Standards of Performance Wednesday April 16th @ Noon Pacific

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Standards of Performance – WS8

 

What does it looks like when it is right? Performance in a Service Department must maximize efficiency, 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 webinar.

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 webinar 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 are 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 webinar.

Everyone needs to understand what we are trying to do that is true. But it is equally important that everyone accepts that our understanding of what we are trying to do is complete. Without understanding and acceptance we will never get commitment.

The time is now.

Shop Floor Scheduling – Wednesday April 16th @ 9:00 AM Pacific

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Shop Floor Scheduling – WS7

 

The 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, outside purchases all are involved. Learn how to establish and manage shop schedules. To date in most surveys on customer attitudes they 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 webinar 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 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 the schedule is intact. If no – that will be dealt with in this webinar.

If you could guarantee completion the work for a customer on a specific date and meet it…. how much do you think your service business would increase? This comprehensive webinar does just that. It exposes everything you need to do to succeed at meeting your “promise dates” or completion date.

The time is now.

 

 

Flat Rating/Standard Jobs Tuesday April 15tht at Noon Pacific time

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Flat Rating/Standard Jobs – WS6

 

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 everything time we perform them. Then we can develop a “standard time” which is different than average time. Learn the secrets of flat rating in this very detailed webinar.

The job code structure is where this starts. The manufacturers provide a job code for use with warranty jobs. It 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 webinar.

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 webinar will be of value to anyone in management who wants to move away from a job shop structure.

Until you satisfy your customer needs you will constantly be explaining things.  They want to know the price before they approve the work. They want to know when it will be ready for them to pick up. You cannot answer either question accurately unless you operate with standards jobs and flat rates. Don’t miss this comprehensive review of these two critical elements for service management.

The time is now.

 

Labor Efficiency – Tuesday April 15th at 9:00 AM Pacific

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Labor Efficiency – WS5

 

Efficiency and quality are the two most important performance measures for supervision of a service department. How you measure labor efficiency leads you to be able to manage labor efficiency. The detailed definitions and calculations as well as tried and true methods to achieve high labor efficiency are the hallmarks of this webinar.

When employees are given specific direction the results are impressive. Without it they can be disastrous. The billing efficiency, 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 webinar for all service management and supervision.

Concentrated information that will make a difference if how you operate your service business.

The time is now.

 

 

Service Webinars next week

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Don’t miss the final four webinars for the service department for the winter/spring period. Tuesday April 15th and Wednesday April 16th at 9:00 AM and Noon Pacific time. For more information please go to www.aednet.org or www.rjslee.com.

The time is now.

 

Service Webinars

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The final webinars for February are coming up this week. Go to aednet.org to register. There are two on Tuesday and two on Wednesday. Don’t miss them.

The time is now…

 

Service Organization February 20th 12:00 Noon Pacific

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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 webinar.

The density of supervision to technician has long been in dispute in this Industry. This webinar aims to put that dispute to rest by providing definitive measures of labor efficiency and quality in 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 webinar will be of benefit to everyone in management and supervision of the service function.

 

 

Service Labor Rates February 20th 9:00 AM Pacific

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Too often dealerships call around to the neighboring dealers and ask for their service pricing. While it is understandable to know what the pricing is in your territory it is more important to develop a 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 and the degree of difficulty of the work involved. That requires we must 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 under price high skill work. We will define and describe the wage multiple so that upon the completion of this webinar 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.

Service Work Order Process February 19th 12:00 Noon Pacific

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The core function within every Service Department is the work order process. Yet little attention seems to have been given to this most important function. Dureing this webinar we will take you through the complete process from teh “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 of 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 webinar 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 webinars 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 customers who use it.

Service Inspections February 19th 9:00 AM Pacific

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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 been 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 that will allow you to improve all repair processes as well as have a more consistent condition report on used equipment.