Work Status

A. Little Help

Author: Art Little
Subject: Managing work flow
Essential Reading: Shop Owner, Center Manager

When I was a young manager, I went to work for a shop that required me to manage work flow. At that time in my career that was unusual, because everywhere else I had worked they did not want me to even entertain the idea of managing work flow.

At all the other shops, they called me the manager. I had on a white shirt, but I was far from the manager. I was what is commonly known as a front man. It was my job to sell, handle the customers and collect the money. I was not allowed to manage work flow. The technicians let me know what the status of a repair was when the customer called and asked. That was pretty much my job description for the first few years I was in the business. You get the picture.

So, now I was the manager at my new job and I was not just the front man. My job description there was to sell, handle the customers, manipulate the shop’s work flow and then collect the money. I liked that because I worked on commission that was based on cash collected. It put me in control of my paycheck for the first time.

Now, instead of sitting in the office and waiting to see what was going to be delivered, I was the quarterback. It was more work than just selling, but I was willing to take on the extra responsibility because I felt like it gave me the control I needed to make more money.

My new boss was a very successful multiple-shop owner. All his shops had great locations and a lot of leads. He paid his managers more than anybody else in town, but he also expected more from his managers. It was pretty simple. He expected you to be accountable for everything that happened in the shop. Every manager he hired had to go through a training and testing process that was designed to cull out managers who were not qualified.

His philosophy was to invest company time and money into management training to produce high-quality managers. Then, he would consistently enforce the company policies and procedures on a day-to-day basis. That is what made him different. He trained the managers and then he managed the managers. That is also a big part of what made him so successful.

He knew that training was not enough. Anybody can train managers. He knew that managers had to be managed after training to get the most out of them. If he taught you how to do something you had better do it, because he followed up on it. He was very resourceful and had many management techniques that would keep us managers on our toes, but I think his best management technique by far was the famous “$50 walk.”

This guy would just show up at any moment and ask you to take what he called a $50 walk. The $50 walk meant that I had to immediately stop what I was doing and walk with him through his shop and out into his parking lot and tell him the work status of every vehicle on the lot. If I could not do that, he would take $50 out of my check – a simple but effective management technique that worked pretty well on me.

I made a game out of it. I made a promise to myself that I would not fall prey to his $50 walk. He was not going to get my $50. He might get $50 from his other managers, but not me. All I had to do was know the status of every customer all the time. That was the challenge and I stepped up to the plate. I became the “work-flow commander.”

As I got into it, not only did I know the lead-flow and work-flow status of all customers, but I also just kind of fell into becoming an expert at work-flow strategy. In an effort to get maximum productivity out of the technicians, I would look at status categories and then figure out the best time-management strategy for each employee’s workday. Guess what. Productivity increased and I started making a lot more money. That was a major turning point in my career, because that is when I became a real manager and not just a front man. From that day forward, when I put on a white shirt it meant something.

You know, sometimes you just have to trust people to have the solution and be willing to learn and apply what they teach you. Sometimes you have to do what you don’t want to do to move forward. So read on if you would like to do something you don’t want to do and learn something that will move you forward. Who knows? You might become a work-flow commander too.

In last month’s article, we broke the lead-flow cycle down into seven lead-status categories. This month we break down the work-flow cycle into seven different work-assignment categories:

Awaiting diagnostics – The vehicle has been entered into work flow by the manager and is now waiting to be diagnosed.
Diagnostics – Manager & diagnostician are in the process of diagnostics and service recommendation
Remove – After the service recommendation, the installer begins the process of removing the drivetrain component.
Parts – After the installer has removed the drive train component, the builder and manager begin the process of ordering parts and getting work authorization
Build – After the work is authorized and the parts are ordered, the builder begins the process of building the drivetrain component
Installation – After the builder finishes his work assignment the installer begins the process of installing the drivetrain component
RTG (ready to go) – The installer has finished his work assignment and the manager and diagnostician are in the process of performing a final road test and delivering the vehicle to the customer.

Employee members at the TransTeam website have told me that it seems as if every shop they relocate to has a different work-flow system. So we know there are many variations of work-flow systems in use today. The main thing is to have a system in place at your shop that empowers the manager to keep up with the current lead-flow and work-flow status of every customer. Real managers cannot plan production efficiently without it.

If you would like to get things organized and under control, start by being honest with yourself and answering a few basic questions. Do you have the lead-flow and work-flow management tools they need in place? Are your employees trained? Are they working smart? Are you sure the manager has a good production plan to maximize shop productivity every day? Do you manage your manager?

Try to understand what I was taught as a young manager. Total control starts only when one knows the current lead and work status of all the customers. That is only the first step. Knowing the current shop status lets you see only where you are. Knowledge of where you are now allows one to plan shop labor time more efficiently. The next step is to create the best strategy and issue work assignments.

You can plan a work schedule for each employee and coordinate the work to be completed at a certain time if you know the work status of all customers and have a good plan. It is like cooking. If you get good at it, everything comes out of the oven and off the stove at the same time. Same thing goes for the manager of a transmission shop. If he plans well, everything gets delivered that day. If not, the money is delayed.

Nowadays, when TransTeam goes into a shop for management support, the very first thing we do is take the $50 walk with a manager or technician. We enter all known leads and all the vehicles on the lot into the lead-flow and work-flow categories. It takes less than an hour, and like magic we are all looking at the current lead and work status of the shop. This allows us to evaluate the leads and current work in progress and start planning a solution.

Shop organization and planning are critical in our business. Over the past several years our industry has seen a lot of shops go out of business. I often wonder how many shops could have been saved if the manager had been using an organized work-flow system and making intelligent production decisions every day. How much money was lost?

Poor management is the main reason shops fail. Knowing the current status of every customer has helped to increase profits in every shop I have been in since I started using it back in the ’80s. It is not too late for you. Organization and planning are timeless. So, as a matter of historical fact, you have a fighting chance to make good money in today’s marketplace if you tune into controlling production.

Not sure whether you need to? Let me help you out a little bit. Is there a test to determine whether your shop needs to get organized and focused on productivity? Yes, there is. My old boss came up with it about 30 years ago. Go out into the shop and do a $50 walk. You will quickly find out for yourself.

That is the acid test. One more thing: If you can’t do the $50 walk, I want you to cut me a check for the $50.

Art Little is the founder of TransTeam. His website is the home of the National Employment Headquarters for the transmission industry. He has been an industry pioneer in Internet technology since 1997, and his background in shops goes back almost 30 years. He is respected nationwide as an owner and manager who specializes in multiple-shop management. Today he is a software developer for the transmission industry, offering apps that make everyday tasks in a transmission shop easy by using today’s technology. TransTeam’s mobile technology puts transmission-shop production on a smart phone. Art invites all Transmission Digest shop-owner fans to go to his website and become a TransTeam fan. Visit www.transteam.com.