The key to improving efficiency is to first effectively measure paint department productivity, something a lot of shops don't do very well, Blickenstaff said.
There are three key measurements: paint hours, repair orders and paint labor sales. That last measurement is actually the same as paint hours, but measured in terms of dollars rather than time.
"Every job in the body department is different," Blickenstaff says. "But the paint department uses pretty much the same process regardless of the job. So it's much more automatable than the body department. You use the same products, the same procedures and process steps whether you are painting two panels or six."There are key items that effect paint department capacity: selling effectiveness, space utilization, technician productivity and booth use. If you want to increase capacity, those are the four things you must measure and maximize, he said.
On the sales side, shops need to effectively sell paint labor in the front office. This is measured by comparing paint hours to the number of repair orders.
Space utilization is measured by the number of stalls per technician. "You want to reduce the number of stalls per tech," Blickenstaff says. "We are always challenged in this industry to get more people in the same workspace."
Technician productivity is a common measurement, but shops don't necessarily take the correct steps to improve those numbers. "The things that impact productivity really boil down to a lack of communication," Blickenstaff says. "There's a lack of knowing what to do."
Booth use may be the biggest challenge for owners. "The booth is your narrowest constraint," Blickenstaff says. "You have to maximize booth cycle time, but a lot of paint booths are under utilized."Several factors can be a drag on booth productivity. Blickenstaff says shops should make sure that cars don't sit in the booth once they've baked and cooled down, and the only thing that should take place in the booth is painting – no checking the color match, or doing any final prep work.
"You always have to have vehicles prepped," he says. "To feed that narrowest constraint, you have to have a car prepped at all times."
For instance, in many shops, the first car never enters the booth until an hour or more after the shop opens. "Always have a car prepped at the end of the day, so you can be ready to paint as soon as the painter comes in," Blickenstaff says.
Blickenstaff emphasized that measurement is the key improving throughput.
"Like anything else in life, you can't manage something if you don't measure it," he says. "When you measure things, they tend to improve just because they are being measured. Give your people a scorecard and tell them how they are doing. If you do that, they tend to step it up a little bit. Nobody wants to be a loser, but you have to tell them what it is to win."
