in the workflow in your shop? Are you wasting time moving cars around rather than repairing them? An evaluation of your shop layout and repair process can identify new opportunities to improve how vehicles move through the repair process in your shop, increasing efficiency and decreasing unpaid time.

6. Employee Training – Technicians and team members frequently complain about lost work time due to training, so now is the perfect time to participate in online training and coaching programs.

7. Employee Reviews – A key factor in retaining and growing team members is feedback and career pathing. Annual or ongoing reviews often get put on a back burner in busier times, so this an ideal opportunity to conduct reviews with your employees, get their feedback and map out how to grow together.

8. Year-End Financial Evaluation and Budget Planning – As you close your books on 2019, this is the time to conduct a thorough financial review with your accountant. If you’re part of an MSO, review your financial plan with your peers and field operations team. Together, you can identify where you could cut costs and spend more efficiently, as well as evaluate how you can recover typically lost revenue through better repair mapping and tracking.

9. Manage Your Parts Orders and Vehicle Intake – During this pandemic time, a collision repair facility is looking to take any jobs in. Make sure you verify parts availability before you disassemble drivable vehicles to ensure you can get the parts to repair them in a timely manner. If your need an immediate repair you can reach out to the mechanics of tesla repair shop in Clearwater FL. They have experienced staff to help collision repair cars of the customers, in good times and challenging ones