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Process Engineering: Six Sigma for Auto Shop Efficiency and Growth [RR 1057]
Process Engineering: Six Sigma for Auto Shop Efficiency and Growth [RR 1057]
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About this episode
David Boyd, a Six Sigma Black Belt, joins Carm Capriato to explore the importance of process engineering in automotive shops. They discuss how understanding and documenting processes can lead to improved efficiency and customer satisfaction. Boyd emphasizes the need for shop owners to engage their teams in defining processes, measuring performance, and continuously improving workflows. The conversation highlights the significance of asking 'why' to identify inefficiencies and the role of key performance indicators in driving operational success. This episode is packed with actionable insights for shop owners looking to enhance their business operations.
Topics:
process engineering
six sigma
efficiency improvement
customer experience
process documentation
key performance indicators
change management
team engagement
operational consistency
lean principles
Cars:
Dodge Charger
Thanks to our Partners, NAPA Auto Care and NAPA TRACS
Watch Full Video Episode
David Boyd, Six Sigma Black Belt, emphasizes that defined processes and systems are essential for shop efficiency and growth. Every task follows a process, whether recognized or not, and “rapid toggling” (doing the same job differently each day) leads to chaos.
Key Insights:
-
Define Processes: Ask “Why do you do it that way?” to uncover gaps and create consistency.
-
Use DMAIC: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control, establish “normal” and fix what’s “abnormal.”
-
Apply Lean Thinking: Reduce wasted motion and idle time (e.g., proper tool placement, faster approvals).
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Link KPIs to Action: Observe workflows directly (“management by walking around”), not just reports.
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Commit to Continuous Improvement: It’s a loop, not a one-time fix.
-
For MSOs: Scaling requires standardized systems and local accountability.
The payoff: higher efficiency, stronger customer experience, productive technicians, fewer mistakes, and sustainable growth.
David Boyd, https://www.callinbound.com/
Thanks to our Partners, NAPA Auto Care and NAPA TRACS Learn more about NAPA Auto Care and the benefits of being part of the NAPA family by visiting https://www.napaonline.com/en/auto-care NAPA TRACS will move your shop into the SMS fast lane with onsite training and six days a week of support and local representation. Find NAPA TRACS on the Web at http://napatracs.com/ Connect with the Podcast:- Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RemarkableResultsRadioPodcast/
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Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Dodge Charger
"at the start of that story, which is with the charger at every station, why? Why is that piece of equip..."
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This is the Aftermarket Radio Network.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome.
Remarkable results, Radio Carm Capriato.
10 years in it now.
Thank you for your loyal listenership.
So appreciated.
We are excited to have a great episode on process today.
And boy, I've got a great guest.
David Boyd's going to be with us.
He's a six sigma black belt.
Yes.
And he's going to take me on halfway through the episode.
Are we kidding?
Look, we appreciate you as a dedicated listeners.
As I said, and remember, listen to learn just one thing,
but don't forget I need you to implement any new ideas
that you take away from our podcast.
And for all the great episodes on the Aftermarket Radio Network.
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Two plus million dollars have been earned
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So you have really made a difference.
And before we get started, great word from our great sponsors.
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Find Napa Tracks on the web at NAPATRACS.com.
Hey, welcome back.
Hey, David Boyd.
Hello, Carm.
How are you, my friend?
No, it's fine.
I was just thinking about the idea of doing our black belt
sparring around process halfway through the show.
We'll have to...
Yeah, we're going to do that.
Have to go into the octagon.
Yeah, we're going to do that.
David's with callinbound.com,
coolest phone system in the world.
They're a dedicated, high-performing independent shop owner service.
Everything for the independent shop owner.
And a lot of times I walk into shops
and I see the inbound phone systems.
So I know you're everywhere.
But you also have to do some AI powered call analysis
and stuff.
And I just love it.
I had a chance to see it handle spam control on the phones.
And anyway, so here's my think on today's episode.
And I'm connected to the industry.
My ears always to the ground.
I know a ton of friends.
They just call me and say, hey, idea, what about this?
A lot going on.
So the top things, David, that I continue to feel,
I mean, in this moment of time right now, culture,
it goes without saying being a client advocate education,
or as they say, customer service education.
Scaling, financial, recruiting and retention.
But way up on top of the list is processes and systems
and policy way up.
