Numbered Parking Stalls

June 30, 2016
Criswell Collision Center’s numbered stalls help increase efficiency and productivity and aid with insurance relations

What It Is: Numbered repair stalls circling the perimeter of the body shop floor.

The Inspiration: Criswell Collision Center is set up like a circuit. Body shop manager Kevin Marvin says owner George Criswell had several designs for the shop floor during its inception, and one of them involved a centralized drive-thru paint shop with production surrounding it.

“It provides big aisleways down the middle so everybody can get through,” Marvin says. “[Technicians] can go from one side to the other without having to move something out of the way and avoid getting bottlenecked or backed up.”

Part of achieving that design meant setting up parking stalls around the paint booths.

What It Does: Seventy-two individual parking spaces were marked off around the edge of the repair floor.

“We wanted the spaces to be marked off to give the technicians generous working spaces, so that each space would allow them to get a car in there and work around it without being cramped up beside the next car,” Marvin says. “They know exactly where to park a car when they bring it in.”

“But if they have to, they can nudge them in closer if they need the extra space,” he adds.

Having numbered stalls allows insurance adjusters to find vehicles with ease.

“You send the insurance adjuster out to a certain stall, and he could look at the number and know where that car is located,” Marvin says.

How It’s Made: When designing the shop, Criswell worked with a local company that paints parking lots to set up the stall lines. Each stall is approximately 12 feet in width, giving the technicians a few extra feet of space between vehicles. The Cost: Marvin estimates the cost was around $1,000.

The ROI: Since the shop has always been outfitted with the parking stalls, Marvin says Criswell Collision cannot use improvements to justify costs. However, he says the shop’s efficiency and productivity has benefitted enough to easily cover the small investment.

“Just from the organization perspective, you’ve got some guidance for where to park cars, rather than just having everything willy-nilly out there,” he says. “They know right where to pull in and get set up right away.”

Through the shop’s CCC ONE management system, Marvin says he’s created a blueprint of the numbered stalls for a bird’s-eye view of production, allowing Criswell Collision to easily track KPIs stall by stall.

Marvin says the setup helps gain customers’ trust and obtain DRP contracts.

“There’s a sense of organization that helps when you’re parading people through there, showing them their car,” he says. “It gives you the impression, ‘If they’ve taken the time to do this, then obviously they’re going to do a good job on my car.’” “The same goes for insurance companies,” he adds. “Having a setup that makes their job easier, and having things in order helps them feel comfortable sending their customers to us.”

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