As part of our conversation about the auto parts shortage that has plagued the market since 2021, Charles Aubry, Patrick Piché and I also discussed auto estimation and how valuable it is. This article highlights my interview with Patrick Piché from Akzonobel. Let’s first recall [...]
This has become a daily situation; there is one coveted part left at the dealership and three body shops buy it at the same time. Only one of them will get it, creating mayhem for the other two. Next arrival: days, months? These days, anything [...]
Whenever they can, Charles Aubry and his wife watch the show My 600 Lb Life. While reflecting on the collision shop industry, Charles draws a parallel between the drama around the show’s subjects and shops that maintain excessive work-in-progress (WIP) loads. He calls it “My life [...]
A few Tips to Get Through the Crisis. 2021 will have seen a return to the repair levels of 2019. Of course, many entrepreneur collision shops suffered a lot from the travel pause that took place at the height of COVID-19. Now that we are [...]
In the last few articles, we have learned and unravelled six of our seven performance rules for optimizing capacity at collision shops. In summary, a good communication with the team, a sound methodology and a strong capacity planning and analysis tool are the three main [...]
You order a part from a recycler. It’s a nice quality A part. You even saw the picture. However, upon reception you realize that it’s more of a C or D quality part. Your supplier may have oversold the part’s quality, or the part may [...]
We often hear the usual: “I get all my vehicles to repair on Mondays and I deliver them (heaven willing) on Fridays. I've been doing this for 20 years, and it works.” Why change a winning formula? What is the point of receiving and delivering [...]
A repair appointment is given to a customer. This simple act happens a thousand times a day across Canada. What the customer doesn’t see is the thinking behind deciding on the repair start date. Ideally, it would be the date when the customer drops off [...]
It’s autumn 2021 and the labour shortage is in full swing. Even before this endemic labour shortage hit the market, the collision shop world was already suffering from a significant lack of succession. It’s hard to believe that we now live in a world where if [...]
