The extremely interested third Part of Service Development Program contains Facility Planning techniques, Facility Organization, Organize Site Traffic Flow and Parking (methodology and samples), Organize the Reception Area and at long last Calculating Stall (workstations) Requirements.

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Service Development Program - Module 1
Continued …

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ROS (Retail Operating Standards)

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Facility Planning
Facilities, Equipment, and Information Management:
 Customers have definite expectations when it comes to service.
 They want Quality, Convenience, Good Treatment, and a Fair Price.
 Clearly it’s a big advantage to have the right plan, but equally important are the resources—the
Facilities (1), Tools and Equipment (2), and Information (3) —that make the plan work as an operating
system.
 Monitoring and evaluating service resources on a routine basis is one of the cornerstones of effective
service management.
 Satisfying customer expectations can only happen when you have the right (Resources) facilities, tools,
equipment, and information necessary to support your business plan.
 As service manager, you’re obviously the best person to keep track of the department’s resources.
 You’re constantly evaluating workshop needs as a normal part of your daily management activities.
 By applying an organized method to managing resources, you can continue to direct most of your
attention where it’s most needed—to the complex customer and technical elements of department
management—without sacrificing basic resource needs.
 The priorities and special needs at your dealership will, of course, affect how you apply the guidelines.

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 Efficient, clean facilities, the right tools and equipment, and accurate, accessible information are some
of the most important prerequisites for providing a positive service experience. They contribute to:
1. Improved customer loyalty because of better repair quality.
2. Greater service income because of efficient daily operations, reduced expenses, and maximum
utilization of the dealer’s investments.
Facility Organization
 Facility resource management really begins with facility planning.
 Well-planned facilities operate more efficiently, are easier to maintain, and present a more professional
image to customers and employees.
 some fundamental information on facility planning is included:
1. Site traffic and parking.
2. Service reception layout and consultant workstations .
3. Workshop layout.
4. Areas for special workshop functions.

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Organize Site Traffic Flow and Parking
PERFORMANCE BENCHMARK
Traffic flow is organized for efficient and safe vehicle movement
 Traffic into and around the site and parking affects a broad array of dealership activities, from
service reception to receiving parts, and even vehicle sales activities, but most dealership
traffic is service related.
 That means you need to be concerned about traffic patterns and organizing available parking space.
 Why get involved? Because how well the site is arranged for internal traffic and parking has a
significant effect on your department’s business. Site traffic planning, like all facility planning issues,
however, must be done in cooperation with the dealer. The following steps will guide you and the
dealer as you work together on making the site work best.
1. Analyze the site plan of your dealership to identify logical parking areas for each operational area
(service, sales, and parts, plus employees) - The basic idea is to locate parking close to each functional
area - The only exception to the rule of close proximity is employee parking—this area should be as far
away as possible from normal vehicle movement (against the back fence of the lot, for example).

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2. Estimate the number of spaces required for each operational area based on daily business volume
for that area and average parking time.
3. Once you have determined the locations and numbers for the various parking areas, draw a detailed
site parking plan. As you develop the plan, consider some additional measures to ease congestion:
a. Make sales and service entrances to the property separate when possible.
b. Provide a separate entrance for parts shipping and receiving, or at least provide a traffic lane for
delivery purposes.
c. Install directional signs to identify each traffic lane.
d. Plan for easy return to the street from all areas.
e. Use high-density parking where appropriate (for inventory and in-service vehicles).

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4. When you are satisfied with the parking plan on paper, discuss it with the other managers and the
dealer. Rework the plan, as necessary, based on the suggestions of your colleagues. When everyone
agrees on the plan, arrange to restripe the site. Make sure each parking area is identified with signs.
5. Tell employees the reasons for developing the new parking plan and ask for their cooperation in
complying with the new site parking plan.
Organize the Reception Area
 Some service departments routinely have vehicles lined up into the street during peak customer arrival
periods—a dangerous practice that signifies poor planning and organization to customers and passers-
by.
 Operating procedures, such as the reservations system, help minimize reception area congestion.
 The physical layout and location of the service reception area are also quite important.
 Consider these ideas to help make your reception area a more suitable environment for customer
consulting.:
1. Make sure the reception area is easy to find.
2. Locate the reception area far enough away from the street so that all arriving vehicles can be
accommodated.
3. Have the reception area close to or attached to the main service building.
4. Establish the reception parking area outside of the workshop and shelter the area from the
elements.
5. Provide easy access to the vehicle testing area, the workshop, and the parking lot. When possible,
have a lane available to return to the street.

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6. Locate the reception area away from the new and used car sales areas and the parts shipping and
receiving area, so that you avoid having reception traffic interfere with those functions.
7. Avoid letting customers drive through the workshop to park.
8. When possible, provide more lanes in the reception area to speed traffic flow (Four lanes one car
deep will move faster than two lanes two cars deep, and a whole lot faster than one lane four cars
deep).