And so many coaches that I talked to that said,
when we can tweak some of the financial things
that are critical in the business.
But what we find out is there's no methodology,
no way of doing things, no consistency.
The processes are broken.
And it looks to me when I talk to people,
says, we don't know how to start.
We tried and then we failed.
And we never really had the discipline
to go forward and keep doing it.
Well, when I found out that David is a six sigma
in processes and systems, I said, come on.
And maybe you can help the shop owner move forward.
And if you will, process engineering.
I love that word, by the way, engineering,
process engineering.
So what the hell is it?
And what's six sigma?
So let's get going.
Six sigma is a process methodology.
And it is designed around understanding first how we work
and then being able to measure that once we understand
the process and can measure the process,
going through a structure of improvement and control.
So there's some terminology that we use it.
Just a quick note about my background.
I grew up in corporate America
and I became a six sigma master black belt in GE.
I worked for a number of years in corporate America
in process engineering.
So I became passionate about process and it's funny
because as you mentioned, processes overlooked often.
It can be even taboo to say, hey, what's your process for this?
It sounds more like a check and balance
as we're running a shop.
What's your process?
Do you have a standard process to find?
What's your SOP?
We hear some of these buzzwords.
Process is actually quite simple
because everything we do is a process.
So when I'm talking about process,
I like to just break it down to the simplest level
which is whatever we're doing,
we're following a process, whether we know it or not.
So if we can just acknowledge that, yes,
we have a process for this,
then we can know it, document it, improve it.
But David, could it be the process of the day?
Because it didn't work like this yesterday.
So today we're going to do it a little different
and then tomorrow maybe have a different flavor.
It's a great point, Karin,
because rapid toggling of process execution
can be really problematic
because then the process is variable.
So if our process is whatever the flavor of the day happens to be,
whatever's quickest or feels right,
then it is an out-of-control process.
I love those two words, rapid toggling.
I think I'm broke.
Well, you're rapid toggling.
To my listener, think about it.
If you can put that in your head, rapid toggling,
that's what's broke.
I don't know if this is skipping ahead in our discussion,
but when we talk about this,
I tend to interact on a process level,
which is just the way that my mind works.
When I'm talking, I'm always evaluating
why is something happening in a particular way.
So when I have a conversation with anybody that owns a business
or lives life or my kids or whatever,
I'm always thinking about what's the process.
So I ask questions like, why do you do that?
Why do you do it that way?
And I'm always listening, Karm, for two key responses
to tell me that I don't know.
If somebody says, why do you do that?
I don't know.
Then we all agree we have a problem.
But I'm always listening when I'm talking about
the way that we do what we do.
And I'm asking, why do you do it that way?
When somebody says, that's how I was taught
or that's the way we've always done it.
Now we have a basis for discussion,
a process discussion.
And it doesn't have to be hard or gross.
We can just simply talk about the way
that something happens in our daily.
So whether it's business or life,
we'll talk probably today about, you know,
in the context of the shop
and why we do certain things the way we do that.
But it's important for your listener to understand,
do we know why we're doing something?
Because we all do stuff
and we're executing process all throughout the day,
whether it's the process of the day
or whether it's something that we do routinely.
Do we know why we're doing it and ultimately what's the outcome?
I believe there's a lot of shops
that do things really, really well.
That's true.
But it's never been documented
and it's never been laid as the law of the land.
It's just next generation,
next iteration of a new specialist in the...
Here's how we do this.
Okay, teach it to me, boom, boom, boom, done.
But there's no why we do it.
Why we do it?
Because, oh, the outcome at the end and the QC thing
and it's really solving the customer's problem
is, oh, my God, it works.
But there's other things in the business that don't work.
And so, you know what I love about this
that just hit me?
If we've got a great process or system,
we can build off the fact that that thing works.
Let's quickly document it,
maybe one page, one and a half pages of why we do this.
There's got to be a how we do this, right?
Why we do this up top,
how we do this down below.
And now saying, this thing is inconsistent.
We're rapid toggling over here.
Let's get together as a team and pull it together.
Do you recommend that people that are on the team
that have a responsibility to this process be involved in it?
Very much so.
What you're talking about is part one of a process methodology.
So in Six Sigma, there's an acronym called DMAIC, D-M-A-I-C,
Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control.
What you've just said is really the defined phase
of the process analysis.
So defining that process is talking with the stakeholders.
