LWS: Service Territory Potential

One of the true challenges in the parts and service business is to determine the successful penetration of the market: the market capture rates. This is another term used to represent your “market share.” How well you are looking after the needs of the customer is the real question at this point.

With this class, we develop a “market potential” model which can be used to determine the purchase potential of each machine. With this tool, an overall potential can be developed for each customer. This is a tool that can be used by management and the sales force to develop strategies to improve performance. We deal with the creation of the model and all the variables within in this comprehensive program.

It all starts with the machine population. That is the list of equipment owned by each customer, and the work application and hours worked each year. With this and the statistics available from the OEM’s and their mean time between failure facts, a reasonable degree of precision can be developed. The major components can be managed in this manner: engines, transmissions, and hydraulic systems.  The wear rates of ground engaging tools and undercarriage can assist in the life of these wear parts. Finally, we have maintenance as the last element. Don’t miss this market potential class.

LWS: Service Work Order Process

The core function within every Service Department is the work order process. Despite that, little attention seems to have been given to this most important function. During this program we will take you through the complete process from the “Service Request” up to and including the Invoicing of the finished job. The process is not complicated, but there are a lot of details which, if mishandled, will not satisfy either the customer or the dealership.

The only group within an equipment dealership that allows a business to differentiate itself from the competition in the market is the Service Department. Yet the typical dealership leaves the Service Department and the dealer business system to establish the methods to be used. This program addresses the complete process from labor posting to outside purchases, from ordering parts to returning them, from introducing the structure of the job to the scheduling of work. We will address them all.

The individual elements will be covered in complete detail in further programs but the basic structure to employ will be detailed in this session. You will be able to return to your work and review how your structure relates to these “Best Practices,” and begin the transformation of the department from a place where repairs and maintenance are performed to a productive, high quality, and safe service shop. This is the type of work order process that attracts talented people to work within it, and retains the customers who use it.

LWS: Service Organization

The organization of a service department is about more than technicians and clerks and management. Designing the structures is about facts and not feelings. The time for shop and field jobs starts the design. The technology, tooling, and processes used take us the rest of the way. Exploring the service department organization from a factual foundation is the goal of this program.

The density of supervision to technician has long been in dispute in this Industry. This program aims to put that dispute to rest by providing definitive measures of labor efficiency and quality at the forefront, and not having “cost” drive decisions about those two fundamental elements of a service department. From Roman times to the current US Army supervision has been a constant and defining attribute of high performance. We discuss the appropriate levels of supervision and provide a model for the participants to use for their business.

The clerical support in a Service Department covers all aspects of record management, as well as labor controls, job controls, job process and work in process, as well as everything to do with warranty and technical documentation, either in printed or electronic format. The dealer business system is critical in supporting this function. This program will be of benefit to everyone in management and supervision of the service function.

LWS: Service Standards of Performance

What does it look like when it is right? Performance in a Service Department must maximize efficiency, maximize quality, and satisfy customers.  The first step to understanding and accepting what needs to be done is to have meaningful, measureable and achievable standards. How to develop your own standards and yet continue to reach for excellence is the theme in this program.

Individual employees want to do a good job, yet many do not know what doing a good job entails. This is a fundamental requirement of good management: communicating performance expectations and measures to the employees. In this program we will cover the fundamentals exposed by Patrick Lencioni in his important book “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job.”  Anonymity, Irrelevance and Immeasureability are the three symptoms of this disease which leads to the “Sunday Blues.”

Each employee can also deliver more than they think they can, yet each is fundamentally lazy. Leadership methods to entice or motivate employees to deliver good performance for coworkers, customers and the Company will be discussed in this extremely important program.

LWS: Service Shop Floor Scheduling

Our customers all want predictable, consistent, high quality service work. But, equally important to them is a completion date for the work you are doing for them. You need to be able to provide a completion date, and you need to meet that date. To do that requires very specific activities and deliveries. Parts, labor, supplies, and outside purchases all are involved. This program will help you learn how to establish and manage shop schedules. To date, in most surveys on customer attitudes, customers indicate that they want “honesty” in the top five. That should tell us that completion dates, which are rarely met, is an area that needs a lot of attention.

This program leads to the items that are required in developing a schedule that can be met for all customers and internal departments. The typical rationales used to explain away why completion dates are rarely met are exposed and dealt with in a manner that allows acceptance of the need to change approach.

Each day, each technician needs to be given eight hours of labor, but no more than eight hours of labor. This requires that each job have work elements that are never more than eight hours in length, so that the answer to the question “will you complete everything I gave you to do today?” will be either yes or no. If yes, then the schedule is intact. If the answer is no – that will be dealt with in this program.

