Boost your paint shop throughput

Quick Changeover is a systematic approach for eliminating or reducing non-value added activities and time in the setup and/or teardown of any process within production. This allows manufacturers to more quickly and efficiently change from one product to another. As a critical component of lean manufacturing, Quick Changeover provides a foundation for gaining critical capacity to meet customer demand and grow operations.

Can a collision center benefit from implementing Quick Changeover principles and techniques? Absolutely. Applying Quick Changeover principles and techniques was an obvious fit within the refinish operation. More specifically, it is a highly relevant methodology for optimizing booth cycles for any shop faced with the need to gain capacity and throughput, but currently is held back by its booth cycle time.

“If shop owners and managers feel they need more booth capacity because they’re experiencing a bottle neck of cars waiting to move through the paint shop or painters working lots of overtime to keep up, or say there’s a need to constantly re-prioritize which job will be completed next, then focusing efforts on the paint shop is the appropriate place to start,” says David Knapp, senior manager, with PPG’s MVP Business Solutions, which offers a training program to help shops implement the Quick Changeover approach.

“The approach is quite simple. First, a shop puts together a team of people to observe the paint shop process and record what happens. The aim is to focus on the process — not the people. In practical application, it requires only a couple of hours of training to familiarize those involved with the thought processes behind Quick Changeover, and the tools employed with this approach,” Knapp says.

Once a shop understands the principles of the approach — essentially to streamline production by eliminating unnecessary operations and instituting process changes to shorten or eliminate other operations — the team can go to its shop floor to begin an audit process.

“We actually use stopwatches to capture times for every step of the refinish process, not to point out what is wrong, but to identify opportunities to improve,” says Robb Power, manager, MVP Business Solutions. “The idea is to identify those tasks that extend the booth cycle time as well as prevent the booth from processing cars.”

Shops applying the approach are often truly surprised by all of the unnecessary steps — those that shouldn’t be performed in the booth, and how long some stages of the refinish process are actually taking. Even collision centers that are doing an excellent job of getting cars painted and delivered become enlightened. “As a shop manager, I was excited about finding ways to improve our throughput in our paint department; but the paint team, however, didn’t share

the same excitement,” said Todd Bonecutter, general manager, Glenbrook Collision Center in Ft. Wayne, Ind. “They compared themselves to goldfish in a bowl and were reluctant to be watched and evaluated.”

However, once the team became more comfortable with the principles of the approach and how to find improvements, the team was more at ease, Bonecutter says.

What shops discover during the observation process can then be discussed and used to develop an improvement plan based on the specific findings and needs of the shop. Bonecutter says that the exercise can prove overwhelming because of all the inefficiencies he discovered and the questions he had on how to implement a plan not only for the paint operation, but the metal shop as well. In the end, however, he got a complete buy-in from his entire staff on making the required changes. “I have several ‘old school’ techs and painters — you know, the ones that avoid change,” he explained. “Amazingly, they are the ones leading the charge on our action plan. Anytime you can take a good process and make it better, you win both inside and outside your business.”

Improvement plans for shops applying the Quick Changeover approach can include a wide range of actions, such as:

• Limiting booth activities to spraying, flashing and baking

• Defining and standardizing paint prep activities so that the next job is always ready for the booth

• Product upgrades and recommendations

• Scheduling and policy changes

• Booth refurbishment

Collision centers applying the approach can typically gain additional booth cycles per day per booth — without spending any additional money. The Quick Changeover approach is further evidence of the benefits that can be gained operating as a lean enterprise.

“If we can get folks to simply focus on not missing any booth cycles, most collision centers would see an immediate increase in capacity,” Power says. “Those that will do the hard work of challenging ‘the way we have always done things’ using methods like Quick Changeover have the potential to radically improve throughput in their shops.”