In process engineering,
we would call those people stakeholders.
We would understand the supplier to a process
and the customer of a process
and we're going to document through
what are we doing and how are we doing it.
So it's very much bringing those people together.
It could be your service advisor, it could be a technician,
it could be an office manager,
but there are people that are involved in that process execution
and it's important to have them part of this
as you're identifying or documenting what the process is.
You cannot effectively document the process
without having the key contributors and stakeholders involved.
In a typical shop, how long?
I guess if, well, here's the process
and how we double check a tire rotation, lug nuts,
there's something on that order and it starts to get,
oh, then you put this thing and then you put the tool back
and can you get to granular?
You can.
I think an important perspective is knowing what is normal.
So when we document a process,
we want to define what we're doing today
so that we can effectively establish normal.
And once we know what normal is,
now we can identify abnormal.
And this is the key that I think goes sideways in a lot of businesses
and a lot of shops is that we don't know what normal is
so we don't know what abnormal is.
The big takeaway from this is establish normal.
It's the commitment of the business, the owner,
the commitment to the customer.
This is how we do what we do, why we do what we do.
Let's list it and that's normal for this particular process.
That's the rapid toggling.
You're going from abnormal to normal,
but you don't know that normal is really right.
That's true.
The way that we've done something may be a defect.
That's another process term that we use in Six Sigma,
is defect.
So we want to be able to identify defects.
That's just another way to say,
how do we identify abnormal?
This does not have to be an overwhelming laborious process.
We don't have to bring the think tank together
and have hours and hours of meetings.
We just simply start at the beginning
and pull in the people that are involved in a process.
It could be appointment setting in your shop.
What's our process?
It could be sales estimates.
What's our process?
It could be the vehicle check-in or check-out.
What is the process?
If we can have the people involved in that,
we can document what we're doing
and now everybody that's involved in that process
knows why we're doing it.
I think in the shop a lot of these things
are going to be based on the why is
operational efficiency and customer experience.
We want to do an effective vehicle check-out process
so that our customer has a high-level experience
every time they interact with us.
It's not variable.
When they call to set the appointment,
we understand what we're trying to accomplish
to maximize my customer's experience.
In this case, the customer is the customer of the process.
In another instance, we may have an internal process
where maybe the technician is the customer of the process
and the service advisor is the supplier to that process.
We need to understand what are the ins and the outs
and just have that documented
so that we understand normally
what are we looking to accomplish,
how do we execute this.
We use a variety of technologies in the shop
as you well know.
Some of these technologies help facilitate our workflow
and some can inhibit our workflow for not careful.
So, David, I love the customer supplier connection
or responsibility.
To me, I think that's a huge part of this episode
to realize when you're going to analyze, find the why
and do the how is...
Who's the customer? Who's the supplier of the process?
Love that piece.
We have done episodes on lean before
and lean is Six Sigma, am I right?
That's correct.
Okay, lean, being lean.
And one episode that we did,
and I do believe it was Christie Hudson,
mapped out an oil change
and the steps that it took to do an oil change.
Get the oil filter, get the oil,
drag this over here, bring in the vehicle,
check this out, do the DV, all this stuff
and it looked like a spaghetti map.
And what they ultimately started to figure out
was they needed to move equipment around
to minimize the steps.
And so, you could sit here,
we can have this show on process,
get it down, make it right, build consistency.
But there's also...
Where are the tools?
I walked into a friend's shop.
He's got a battery charger at every bay.
And I said, Jim, why?
And he said, we did a lean analysis
of every time we needed to go
and get a battery charger
and where it was stored in the back room
and how many steps we had to take and come back.
So there's a lot of people out there
realizing that you can have a great process policy.
We do this before we do that,
and then we do this, and then if not,
there's an ABC choice, boom, bam, bam.
But he's got timers on every lift.
It's amazing how some people get
not only good policy procedure,
but they get really good placement
of material tools equipment.
You asked the number one question
at the start of that story,
which is with the charger at every station, why?
Why is that piece of equipment there
or why is that piece of equipment not there?
If you understand what you're doing
and you can answer that question as an owner,
I love the fact that the owner
was immediately able to answer the why question.
Why do you have that there?
Well, we had some extra money in the budget.
We thought, hey, we'll have it.
Why is because it drives efficiency?