LWS: Service Flat Rate Standard Times

Customers want to know how much the repair work will cost before they approve the job you will perform. We have to provide this important information. In order to do this, we must manage our repairs with job codes. We must determine standard jobs, and then track them every time we perform them. In this way, we can develop a “standard time” which is different than average time. You will learn the secrets of flat rating in this very detailed program.

The job code structure is where this begins. The manufacturers provide a job code for use with warranty jobs. This is the same logic that dealers must use to manage the repair and maintenance jobs. The code needs to be easy to understand and search out in a file or on a system. Once we have the job codes, then the inspections and job structures need to follow the same logic. How to develop the job codes and then utilize them to develop and manage history is a critical element of this program.

The determination of the standard time is also misunderstood by most. It is NOT about the average time to perform the job. Learn the perils of assuming all the risk on jobs, and how to provide for those risks with standard times. This program will be of value to anyone in management who wants to move away from a job shop structure.

LWS: Service Labor Efficiency

Labor efficiency and labor quality are the two most important performance measures for supervision of a service department. The way in which you measure labor efficiency leads you to be able to manage labor efficiency.  Detailed definitions and calculations, as well as tried and true methods to achieve high labor efficiency are the hallmarks of this program.

When employees are given specific direction the results are impressive. Without it, the results can be disastrous.  Billing efficiency, or the amount of time that can be billed versus paid, is not the same as labor efficiency. Labor efficiency is owned by the technician, but is directly influenced by the methods used to schedule work by the first level supervisor. This brings together inspections, job segmentation, standard jobs coding, and standard job times. Fundamentals of scheduling then can be applied and allow the performance of the work by a service department to become predictable.

Finally, the elements that interfere with good labor efficiency are exposed and suggestions developed for each so that they can be overcome. The customer will benefit greatly from predictable completion dates which will be the “intended” consequence of this program for all service management and supervision.

LWS: Service Pricing

Too often, dealerships call around to the neighboring dealers and ask for their service pricing. While it is understandable to want to know what the pricing is in your territory, it is more important to develop the price structure that is required to attract the business and also produce the profit necessary to operate a dealership.

We will expose the “peanut butter” labor pricing for what it is – an over-simplified, unrealistic pricing mechanism – and provide an alternative to consider. It all starts from the skills of the men, as well as the degree of difficulty of the work involved. This requires that we know the skills of the men we employ, and then use their skills on jobs that match that skill. Consider that the wage that is paid to the men is a direct reflection of the skills that the men have, and we have a starting point to determine labor rates. It is called a “wage multiple.”

This methodology has been in use for a long time, but not by sufficiently large numbers of dealerships.  Currently, most of us over-price low skill work and underprice the high skill work. We will define and describe the wage multiple so that, upon the completion of this class, the participants will be able to return to work and recalculate their labor rates with this new method and evaluate whether or not they should apply it in their Service Department.

LWS: Service Inspections

Customers, for the dealership service department, have grown used to performing service maintenance and minor repairs either themselves, or with the help of independent mechanics. This has led them to the conclusion that repairs are easily done and that they can diagnose problems with their equipment without much help from anybody.

While it is true that some of the customers, employees, and independent mechanics can perform very technical work, it still remains the dealership that has access to all the technical expertise that is provided by the manufacturers of the equipment.

The parallel that will be presented in this program is that of the doctor. The technician performing the inspection is a qualified analyst, trained to know what to look for and what the symptoms mean. The inspections that we are talking about here are diagnostic inspections to be performed prior to conducting any repairs, quality control inspections to be done after work has been completed, and machine appraisals which would be required of machines being traded in or being purchased used.

This program on inspections will provide you with an outline – a process – to follow in developing the inspection programs listed above for your dealership. This outline will allow you to improve all repair processes as well as have a more consistent condition report on used equipment.

LWS: Service Time Management

Time is one of the many elements of our lives that we deal with every day. It is one of those elements, however, that does not change.  We do not have the ability to add more time to a day. As a result of that fact it is important that we use all of the time that we have as effectively and as efficiently as possible.

Rarely do we accomplish that. We do things over and over again, we defer conclusions and decisions, we get interrupted with unrelated issues, we have to deal with meetings and the internet and the telephone. There is a lot to the use of your time.

This course will introduce you to different styles of work and a series of steps that you can consider to more effectively manage your time. At the conclusion of the course you will have been exposed to a wide range of options for you to consider that will assist you in managing your time more effectively and efficiently.  Don’t miss out on this powerful learning program.