When planning our capacity, it’s quite simple: we want to bring to our collision shop as much work as possible, while keeping a workload that makes us efficient, so that we can deliver in the optimal cycle time for our operations.
The severity grid is an important planning tool. Lately, we discussed seasonality, which can impact your grid. However, the factor that undoubtedly has the greatest impact on your severity grid is your location.
Indeed, your location will greatly influence your demand. Canada is vast, and workshops can experience 50 shades of geography. The examples are endless:
- Your region has vast fields: freezing rain and strong winds sweep across the country roads built in the middle of the plains.
- The deer population is out of control in your hometown.
- The pandemic has brought 25,000 new souls to your small town, and the street network is not ready.
- One route segment is particularly dangerous.
- Your area has zones where traffic jams are frequent and significant.
Even the type of local population and its driving culture can massively influence the type, quantity, and complexity of the work you receive in your collision shop.
The key is to know how to plan based on your customers’ reality, in order to optimize the workload by severity, with the objective of being as efficient as possible. But severity is not everything: at Progi, we believe that combining a collision shop’s severity grid with its actual workload provides optimal planning results.
Naturally, you can easily configure your severity grid with ProgiPlanning. If you keep an eye on what’s going on in your area, it might inspire you to optimize your grid. That way, you can be ready to receive the work when it comes in, and you will be able to take it at the best possible time for your collision shop.
From the whole Progi team, I wish you an excellent year 2024.
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Authors: Alexandre Rocheleau and Nelson Guilbert
Editing and translation: Krystel Henley-Rocheleau