So when we know what we're doing
and we can answer the question of why we're doing it,
now we can identify what is the most efficient
or effective way to do that,
placement of the technicians toolbox,
the way that they are moving from point to point
and starting and stopping various jobs.
Are we waiting on parts
and where the parts are delivered?
How is the technician notified?
Again, it can sound overwhelming
to make this a big jumbled mess of spaghetti-carm,
but when we have a why-questioning outlook
in the shop, now we can begin to
drive greater efficiency
because we're actually asking the process question.
Why is a process question?
And when we ask why and I don't have an answer,
now we have an opportunity to educate.
Maybe educating a technician or a service advisor.
When we do have the answer,
we can ask when we're doing it this way,
what gets in the way?
What are the roadblocks?
What are the bottlenecks?
The owner of the process is generally the shop owner,
maybe a production manager or shop manager,
something of this sort,
but everybody is part of the process.
So anybody who's touching something can be a contributor.
So this isn't a hat that I put on and say,
hey, I'm the process guy today
because if we're looking out and understanding,
there's always an opportunity to improve.
Do I know what we're doing?
Do I know why we're doing it?
And then can I measure what's happening
throughout the execution of my work?
Now we have the basis for really driving efficiency.
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I want to get into measuring
because I think that's a real struggle for people down the line.
But I believe Six Sigma Lean uses the word process mapping
because I did a little research and I have that in front of me.
And that reminds me of why the battery chargers are there,
why they moved oil filters around, you know.
And when I think of that,
the flow is really big and the software that's helping us.
So there's not only workflow screens at our counter
and our service counter,
the workflow screens are in the back,
sometimes with the shop manager.
But I've walked into shops where the screen is like an 80 inch screen.
And I said, why is it so big?
Now everybody can see it.
You know, they're kind of a square four bay operation
and it was kind of up in the center.
And if not, where do you think some specialists in the bays are going?
They're walking over to the small 30 inch screen
so they can actually see what's going on.
But instead of making that, which takes time,
yeah, instead of taking that walk,
making an 80 inch screen.
So it's these little tiny things.
I didn't think of that.
Wow.
And so the process mapping of,
wouldn't it be cool to take the camera,
take a picture every two or three seconds in the shop
and then play it back and says,
why did this guy walk 10 miles today?
Think about it.
The ability to look out into the shop
and see what's happening
and then have the presence of mind to ask,
why is that happening?
I'll give you an example.
I was in a shop.
I worked closely with this owner in operational process areas.
But before I really started doing that,
I was working on their communication system
and spending time at the shop
and really just looking around,
seeing the way that people work.
It's not this process mind that doesn't ever shut off.
So I saw a technician sitting on his little portable stool
and just kind of had this whole hum look on his face.
This is an ATEC, right?
You want to keep these guys busy.
So I had just made this comment,
kind of like a slow day,
that kind of thing and he just shook his head
and I'm like, oh, what are you doing?
It was the why question,
why are you sitting there basically
without asking why you're sitting there.
It was just like, oh, I'm waiting on the approval
and whatever and the service manager
is three estimates deep, all of these things.
So here's this ATEC sitting there,
not able to produce because of a process error.
He knew what he was doing
and he knew why he was basically on pause.
So now this is an opportunity
to go talk to the service advisor
and ask what's happening here.
What the ATEC just told me is your three estimates deep
and it could be another hour
before you're even talking to this customer.
So we go down the process,
just simply looking out and understanding
why is somebody moving from point A to point B
and do they understand,
do I understand as the owner
or the person responsible
as the thought leader in this environment
why they're doing that?
Can we address that area of inefficiency?
Why is this technician just sitting here?
Do we have the work?
Yeah, we have the work.
He's just waiting on an approval.
What can we do to streamline that?
So that led into a whole area of process analysis
that said what can we do
to actually compress the time from inspection to approval
and we were able to pilot a program
and drive greater efficiency
in leveraging additional resources
within the organization to compile the estimate,
take the inspection,
compile the estimate,
get that to the customer
and minimize that time
even affect the parts ordering process.
So from the time that the inspection is complete,
we get that back to the service advisor.
They prepare the estimate
and order the parts,
then call the customer.
Those parts are already on the way.
Now we've compressed the timeline
because we have additional resources
able to complete that process
and we've also moved forward
the implementation of our vendor process
to get those parts in.
So now this drives a lot of efficiency.
