Automotive Repair Shop Scheduling- It's Probably Costing You Money

Gotta love the floor wiring harness replacement and transmission slipping and its scheduled for one hour as a waiter with the customer sitting in waiting room.....

The coffin method is very annoying. The shop I work at has been like this. Packed parking lot, can't even move anything around. Slows production way down to many to keep track of

Back in the day before my back failed and I had my shop ; I would use putting someone in a rental as a tool to take the worry out of " is my car done " . Gave techs room. And Gave me a tool to say to a customer if we get the ok to do this work I will put you in a rental for two days. This Gave me great relationship with the rental company. So we were able to stack billable hours .

After doing this for 20 years there is no exact science to this, there never will be. A few things we do. No waiters. None. When writing up a customer we will ALWAYS ask, " When do you need your vehicle done by" You would be surprised how many extra DAYS this will give you, which gives you flexibility in the schedule and pressure off the techs. Oil changes and the small stuff have to be done, thats how we find work. We do a set number of oil changes a day. All of our most successful months have been busy, but not chaotic. Some of our worst months have been insanely chaotic. Slower is faster.

Well the problem where I'm at is, is a corporation and it sucks. They have a system where you as a customer can schedule your own appointments online and order your services online. Well that would be OK if it didn't over book and showed what times that we have a available. I've had 5 people schedule for the same time and had got pissed off when they got sent away because we couldn't get to them. It's reasons like that I hate working automotive and want to get out of it again. The only reason why I got back in it was because I needed the money. And not only do they want you to over book, they want quantity over quality, and wonder why when shit doesn't get done, or when they have so many come backs, and things like that.

Great Vid Mike. Im a Tech currently and do a lot of side work. Scheduling things to be efficient is key and I am lucky to have a writer I can work with that schedules vehicle efficiently .

Great video Mike and talking about the importance of efficiency in the shop.Keeping things flowing the right way is what it is all about.I would rather do a oil change if like you said everyone else is elbow deep into there repair and i got a second to spare plus it keeps things moving.

I work at a dealer. My GM constantly over books us. We are currently beta testing a different RO system. Needless to say we are supposed to limit tickets so we have time to sell stuff. Last week it was pretty dead up in till friday. My GM decided to play service advisor. Instead of the 60 tickets that we are suppose to stay at. He puts us at 90. Nothing was able to be sold with all those tickets. He does this all the time and never learns. Everyone in every department hates him.

You got this down. Very well spoken many shops need to see this video and take note

Denial of a scheduled oil change is a quick way to be told have a nice day "Next in line!!!" lol

Book every available hour so theres no time for any up-sells. No time to do pads and discs when you book 7 services per person

we bring in 12 hours of work for each tech and figure it out amongst ourselves.

Thanks.

That's funny (oil cooler), We have a dodge that just came in our shop needing an oil cooler.

My strategy is this - techncian capability comes first. I'm dispatching to strengths so my techs that are strong in specific areas have appointment types that only they get. For instance brakes, electrical diag, driveability etc. Aside from maintenance services, nothing is coming in that doesn't include a testing routine so we're able to fairly accurately dispatch. Next we use that techs performance over the last 6 months coupled with their target or goal production. Is the tech capable of 4 hours a day? Maybe 6? 12? Next we use the average hours per RO... In our shop the MLAP is 3.5hr/ro for the advisors (pretty much the national standard in indys). Some techs get 2, some techs get 3. We usually cap at 4 as it kills hr/ro and aro above that. We use an online scheduling system which automates 99% of this process.

Im the same way, im always grabbing the next Repair Order regardless of what it is. Keeps things flowing the way they should👨‍🔧waiters love me bro

Mike, I’d like to get some back story on you so I understand your perspective. Since you first started working in shops for other people, how many shops and how many years total? Thanks!

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Doctors office the same, overbook let everyone wait Car dealer overbook let everyone wait Dealing with angry upset customers is part of the job, it "IS" the system. Dealing with unknown and an infinite amount of variables including the customer... You can't be truly efficient, you may get lucky and that's a win but not the norm or predictable long term.

I wish we had writers schedule appointments rather than the bdc people which literally know nothing about fixing cars. Also writers upselling work and not accounting for it when they take others appointments is a huge issue