The Blueprint to Success in Repair Planning

There’s nothing like a sports analogy to make a point about business. “Skate to where the puck is going, not where it’s been.” “You’ll never hit the ball if you don’t swing.” And, perhaps the heavyweight champion of these sorts of aphorisms, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth,” attributed to legendary prizefighter Mike Tyson, though probably not phrased in those exact terms. 

The quote’s an all-timer—but perhaps gives the wrong idea about planning. It’s not that planning is ultimately useless once confronted with reality, it’s that a plan is ultimately going to be tested. And those who have prepared and planned properly are going to be ready when that first punch arrives. 

We’re talking, of course, about repair planning, or blueprinting, if you like. It’s blueprinting that helps avoid those sucker punches that come up in the repair process. And if you’re not doing it, “You absolutely need to start doing it,” says Will Latuff, owner of Latuff Brothers Auto Body in St. Paul, Minnesota. “Because it’s the best way to serve your customer.” 

Collision industry veteran and I-CAR instructor Mark Bono offers another priority: “I always tell people in my classes, in the office, you really have one job, and that is to give the body men what they need, everything we do. I try to explain to people that every business out there plans, the good businesses that succeed, that do well.” 

Bono offers the example of McDonald’s as a business that has become the behemoth that it has due to planning. Every decision has a purpose, and every innovation is designed to eliminate inefficiency and waste. But a car, of course, is not a cheeseburger. 

“Every vehicle, every manufacturer’s procedures, are unique,” says Bono. “… So, the planning has to be done on every single vehicle, unlike another business, but it still ends up in the same result. If we know everything we need going into it, the production is going to happen much faster.” 

Changing on the fly  

For shops that are still using traditional estimating, change can be difficult. That’s especially true for the employees tasked with learning new procedures and processes. Latuff’s shop has been blueprinting since 2007, but he recalls that initially, there was skepticism. 

“I think some of the resistance initially from the crew was kind of shock, because, we were like, ‘We can see a better way to do it, we want to do it,’” Latuff says. “And then there was pushback, fear of change, or, ‘How is this going to affect my pay?’ And then we had to work through those things.” 

Both Latuff and Bono say the key to making this transition is to be committed while also communicating. This change is happening, and the shop is fully committed to it. But you’re also going to be open and communicating throughout the process so that everyone is on the same page. 

“Once you start down the lane, you need to just have continual dialogue with the people who are doing the work to make sure that your intended outcome is actually what’s happening,” continues Latuff, “and that you're not running over people in the process, that they’re going along the journey with you.” 

Bono agrees, saying the resistance to change is probably the hardest part. People instinctively want to fall back on how they’ve always done something. But “how we’ve always done it” can be a killer in business.  

“If you’re not continually communicating what your vision is,” Bono says, “and celebrating the wins, and making them see when something happens the way it’s supposed to, making them see what just happened, and how it was better, if you're not doing those things, then the progression is never going to happen.” 

An idea Bono gives in his classes is to try to “do one.” Take one car and do the blueprinting by the book, do a disassembly—“Stop calling it teardown,” says Bono, “ask for teardown, you're going to get what you asked for. Ask for disassembly, and you're going to get disassembly;" Move the car out of their stall, and then they don’t see it again until everything is done and the car comes back in their stall. Seeing the whole process and how fast the car moves becomes a win that everyone can celebrate.  

Moving the goalposts  

Bono says that it’s a mistake to look at repair planning as merely a different way of estimating — it’s a far-reaching change to how a shop operates. And even a lot of the ones who say they repair plan aren’t doing it right. And those that are doing it right can always get better. 

“It’s always a never-ending goal, you’re always going to move the goalpost,” Bono says. “Every time you get better, you’re going to move the goalpost. ‘How do we get better than this?’” 

Change also takes time and patience. Back to the idea of committing to the change, Bono says it can take a year before employees can believe you’re serious about the change. “And then, after a year, maybe after two years, it’ll start to become culture, and it’ll start to be, ‘This is the way we do things.’” 

Latuff says that initially, they had a dedicated disassembly person, which was great for documenting the damage, but they had a disorganized process that made it hard when someone else had to put the car back together. Over time, other techs in the shop became accustomed to the disassembly process, “and so then the estimators were going to the technician that was doing the work and doing the blueprint there, and then that technician would usually put the car back together.” 

Baby steps are what Bono advises as the prudent way to proceed. After all, he described blueprinting as more than just a replacement for estimating; it’s changing how the shop operates. It might be tempting to think you need to do everything all at once to set yourself up for success, but instead it’s better to crawl before you can walk. Send your technicians to classes. Talk to other owners and find out what works for them. Because a haphazard approach could lead to the loss of your most important resource — your people.  

“There’s a lot of people who disagree with me and say, ‘No, you should go in there and change the whole shop,’” Bono says. “I just know that with a lot of shops, and the fact that we can’t find people — you might have been able to do that in the old days, where you could just let people go and there was another person available. Well, now they’re not available.” 

Ultimately, it’s best to think of this transition as more of a mindset shift than anything else. Yes, process changes and capital improvements are to come down the road, but you won’t have a successful transition without the will to do it, bringing your people along with you, and forgetting about what may have worked in the past. And that’s the blueprint for success.