Chapter 22
Gus's Garage

By Jake Snyder

I'm writing this towards the end of my second week in KL on a consulting and training project in a greenfield "workshop that has been in operation for approximately 1.5 years.

This 56,000 sq/ft shop is the Asian piece of Ford Motor Company's International Affil-iate Alliances in which the consolidator groups CTA in the U.S., and Howard Basford, UK are also participating.

The facility here is touted as the first "ultra-modern" workshop in Malaysia. It is well-equipped, comparable to any progressive collision center in the U.S.

For the past two weeks I have been working with the estimators, staging specialist, parts manager, and production manager to streamline the pre-production activities to eliminate untimely supplement approvals and work in process delays.

After having to adjust to the oppressive heat and humidity (KL, Malaysia is below Thailand and above Indonesia & just a few degrees north of the equator), the next biggest challenge is the language differences. Like the majority of us language ignorant Americans, I only speak English and none of the local languages used in the repair center, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Bahasa Malaysia. Luckily, the employees here speak several languages of which one is English.

But language is still a challenge, because we Americans even screw up the English language with our idioms, slang and lazy pronunciation. Malaysian English is based on Great Britain's usage, as Malaysia has only been independent from England's Colonial Rule, since 1957.

It is hard to appreciate how missing the gist of anywhere from ten to 50 percent of what is being spoken makes it so hard to train people. Everyone in the shop is by now familiar with my regular comments of "How or what percentage of what I said did you understand?" It is even more challenging when everyone says "yes, yes" and nods his head in agreement in response to you. But, when the employees start laughing and slapping each other on the back as if you had just said the punch line to joke, you know they really didn't get your meaning.

The intent of this new facility is to bring current repair processes to Malaysia. Repair quality and standards here are abysmally poor. For example, I had visited several typical workshops here to get a general sense of what the standard collision repair practices were like.

The shops I visited had a combination of buildings and open air, yet covered, repair areas. They had spray booths, but no frame equipment other than port-a-pull floor devices, and only oxyacetylene welding systems.

Technicians are all "contractors" and bid on each job. Because there is little negotiating with insurance companies and shops accept lump-sum insurance settlements with no add-ons or supplements, shops either repair the hell out of everything, use aftermarket parts, or salvage parts.

When I say repair, I mean repair.

I saw a car that was T-boned 18 inches where the metal tech cut off the rocker (inner and outer) and center pillar (inner and outer) and separated each assembly into inners and outers. He then put the mess on the concrete floor, straightened it all, and then gas-welded it all back together again. Then he finished up by gas welding the entire mess back onto the side of the car.

My sense is that cars undergoing extensive structural repairs in this manner are likely to explode like a "leggo set" if hit again.

I understand now how horrific the tree and chain "war stories" really were that I often heard years ago when first starting out in the industry. It really wasn't so long ago that U.S. collision repair facilities were what I would consider to be pretty backwards.

KL is the largest metropolitan area and there are no shortages of cars and accidents. Vehicle mix in terms of early and late model cars seems to be similar to the vehicle mix in the U.S. The only difference is that full frame cars are very much in the minority.

Ninety percent of the different model cars on the road are part of "national car" brands Proton and Perdua, with the Proton Brand having the most models and units on the road.

The cars are essentially assembled here by Proton and Perdua with design, engineering, and manufacturing coming from Japan's Mitsubishi and Daihatsu. There is only a single Proton model that they have designed and engineered domestically in Malaysia.

Collision damages here seem to have a much higher frequency of front suspension damage. People go off the road quite a bit, but they also inadvertently plow into these speed-bumps that are scattered around residential streets.

Gus is probably picturing me lying around on an exotic beach on a perfect tropical island, but we have been keeping in daily contact. His e-mail messages indicate that he is struggling a little with his process quality control system - so I will follow-up with him next month and report on my findings.

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.