Ultimately it keeps our ATEC busy
and then who's the end customer
is our actual customer.
They get their vehicle on time
or ahead of time.
So we have the opportunity to wow them
instead of delay them.
These are the things that
when we talk about process,
a simple question can turn into this
like I had no idea that we were waiting
on getting three estimates complete
before we keep my ATEC busy.
Who said I had no idea?
The owner.
The owner, okay.
And again, let's go back to manage
by walking around
or having those daily huddles
which can expose a lot of this stuff.
And when I'm thinking of the word measurement
because it's very difficult,
how do I measure that?
My God,
bay or technician efficiency
for the hours that they spend
or that bay can actually produce revenue.
That's not hard to figure that out.
David,
I got to believe one of the biggest
most important takeaways from this
is to start having
and question your people
in your daily huddles.
How often, every day,
do you think you're standing around?
Now, a lot of it has to do with pay.
A person's on a salary,
they don't give a damn.
But if it's a hybrid pay system
where they get paid X,
but they earn because of these other
measures that they have,
meaning that you've got to
contribute be productive.
You walk into businesses and their counters,
they have a CSR, customer service rep,
that's greeting the customer
and starting up tickets.
But a lot of the heavy work is done
behind curtains
or behind the counter
where people don't get interrupted so much
that they can really, really hammer it out.
You've touched on something
that I would call key performance indicators.
And we use KPIs
within the industry.
We use that in process engineering as well.
And I think throughout the industry,
I see a lot of owners and managers
that understand KPIs
and they can go into their
shop management system, perhaps,
or whatever they're using for reporting
and pull out ARO.
They can pull out any number
of various metrics.
And I would challenge them
to say,
do we understand what levers you pull
as an owner or
manager that influences
those KPIs?
I think that's where
the wheels begin to come off the bus
is taking the fact
that I can access
a metric or a measurement
and know, okay, I know this number.
I know my numbers. I know my ARO.
I know my car count. I know these things.
And then do I also
know which levers I can pull
that influence these?
And how do I learn these things?
Well, again, I go out into the shop.
I spend time observing.
I have in the back of my mind,
I want to watch for key
behavior in the shop,
or I want to just occasionally ask
questions. The morning huddles are a great time to do that.
If you're not having a morning huddle, please do that.
Stay in tune with
the people in the shop.
And if you are having that,
in addition to the morning huddle,
are there moments or opportunities throughout the day
to walk around? If you're managing,
there's this idea of walk around management.
It's as applicable
to our industry in automotive repair
as it is in corporate America,
where walk around management is
common in a lot of organizations.
This becomes important. And why do we want to do that?
Well, we want to walk around to understand
and take the pulse and stay in touch
with what is happening so that I'm not
just sitting in my office pretending
that everything's great and everything's moving along
just fine. And I look at my KPIs
on my SMS and I feel like,
yep, we're doing great. But all the while,
we have these potential areas
of missed opportunity.
So as I'm out engaging
aware of the workflow and the process,
now I can apply these simple
process tools.
If I can leave your listener-carm with the idea
that process doesn't have to be scary,
it just has to be talked about,
then we're all moving the needle here.
This is about sustainable improvements
to the business. And it's an objective,
it's a goal, it's almost a
must-do, it's a responsibility.
I've said in the past
and I think this episode is helping
justify when I say
get your antenna up,
Mr. Owner, get your intuition
connected to your antenna
and manage by walking around
or walk around management.
And when you see the data
that you as an owner need
to understand and know and say
I'm not sure what this really means
or why isn't it as good as it was
last month, etc. etc.
Then going out with your
observation antenna
out, you usually can
find a problem. And a lot of it is
if it's a company that's already got their
systems down, they've got some great
processes, a lot of people put
them up online. It doesn't mean that
because we did this
last year, that it doesn't need
to be looked at again.
Well, we added a new piece of
equipment. We added another bay.
We have a new person from the outside
just joining us. Someone from a
customer came in. They have
mentality of process that
oh, that's how we did it over there.
And sometimes things break
down. It's almost
like the maintenance of
a vehicle. It has to be done.
It very much has to be done.
Process analysis
and improvement is a cyclical process.
I'm using the word
process to define process, right?
So in Six Sigma
Domaic, I mentioned
earlier, define, measure, analyze, improve
control. Control
puts us not into status quo.
It puts us into the next
phase of define. So we're
going to go back to the beginning.
