Body shops have historically been designed around the shop technicians and their individual needs. At one time, it was not necessary for a car to leave the technician’s bay until it was completed. Frame repairs were made with little more than a set of floor pots, a come-along, and a tape measure.
Additionally, cars were then painted with forgiving lacquer products that were sprayed openly on the shop floor. This allowed many shops to be designed with a center aisle configuration where little or no consideration was given to "work flow."
The repair process could virtually begin and end in the same location (See figure 1- Center Aisle Configuration). The advancing technology of the OEM’s forced shop owners to invest heavily in capital equipment that would allow them to restore cars to pre-accident condition. These changes, coupled with a growing concern for environmental, worker, and public safety, helped to set new standards for collision repair.
The introduction of the unibody frame system, as well as the need to perform more accurate repairs, made it necessary for shop owners to purchase frame racks and sophisticated measuring systems. New product developments in refinish technology, such as basecoat/clearcoat technology, and the need to produce consistent, quality repairs forced owners to invest in a dedicated spray booth for paint application.
To accommodate these changes shop owners had to make room for their new equipment and rethink the way they did business. It was no longer possible to complete the repair in a single bay. The repair process now involved moving the car from one stage of production to the next. Shops that had once operated smoothly were now dysfunctional due to the bottlenecks that had been created at the frame rack and spray booth. To help solve these dilemmas many paint manufacturers, equipment suppliers, and independent design consultants began offering design assistance to help overcome these obstacles.
The original function of the body shop design consultant was to help shopowners through this transitional period by helping them to locate this new equipment in a way that would improve work flow and minimize the constant manipulation of vehicles.
Sherwin-Williams Automotive Finishes Corporation was one of the first companies to respond to the customers’ needs by establishing an in-house design group, the Collision Repair Design Service, to assist customers with the redesign of their collision repair facilities.
Not only did the addition of frame racks and spraybooths change the way vehicles moved through the shop, but it also changed the way technicians were being used. Shop owners quickly discovered it was not feasible or profitable to have three, four, or more technicians waiting to get their car on the frame rack or in the spray booth. This led to the creation of dedicated body and paint technicians and the idea that the repair procedure could be segmented and performed by different individuals. The natural progression of shop design was simply to provide separate areas for the body and paint technicians and to isolate the environments to create better, cleaner work conditions (See figure 2 - Divided Center Aisle Configuration).
Further evaluation of the two independent functions performed by the body and paint technicians, revealed that at least part of the repair process was repetitive. The prep, prime, and paint procedures occurred in a logical, systematic fashion that could easily be adapted to a production environment. In this environment the vehicle is processed in sequence through the stages of the refinish cycle, allowing for an assembly line procedure. This paved the way for a new era of shop design (See figure 3 & 4 - "U" configuration &"L" configuration).
With the recognition of the repetitive process that existed in the paint shop, many owners further segmented the role of paint technicians and divided the labor force into dedicated preppers and dedicated painters. This allowed the more highly skilled technicians to do the actual painting and simultaneously provided an apprentice program where technicians could begin as preppers and eventually work their way up to being a painter. This greatly improved the productivity and profitability of the paint shop.
While the process has been much slower, a transition similar to that of the paint shop has been taking place in the metal shops of some highly productive facilities.
Shop owners have realized that they can make more effective use of manpower resources when highly skilled body technicians are deployed as dedicated frame/structural repair technicians. This allows the technicians to become specialized and efficient with a narrow range of tasks which helps to increase the productivity and overall profitability of the metal shop.
In some cases, shops have begun to use body shop helpers to perform the low-tech procedures and allow the more skilled technicians to do the high-tech work. Again, these practices have resulted in dramatic increases in productivity and profitability and have also helped to serve as an apprentice program for body shop technicians.
For all practical purposes, modern collision repair shops are currently being designed using the "U" or "L" configuration. These designs represent a combination of both a job shop and a production shop environment. The metal shop continues to be treated as a job shop, where each repair is considered unique and handled individually.
On the other hand, the work being done in the paint shop has evolved over time into more of a production environment. While this shop design has served many owners well over the years, competitive times are forcing more and more shop owners to look for new innovative ways to do business.
One of the places shop owners and design consultants have recently been focusing on to improve efficiency and reduce cost is the simplification of the metal repair process. Much of the repair process in the metal shop has become more systematic in that it consists of more remove and replace and less straightening. This is evidenced by the ever increasing percentage of dollars that are being spent on parts in relation to the average repair order.
The collision repair industry has seen the percentage of parts increase from 25 percent of the repair order to nearly 50 percent . The increase in parts percentage is inversely related to the percentage of metal labor required, which has steadily declined over the years and become less of a factor in the overall repair process. Considering these facts, it is now more possible than ever to incorporate an assembly line procedure in the metal shop repair process.
The natural reaction to an assembly line metal repair process is, of course, that it can’t be done. The metal shop repair process has always been considered to be more of an art than a job, where each car is hand crafted. This may have been true when it was more profitable to repair parts than replace them.
With today’s cars being designed to absorb the impact rather than deflect it, straightening of parts is often times not an option. What many shop owners have discovered is that it is more profitable to simply replace the part than it is to spend valuable clock hours straightening and filling. European models currently exist that suggest the production techniques that have been so widely applied in the paint shop can work just as well in the metal shop (See figure 5 - Future Design).
In this futuristic design, much of the metal repair process is being sequenced in an assembly line process. The major straightening will continue to be done off-line, where the vehicle can be tied down and straightened. After the major structural work has been completed, the vehicle would then be processed in an assembly line fashion where all additional disassembly, replacement of parts, prepping, and painting will be done in a continuous process by teams of technicians that are trained and specialized in a particular segment of the repair process.
Specialization allows for improved technician efficiencies and significant reductions in labor cost. The basic concept behind the assembly line process is that vehicles will be moved from repair station to repair station at regular time intervals. Different lines of production are based on varying ranges of labor hours estimated to complete the repair and each production line moves at a different time interval to accommodate varying degrees of damage . This concept is illustrated in figure 5.
Using this configuration it would be possible to operate three shifts, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to maximize equipment utilization and return on investment. Well defined systems and procedures would be in place to eliminate the problems typically associated with passing of a job from one technician to the next. Each repair station would consist of a series of well defined tasks and employees trained to do these specific tasks independent of the vehicle being worked on.
With ever increasing pressure to complete repairs in a timely and profitable manner, progressive shops are looking to apply new theories of design and production. Industry experts suggest that the consolidation phase has just begun and the rise of multiple location facilities and mega-shops will continue to shape the future of the collision repair business.
As a design engineer specializing in body shop layout and planning, I have personally seen the changes that have resulted from the consolidation. For example, the average size for new facilities has increased from 10,000 square feet to more than 20,000 square feet over the past five years, and facilities in excess of 60,000 square feet that were once just a dream are now a reality. The future of body shop design involves identifying, retrieving, and applying successful concepts from other manufacturing industries. The economies of scale obtained by the large scale, high volume producers are just too great to ignore. Most shop owners will discount the idea of applying these new concepts simply because the change will be difficult and time consuming, concluding "they can’t afford to." The question that remains unanswered is, "Can they afford not to?"
Have a comment? Send an E-mail to: rthrall@postoffice.ptd.net
Reprinted from the May 1998 Issue of Collision Repair Industry INSIGHT.
© 1998 Collision Repair Industry INSIGHT. All Rights Reserved
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