Use shop efficiency
Use shop efficiency
Track it. Billable hours divided by technician hours…it’s that easy. Guesstimation won’t really tell you who the top technicians in your shop are. Tracking efficiency not only allows you to compare techs with one another, but also can help with goal setting for each season. Many dealership management systems make it simple to track efficiency, allowing techs to clock in and out of jobs with a single click of the mouse.
Share it. Let your employees know how they’re doing. It’s hard for someone to improve something they can’t measure. A tech’s individual efficiency can at least be brought up and discussed during employee reviews. But a better idea would be to…
Post it. Create some friendly competition among your team. In fact, dealer consultant David Parker says that merely by posting each tech’s efficiency somewhere in the dealership, overall shop efficiency typically increases by 10 percent, purely motivated by pride. These numbers are useless if they don’t inspire the shop to collectively push for improvement every day. Greater efficiency means more revenue from this valuable department.
Rayburn’s Marine World (Ranked 27) in Kelowna, British Columbia, is a prime example of fully vetting tech efficiency. Not only does the dealership track the figure for each shop employee, but it also includes the most recent numbers on his or her pay stub and posts the percentages daily in the service area so all can
compare and contrast how they are doing against their fellow techs. In addition, the company has tied a bonus plan to efficiency. Each technician earns $1 per hour extra for efficiency above 75 percent, $2 for above 85 percent, $3 for above 95, $4 for above 105 percent and so on. The structure increased revenues 30 percent for 2006, the first full season it was implemented.