We're going to understand
what we do. We're going to measure that,
improve this process by making
data driven decisions.
And ultimately we get into a control
phase. Well, control just means
we're operationally
working at our new level,
right? So we were working here.
Now we're going to raise the bar. We've made
data driven decisions. We've improved
our process. Everybody's on board.
We know what we're doing. We know why we're
doing it. And we know who feeds
what I'm doing and who benefits from what
I'm doing, right? The supplier and customer.
Now in control, we're going to come back
to the beginning. So we're
going to do this process, this new
improved process for 30, 60,
90 days and then
go kind of go back to the
measure side of it, right?
Are we actually realizing these
results? Has our process
improvement proven?
Or have we introduced something that was a variable
we didn't identify? Because we know
what it should look like.
Now we know what a defect is or what
abnormal is. But this is
a circular process. In my opinion,
this is never a one and done.
We're never going to just do something, say
check. I have my book now
and good. When somebody asks
me if I have my SOPs or
my process is defined. Yep,
I got it. This becomes
a part of how we work and how we run
our businesses. I love the words
perpetual loop.
Yeah. It describes just what you said
that you need. It's almost
like once you get done
either reviewing or creating
a process and
now I'm just going to throw a number out. You got
40 of them out there
because of all these different types
and styles of
situation old jobs
responsibilities. It's
we got this done.
Whoops.
You may have to go back and visit something you did
three months ago because of a change
in the business. You may have to go back
because one of the brainiacs
in the back says this isn't working
any more. We got
a new piece of equipment. We have some new technology
that shortens that loop, if you
will, in going from
A to step C. Now we don't need B
and I love
your point this whole
it's like paying attention to KPIs in finance
as an owner.
Almost needs to be someone
anointed
to be the process person
and I'll bet you you can find someone in the company.
Now if you're three or four base shop it's not
going to happen. You own it. You're the owner.
You are the owner. You're the process owner and the business owner.
I mean I know there's people
with shop foreman, shop managers,
area managers.
It's almost like the responsibility needs to get
inside but if an area manager is managing
three or four stores each
and it's a six or eight, ten store
chain, they need to work together.
Someone may identify this.
Our building is a little different size
a little different format.
We have long base instead of square
base. It's like
this doesn't work in this
particular place and it may work somewhere
else. Thank you for bringing it up
and you talk about when in the war
you know processes
they win wars. Policies win
wars against yourself
and the competition and the marketplace.
He brought up a super important
point right now and I'm glad you did
because you talked about change
management. The idea
take an MSO
and the idea that okay
you'll run into this right where somebody
says that process works for them but it doesn't work
for us and let me tell you all the reasons why
it doesn't work here. It's a little bit of
not from my camp mentality
and this is why early
on we talked about
bringing in the people involved in the process
these might be subject matter experts
they might be key contributors
they might be individual process owners
within the MSO
environment.
Who's the foreman at location one
and who's the foreman at location two
and are they all part of this
because almost without exception
a business process
is going to be
portable from one location
to the second location to the third location
when people are
on board with that and change management is
super important so this is now where I want
to bring in my subject matter
experts and you know
I'll call them local process owners
to be part of this
so that we understand
ultimately they're going to be charged
with taking what we learn
and what we know about process
execution back to their
local
managing that and implementing it
because we don't want people
this is a defect area
where we have people say okay
this process was built for that location
it doesn't work here because of XYZ
so I'm not going to adopt it
and then without even saying
I'm going to check out
they've checked out without effective and proper change management
we don't have the ability to
implement, maintain and manage control
across multiple
locations in certain cases
so this comes back
to really making people understand that they own this
if there is variability
from one location to another location
that's okay but that can be accounted
in our process documentation
but we have to know why
we can't just have somebody say
that won't work here because
if they can articulate
why and understand
is it actually different or
is it the same but because you have
7,000 square feet
and this location has 2,500 square feet
you think it won't work
or can we actually drive greater
benefit because of these variables
this is important, change management
is important as our organization
is larger and we have
10, 20 locations
getting those area managers
the location managers, the shop foremen
from each of those locations part of this
becomes that much more important
because now they have that sense of ownership
and when people own
their piece of the picture
they're ready to go back now and engage
and make that change
real at their location
thank you for that, change management
