Winter’s here, how should I adjust the production in my collision shop?

We are Canadians. And in Canada, as in the Game of Thrones show, Winter is coming. This is an inescapable reality.

And winter, in the collision shop industry across Canada, is what we call our high season. Soon, order books will explode and the yards will be full of non-drivable vehicles.

You need to take action

If you run your shop with a severity grid as part of your capacity planning strategy (which I highly recommend), now is the time to take a break. Take a moment to evaluate how accident severity in your region will be impacted by winter conditions, and adjust accordingly.

Readjust and don’t forget that after winter comes spring

Monitor week after week how well your winter schedule is meeting demand, and make ongoing adjustments as much as possible. Make the most of the season by optimizing your severity grid and taking into account the seasonality of your geographic region.

Naturally, as winter ends, the milder the weather gets, the more we change our severity grid to readjust.

Past is no guarantee of future

I ask you to be vigilant and adjust from week to week, because the coming winter is never the same as the one before. But also because life and the world change.

First change: the weather is becoming more and more accurate, and is announced earlier and earlier. Schools now close even before the snow begins to fall. Just a few years ago, school closures were only announced in the morning, when the news was on. Nowadays, we can predict better.

Second change: remote work has become an everyday reality in many industries. This is the gift that the pandemic has left us. If it snows, we work from home instead of moving around and taking risks. In this context, when the news announces a storm, cities see less drivers on their roads. There are fewer people taking risks with dangerous driving, and therefore fewer collisions.

Third change: cars are getting smarter, reducing the risk of collision with each technological advance. While this change is not having a great impact at the moment, it will become increasingly important over time, and we must be aware of it.

Conclusion

You already have a good severity grid, and you want to maintain your operational performance at a high level all year round. You need to be sensitive to internal and external changes that impact job offer or your collision shop capacity, and adjust along the way.

With ProgiPlanning, which evaluates your workload not only by severity, but also by percentage, you can reach your full potential at any time of year. If you want to build a good severity grid, but don’t know where to start, you may also be interested in the training program offered by Progi.

To get ProgiPlanning or register for the ProgiAcademy collision shop school, contact us here.