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Letter to the Editor

Quality Control Takes Center Stage

After several years of industry discussion of C words - cycle time, consolidation, costs, and CSI - INSIGHT is hearing the Q word again - QUALITY

For smaller shops - or even larger but single location operations - repair quality control has not been an overly complex issue. (See "Managing QC on a smaller scale" on page 12.) The business owner, who is often on-site, uses a variety of relatively simple means to convey expectations and requirements, and to then "inspect what they expect."

But quality control is beginning to receive renewed emphasis for a number of reasons. In California, for example, the Bureau of Automotive Repair has stepped up efforts to check that shop paperwork matches the work performed. And diminished value claims and lawsuits nationwide have given insurers new cause to demand and - at least in some cases - more adequately compensate shops for quality work.

Combine this with the trend toward more larger and multi-location repair businesses without day-to-day ownership oversight of quality, and you find the need for some different types of quality control systems.

No matter what the size of the repair business, quality control must begin with a fairly broad look at the entire business, said Bill Troyer of PineTree Consulting.

"Quality encompasses many things, including customer perception, staffing, equipment and processes," Troyer said.

It's important that someone who clearly understands both proper repair procedures and customer expectations establishes the level of quality the shop must meet, according to Troyer. You don't want to leave this determination up to the customer.

Secondly, the shop must have the equipment and people capable of meeting that level of quality.

"Every year, the shop manager should determine a plan to improve the staff's abilities," Troyer said. "This may require training or new hires. But he will only have done his job if he can look back at the end of the year and say he has a better team now than he had in January."

Similarly, the shop must have quality suppliers with products that can be warranted to the customer.

Consistent, repeatable processes are a third element to quality control.

"The shop must establish repair and customer handling processes that can be repeated for each vehicle by each technician or customer service rep every time," Troyer said.

Lastly, these processes need to include a "checks and balances" system, including a way to measure and audit compliance and improvement.

Ron Guilliams is implementing just such a process for the Fix Auto network of shops.

"We've actually developed a self re-inspection process where we spend a day at each member shop once a month literally pulling files apart and physically looking at work and rating the quality of each individual vehicle that we look at," Guilliams said. "We actually came up with a rating system to rate the quality of an individual job and to come up with a quality rating for each individual store for that monthly visit, so we can have peer measurement across our network."

Guilliams said some of the re-inspection process mirrors what is being done more frequently by some insurers.

"We actually went out and consulted with a lot of different insurers and tried to learn and understand how they look at a car after it has been repaired, to help us look at it through the eyes of the insurer, or through the eyes of the Bureau of Automotive Repair, to ensure that our paperwork reflected exactly what was done to the car, that there was good value there and the repairs were of high quality," Guilliams observed .

The physical re-inspection, he said, is designed to ensure that the customer doesn't have any surprises the next time the vehicle is raised for an oil change or taken to the dealer for trade-in. This means checking such details as ensuring welds are well dressed, seam sealers match the appearance of the factory-applied, that inner fender ledges match in color, texture and gloss, and that the paint on any bolts that have been removed and reinstalled is touched up.

But as Guilliams said, you can't "re-inspect quality back into a job." The only way a re-inspection program is effective is if it is teamed up with the right training and communication of expectations.

"I actually go in and have a meeting with all of the shop personnel, and basically tell them I want them to be thinking about quality the other 29 days of the month that I'm not there," Guilliams said. "We try to communicate with them that our future depends on being able to do all these things at the highest level.

"Our basic message is that we're not going to move a car forward in the repair process with a known defect," Guilliams said. "We tell all of our technicians that they need to imagine there's an invisible red handle hanging over each one of the cars, and they can pull that red handle and stop the repair. It doesn't matter whether it's the detailer, the estimator or the painter's helper. Anybody can stop the repair. A lot of people say all they can count on their detail department to do is wash cars. But I say if that's what you think, that's exactly what they're going to do. But if you expect great things of your detail department, they'll give you great things."

In many ways, clearly communicated quality expectations make things easier for employees, Guilliams said.

"If there are three guys standing outside looking at a car from three different angles, saying, 'It looks pretty good from this angle,' or 'It doesn't look that bad from this angle,' there's a problem," he said. "If you've got three guys trying to discern whether a paint job matches, it's simple: It doesn't, and you need to get the car back in the shop and redo it."

Guilliams said he sees a heightened interest in quality among some insurers, probably because of concerns about diminished value, customer retention, and crackdowns by regulators such as California's Bureau of Automotive Repair.

"There are some insurers that are focused on quality and willing to pay for quality," he said. "But there are other insurers who say they're interested in quality but aren't willing to pay for it. There are still other insurers at the bottom of the rung whose primary focus is severity, that put severity above customer satisfaction. So it's not uniform across the board. To my knowledge right now in California, there are three major insurers for whom quality is the main focus. They're demanding that cars be repaired at a much higher level than ever before. And I think that's a trend."

Adding the Q word to the everyday collision repair facility equation may result in some very pleasant C words for shop owners and managers: completed repairs with less comebacks, customer satisfaction, careful and coordinated team work, and cutting costs for expensive reworks.   o

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