Jan. 14, 2015—Mitchell, a provider of technology, connectivity and information solutions to the property and casualty claims and collision repair industries, announced Tuesday its enhanced Vehicle Location feature that allows shop managers to track a vehicle's repair process from start to finish.

By managing the repair process closely with Vehicle Location, shops can streamline and speed up the workflow of the repair team.

"The shop marketplace has grown more complex than ever and customers demand a high level of quality and efficiency with repairs," Brian Elmi, Mitchell's director of product development, said in a release. "Vehicle Location allows production managers to identify where a vehicle is in the repair process, whether that vehicle is ahead or behind the average timeline, and what resources should be shifted to ensure a successful repair. Managers now have better visibility into repair cycles and staff is better informed about the progress of a vehicle."

The updated Vehicle Location feature delivers a tablet and mobile friendly way to search and update vehicles during a repair. It also delivers improved visualization tools that allow for any employee within a shop to view reports and analyze repair process data. The new Production Management tool is part of the RepairCenter management solution and has been designed to:

• Enable tracking and updating of Vehicle Location for individual jobs effortlessly with Timeline, a visual representation of where the vehicle is in the repair process.

• Provide real-time capacity information of WIP to identify bottlenecks and efficiencies by department.

• Allow printing/viewing/reporting to complement the vehicle update process and provide shops with data to react on body shop production key performance indicators (KPIs), including Cycle Time, Severity, Rental Expenses, and Customer satisfaction scores.