look I'm going to sum up the episode
with this one particular concept
and that is over the 10 years that I've been
podcasting and getting to know so many people
you mentioned MSO, multi shop operations
and people wanting to scale
what I learned about 8 years ago
so how was that store number 2
we never hit our processes
and systems down
well how did store 3 go
it wasn't as good because we never fixed them
and then we finally got
slapped upside the head
found an accountability partner or a coach
we got our stuff together
now we're at 10 stores but we're stupid
we grew without any disciplines
we grew without any systems
and processes
and those are the people that would say
oh my god David you know
Six Sigma Lean it's so important
even if you have a one
up store operation
you'll find out how much more efficient
it's all about the satisfied
the client experience
done at the end of the day
you want a wheel to come off
oh how many wheels have come off down the road
3 or 4 blocks away
it's because you don't have a process in a system
so cover in a few remaining minutes
the importance
that you can't scale
if you don't have great systems
processes
it's the practice ground
we never despise small beginnings
everybody starts at the beginning
some of the biggest shop owners
that I know today that are
20 plus locations
they started renting a bay
it's funny you say that because
I've talked with those owners too
we joke that
store is the hardest until you add
the third store
because now we really
expose
the inefficiency
what we're saying from a process standpoint is
we're really exposing the defects
because I don't know the process
I can't measure it
I don't know what normal looks like
so I am not able to identify abnormal
and then what happens
the oil leaks out within 3 miles of the store
or the wheel comes off on the highway
these are not just dissatisfying
factors that affect a customer
they're
potentially dangerous considerations
we want our customers happy
and of course we want them safe
so we start at the beginning
and understand that today
I'm going to
look and identify a process area
to understand better
that's really what this comes down to
in my opinion Karm
if I take a moment
the shops that are having the morning huddle
there are different names for these
that are used throughout the industry
those are just conscious decisions
that we're going to allocate this period of time
each day
we're going to accomplish something as a group
similarly in process analysis
and process improvement
I'm the owner of a shop
I'm going to make a conscious decision that each day
I'm going to evaluate what's going on around me
and try to better understand
why people are doing what they're doing
to gravitate in a lot of cases
to a path of least resistance
in their own mind and that doesn't mean
that they're doing something effectively or efficiently
and this is where we see that rapid
tackling of process execution
so when I make that decision
I'm the thought leader for the business
and that just means that
I need to stay in front of what's happening
and evaluate
a process area
make a decision to talk with
the people that are involved with that
who's doing what
what are the inputs and the outputs of a particular process
ultimately I'd like to document that
and measure this so that we can make some improvements
around that
this begins to train a pattern of behavior
and you'll actually
my feeling is that
owners that make this commitment to decision
will begin to get energized
by process improvement
I've seen it happen before
they are intrigued like
I can actually cut seven minutes
off of a particular service
from that
certainly our shop
we have more throughput capability
the customer
potentially getting their vehicle back sooner
my technician
who is flat rate
versus salary
they're going to benefit from doing something
seven minutes faster
because we've defined some efficiency
we have discernible
measurable process
that is ideally without defect
so my customer's safety
is elevated and I can stand
by my commitment and guarantee
that they're going to be satisfied with
coming to us and they'll come back again
so these are all the things that happen
and this begins to grow
I do feel that the owners
and process owners
will begin to get encouraged and excited about this
and as you drive
efficiency in your shops
as you drive reduction of defects
your service advisors become more happy
your technicians
your CSR
the managers
and you have growth potential
it's intoxicating
well for a guy like me
who's driven by process
I call it my love language car
we talk process right
so it really becomes invigorating
and I think that it's like the challenge
I'm going to go find something
I'm going to ask
an extra question today
just to hear somebody's response
do they know why they're doing something
unbelievable
thank you so much
a couple of my big takeaways is of course
ask why
the rapid toggling is
unbelievable
the loop
the perpetual loop that we get into
needing to establish
normal and processes
without defect
wow
David Boyd
Aline Six Sigma
Black Belt worked at GE years ago
which is where all this came
to you from
but you had the brain
that was perfect for it
because you eat and live processes
David Boyd from
callinbound.com
great phone company
one of the sponsors on the aftermarket radio network
this was enlightening
thank you so much now
if you listen or learn anything
please go implement it
and whatever you do
please
please do it well
thanks for being on board
to listen and learn
from the premier automotive aftermarket podcast
until next time
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