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Page 1 of 2 Shop owners struggling to remain profitable say they are increasingly focusing on the paint side of the shop, looking for innovative ways to squeeze even more productivity out of paint booths, paint products and paint personnel.
Here's a collection of ideas designed to pump up paint shop productivity. Some of these concepts are new and found in only a few top shops. Others have been talked about for some time, but still have been implemented by a surprisingly low number of shops. Increasingly, however, it will be the shops who implement techniques such as these that prevail in what is only likely to become a tougher market. Make sure your staffing is adequate Mark Main, a regional training instructor for BASF, said many paint shops appear either over or understaffed for maximum productivity. Here's his formula (see chart) for determining adequate staffing: Start with your maximum total monthly paint labor sales dollars (or calculate it as 20 percent of your total monthly sales dollars). Divide this number by your paint labor hourly door rate to determine your monthly paint labor hour capacity, and divide that number by four to determine your weekly paint labor hour capacity. Next, determine your paint personnel's productivity (total monthly paint labor hours flagged divided by total actual clock hours worked). The industry benchmark, Main said, is 180 percent. Multiply your weekly paint labor hour capacity by your productivity. This is the total number of actual clock hours per week your paint team should be working. Divide the number by 40 to determine how many full-time employees your paint shop should have. Focus on skill specialization Main said it is important not only to have the right number of people but the right people using the right skills. The best spray technician, for example, should be in the booth spraying, not tinting paint, removing trim or masking or prepping cars; let lesser-skilled technicians focus on - and become efficient in - those steps. Always have two or three cars at various stages in the prep process so that as soon as a sprayed vehicle moves out of the booth, the next one is ready to go in. Determine your "booth cycle time" by dividing the total number of hours the booth operates in a month (8 hours x 21 working days = 168) by the number of ROs processed. For example, 105 ROs in a 168-hour month is a booth cycle time of 1.6 hours per RO, a benchmark that Main said shops should be meeting or beating. If your booth cycle time is higher than 1.6, Main says you'll likely find that a car isn't being sprayed in the first and last hours of each day, or that the color matching process is taking place in the booth. "It's a paint booth, not a color match booth," Main said. "That technician should only be painting in the booth. Color matching is an offline process, done before that car rolls into the booth." How many employees should your paint shop have? | ABC Auto Body | Your Shop | | Monthly paint labor hour sales | $32,000 | $ _____ | | (can calculate as 20 percent of total monthly sales) | | | | Divide by paint labor door rate | $38 | $ _____ | | = monthly paint labor capacity | 842 labor hours | _____ | | Divide by 4 for weekly capacity | 210 labor hours | _____ | | Paint shop productivity % 1.8 | (180%) | _____ | | (productivity = monthly paint labor hours flagged divided by actual clock hours worked) | | | | Clock hours of labor needed ~ | 116 | _____ | | (weekly capacity divided by productivity) | | | | # of full-time techs for clock hours ~ | 3 | _____ | | (divide clock hours by 40-hours-per-tech) |
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