Cycle Time Bandits

Where are the cycle time bandits in your business?  This key question becomes the starting point for streamlining your business and increasing profits.

Before you can accurately locate these profit stealing activities in your shop, you must first understand what you are measuring.  Here is a key point.  There are two timelines that we concern ourselves with.  One is the time we spend working on the vehicle, which is labor time, not cycle time. The other timeline is how long a vehicle resides in your care before being returned to the customer.  This is the timeline that is important, because it is the cycle time of the repair.  It is the time the vehicle spends doing something, or waiting on something, that is important.

For example, if you have to spend an extra 30 minutes of time on a vehicle that saves a day of vehicle cycle time, it is the day of cycle time savings that is important.  The 30 minutes can be billed as labor, but does not contribute to the vehicles cycle time.

In the language of Lean, we call this the value stream.  The value stream is made up of value added and non-value added steps.  Basically, value added steps are those things the customer doesn’t mind paying for; non-value added steps are those things that they do not want to pay for.  For example, the insurance company would be happy to pay a half hour of labor that cuts a day of cycle time from the repair.  They are not happy about paying for the rental car charges for an extra day while the vehicle waits for some sort of service.

One last note; when considering cycle time, a return of the vehicle to the shop due to some repair problem, adds to cycle time. Everybody loses in this situation.  You need to evaluate every comeback and eliminate its root cause.

Thanks to the folks at Heatcraft in Tifton, Georgia, for spending some time with me. They have a design/build to customer specification manufacturing process that operates at a very good cycle time. This takes a “can do” attitude, and they have it.

They will tell you that focusing on the customer makes all the difference and they are right. That’s how you keep/save jobs.

This email is not addressing a current problem.  I simply want to make sure everyone understands the importance of working through your teammates and not around them. As we grow and become a more diverse and complex group of employees, one of the first things that will be compromised is alignment of agenda and purpose. Customers and prospects should get the same message and content every time they communicate with us.  This means all of us must be “singing from the same piece of music”. We are all aware of how inconsistency has hurt us in the past.  Just imagine how bad it could have been with 10 or more times as many customers and prospects. Remember that none of us alone know everything we  need to know to plot a course for our future. As a team though, we come pretty close.

In order to make sure customers and prospects receive the same message, no matter who they communicate with, our message content must be standardized. This means that we will only use approved sales and marketing material. “Approved” means that the team has signed off on the content and message. This is not meant to stifle creativity, just to protect the integrity of the message.

It is important that we keep the approved sales and marketing documents on the Google Drive and shared folder (I will get this folder set up) so that we all have access to them.  All communication with customers and prospects must be consistent with approved  content and message.  When creating a new document (word, ppt, etc.), or proposing a change to CDS’s messaging, the approval process involves the sign off of the other team members. We do pretty good at this, I believe.  It only works, though, when we actually read the proposed new or modified documents and give feedback to insure their alignment with currently approved content. I will not approve anything where I haven’t seen feedback from other team members.

When a current approved document or message needs updating, it must go through the approval process.  There should be no “draft” or unapproved documents on the Google Drive or in the shared folder. There should be no communication with customers and prospects that includes information out of alignment with approved content. In other words, no freelancing or operating on your own agenda. This includes email and phone conversations with customers and prospects. These may not go through the approval process, but the onus is on you to insure that content is consistent with the agreed upon CDS message.

Sales and Marketing 101: Prospects and customers like consistency of message because they can predict how outcomes can affect their business. Inconsistency will make us seem unreliable and drive profits out of the business.

Knowing where you are going is an important part of getting there.

MetaOps Magazine presents “Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing”

By Walter McIntyre

LIVONIA, March 1, 2014 – There are so many issues corporate leaders face each day. The question is how to prioritize them? In his article, the author discusses his 5S method to help decision makers keep their eye on the ball and focus on what needs to be done.

http://metaopsmagazine.com/keeping-the-main-thing-the-main-thing/

Walter McIntyre has spent 30 years in the business world, holding positions from apprentice to Vice President. He is currently the Chief Operations Officer and General Manager of Nationwide Parts Distributors and Automotive Electronic Solutions Technologies in Jacksonville, Florida.

Some us work for external customers, some for internal customers, and some for both.  It is easy to fail to deliver on the needs of internal customers because we fail to see them as customers.

All of us need to ask ourselves if our internal customers are happy with our service delivery.  To your customers, it doesn’t matter why there is a problem, only that there is a problem.

I’ll leave you with this: Leadership cannot exist without followship.  This relationship springs out of the fact that successful leaders are servants and facilitators for their customers (both internal and external).  Are you doing all the things necessary to build followship of your leadership?

EINAR GILKYSON
You think the dead really care about our lives?
MITCH BRADLEY
Yeah, I think they do. I think they forgive us our sins. I even think it’s easy for them.