Chapter 17
Gus's Garage

By Jake Snyder

The new store has put Gus in more of managerial role than ever before.

Gus has limited his daily processing responsibilities. He depends more on his key staff members to run daily operations. In Gus's Garage, George his son, Kelly, and Pam run daily operations. At Cherock's, Gus depends on Tom, the GM, and Jenny the bookkeeper.

Gus and his son George wear the most hats and now follow a strict daily routine to keep up with management and operations. Gus splits his day between Cherock and Gus's Garage. He begins each day by opening up the Cherock facility and assists Tom in creating the daily production plan, updating WIP status reports, and dispatching work to technicians.

This routine has helped Gus get better acquainted with his new employees, develop a working relationship with Fred, and provide oversight of operating changes being made.

Unfortunately for Gus, he also had to upgrade his attire and take a more formal approach with his new staff members. He has gotten rid of the blue jeans and t-shirt look he was accustomed to wearing when he worked only in Gus's Garage.

Gus never had to demand respect from his staff because he is respectful to others and provides decisive and compassionate leadership. But at Cherock, he now has to present himself as the managerial equivalent of Tom, his General Manager, who is a shirt and tie man.

Gus usually returns to his original store at midday to provide lunch-hour back up for estimating and customer care. He reviews the daily production schedule and has a quick meeting with George to catch up on production issues.

After lunch, George hands off production management to Gus and returns to the paint department to finish the day as a painter. His dual role as lead painter and morning production manager has worked out very well.

Gus starts production planning and tech dispatching at the end of each day. He then hands-off to George who finalizes the plan in the morning while Gus is at Cherock's. Tom, the GM at Cherock's is also required to start production plan at the end of the day and be ready to go over it with Gus the next morning.

In addition to his part-time production management responsibilities, Gus has been working on improving the relationships with insurers, vendors and sublet providers. He is using his new relationship and access to Hometown Chrysler, to develop best practices for parts ordering and outsourcing of sublet work. His intent is to improve parts ordering and receiving processes and then leverage his learnings with his other parts vendors. He is also working to attain the same insurance referral programs in each store.

Gus is very pleased with the progress his son George is making. George has always been reluctant to leave the technical end of the business and take on managerial responsibilities.

The new split-system or part-time production management has been just the thing to ease George into management while not having to bear the full weight and pressure of learning under-fire.

If Gus had not been able to come in and take over production management during the second half of each day from George, the transition of George from technician to management would likely have been very stressful and less rewarding then his current role as a lead painter.

The only issue Gus has with George is that he is hesitant to change and adapt the daily plan in response to unforeseen issues that pop up during the day. Instead, George has needed more overtime hours of himself and selected techs to get the jobs completed as originally outlined by Gus the night before.

I explained to Gus that I have mixed feelings about this being an issue. I first agreed that George would need to gain more experience and savvy in reprioritizing work and adapting production to unforeseen problems. But, I really had to emphasize to Gus, that the overall operation would be better off by improving pre-production planning and reducing unforeseen problems than having to depend on creative last minute expediting of people and resources.

Another unexpected benefit of George going back to the paint department at the halfway point of the day was that he was actually scheduling and managing his own paint workload. In fact, participation in creating a daily production plan for the whole shop, having a close working relationship with the techs, and making sure that he maximized his own utilization as a painter, has given Gus's son new insight into process and workflow management.

The metal techs and Kelly, Gus's lead estimator, have also become better team players in working to help George's transition into production management. They are more sensitive to workflow issues that impede throughput.

Kelly and the metal techs created a more informative Work Order that is less dependent on the need for management intervention and last-minute instructions in order to clarify work priorities or special customer requests. There is more pre-production work being done on repair orders to identify supplemental and parts needs, and to document special customer requests, and pre-existing vehicle conditions.

The techs now have more information about the job at their fingertips and don't have to stop to solicit management feedback and direction. Parts status, sublet needs, target delivery dates, customer or insurance company authorization requirements for supplements, and the need for additional technician testing and diagnosis are now included in the Work Orders Files that are placed in each vehicle.

George also felt the positive techs' response and sensitivity to workflow issues was related to the employee exchange last month between Cherock and Gus's Garage. After the 'exchange' they had talked about out producing the new sister facility. It appeared the techs were now feeling a bit more responsible for assuring that all processing steps in the overall production process worked in better unison.

Gus agreed. By asking the employees for their opinion and getting them out of their facility to critique the other facility, he had forced them to expand their thinking beyond their immediate work areas and daily responsibilities.

Last month after the employee exchange, Gus and I had a series of mini-meetings with shop personnel to discuss what we had seen and how changes could be made to improve the key performance measures now being used for the two shops. I broke up the shop into three groups and tried to get a mixed representation from each area of the shop into each group. I also conferred with Gus and George to divvy up the strongest leaders and biggest complainers between the three groups.

Each mini-meeting was scheduled at 4pm for one hour. We met in the lunchroom and closed the meeting off to any interruptions. I used a flip chart to record bullet point summaries of the comments made.

At the end of each meeting, I took the flip chart sheet of bullet points and taped them to the lunchroom wall, for everyone to view. A group decision was made to make the lunchroom exclusive to only employees; non-company personnel were no longer permitted in lunchroom.

The posting of the flip chart sheets accomplished three things:

1. For the next meetings, we minimized a rehashing of comments and points already made;
2. It kept the comments on everyone's mind;
3. It created a record for future reference. (All the flipchart points were typed up, dated, and placed on a clip-board in the lunchroom under the Get acquainted poster.)

The employee lunchroom had now become the focal point for shop performance feedback. Cherock, the sister shop also had the same meetings and set-up in its lunchroom:

1. Get acquainted poster;
2. Shop performance data;
3. Clip-board summarizing shop meetings and process improvement issues.

Gus had facilitated each meeting, and I acted as the scribe to summarize and write the comments on the flip charts. Before each meeting started, I taped a flipchart sheet with the new store's three basic operating objectives listed on top and the eight performance measures underneath the lunchroom wall. The three objectives are:

1. Improve on-time delivery and process cars in the sequence they arrive.
2. Significantly reduce internal defects and re-dos (rework and comebacks).
3. Improve shop efficiency by 25 percent.

The eight performance measures are listed for review:

Performance Data to Collect for Benchmarking

1. CSI
2. Warranty Rate % of sales dollars and units
3. Rework Rate % of costs and unit volume
4. Material Costs % of sales dollars
5. Parts to Labor Ratio in sales dollars
6. Employee Absentee Rate
7. Sales Closure Rates DRP, Non-DRP, Customer Pay by units
8. Inventory Turn Rate by units, sales revenue

Personnel made a variety of points in the mini-meetings and the original intent was to discuss the sister stores, but the end result was more feedback and concern for their own operation. They also thought that the "Parts to Labor Ratio" measure would focus them on replacing more parts than was necessary, it was agreed to remove it from the list.

Gus and the employees seem to be responding well to this new information sharing. They are at the beginning stages of developing a solid continuous improvement system.

Jake Snyder, creator of the popular Gus’s Garage series, is interested in hearing from shop owners with real-life questions.
E-mail JJ the Remote Pro, Gus’s intrepid consultant.