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Organizing Service Consultant Workstations
 The consultant workstations some of the most frequently visited customer areas in the dealership.
 It’s important to view the areas in that light and make sure they always look organized and inviting, and
to reflect how important customers are to the dealership.
 In some dealerships, service consultant workstations become bottlenecks for paperwork.
 Make sure there is a similar arrangement of the consultants’ tools (telephone, calculator, computer, and
so on).
 The tools routinely use of service consultant:
1. Repair orders.
2. Telephone notes.
3. Daily service records.
4. Customer information cards
5. Estimating worksheets.
6. Day planner/personal calendar.
7. Provide a desktop reminder system (tickler file) for each consultant to organize customer follow-up
work (see the Follow-Up chapter in Service Transactions for details). And at each workstation, provide a
stacking tray or file to hold.
8. After-hours drop-off repair orders awaiting contact with a customer to clarify wants and needs.
9. Repair orders waiting for approval of revised estimates.
10. Repair order copies pending telephone delivery.

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 Consistent workstation arrangement, just from a visual image standpoint, helps establish a uniform and
professional customer experience.
 From an operational standpoint, systematizing service consultant workstations makes it possible for any
service consultant to respond to any customer inquiry at any time.
 This permits the department to remain responsive to customer needs even when the original service
consultant is unavailable.
 Here are guidelines to help your service consultants organize a daily workstation maintenance routine:
1.Keep repair orders, and other documents you’re working on, in one place where you can quickly find
them. A desktop tray is a good place to temporarily store repair orders while awaiting parts information
or a customer authorization. This applies even at dealerships where a computer generates repair orders
and invoices.
2. Keep telephone messages and notes about telephone conversations in a single bound notepad or in
your follow-up tickler file (Follow-Up Service Transaction). By dating your entries, you can quickly find
pertinent details about important conversations. This also eliminates the clutter of notes taped, tacked,
or otherwise scattered about your work area.
3. Keep the workstation free of personal materials or photographs - It’s a customer environment.
Making the customer feel at home there is the primary concern.
4. Clean the telephone, calculator, and computer regularly.
5. Make sure walls and desk surfaces are wiped clean daily.
6. Always take care of your personal needs away from the workstation. This means that you should eat,
drink, or smoke only in the lunchroom or another area away from customers. The same goes for

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personal telephone calls; tell personal callers that you will call them back, and make the calls only at
locations away from customers.
Be Aware of Workshop Layout Factors
1. The first basic facility planning step is to decide on the number of repair stalls needed:
• Calculate the number of workstalls you need based on desired service market share, using the
method described in the sidebar Calculating Stall Requirements.
• Plan for complete productivity from every stall—one technician to one workstall - Avoid assigning
technicians two or more workstalls—it’s too expensive.
Calculating Stall Requirements
 your objective is to have shop capacity in balance with desired service market share.
 Formulas that link workstall requirements to new vehicle planning volume are too simplistic.
 The most sensible approach is to calculate stall needs based on your own assumptions about the service
business in your market.
 One important warning: This method assumes that a market share goal is also a practical expectation. It
takes into account a number of variables:
o Number of owners in the market area.
o Frequency of servicing needs.
o Average labor hours sold per visit.
o Hours of operation (multiple shifts).
o Use of special equipment to multiply effective capacity (such as multilevel maintenance bays with
more than one technician working).
o The service department’s business plan for growth.

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Calculate workstall needs by applying the following logic
 Determine the number of vehicle owners in the market area. Get registration information from the
manufacturer or a firm specializing in tracking owner registrations. As a last resort, estimate these
numbers using the dealership’s own sales figures.
 Subtract the vehicles older than five years. These are probably not original owners, and you can expect
very little business from this segment of the vehicle population.
 Multiply the remaining vehicle count by a visit frequency factor. That will be an estimate you make for
the average number of services per vehicle per year. This will vary depending on normal service
intervals, product quality, and typical miles driven per year. A conservative frequency factor is two visits
per year.
If you have 30,000 vehicle owners in your market area with an average visit frequency of 2 visits
per year, your service visit potential would be 60,000 (30,000 X 2) visits per year.
 Next, decide what share of that service market you intend to capture. Industry-wide, dealerships
capture approximately one-fourth of the aftermarket service business. Although this figure is based on
dollars, not visits, it provides a good starting point for forecasting baseline capacity needs. Using this
assumption, the 60,000 potential visits per year translates to 62 visits per day.

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60,000 (potential visits/year) ÷ 4 = 15,000 (potential visits/year)
15,000 (visits/year) ÷ 12 (months/year) = 1,250 (visits/month)
1,250 (visits/month) ÷ 20 (workdays/month) = 62 (potential visits/day)
 The next step is to figure out how many hours of capacity you need per day to handle those 62 visits. To
do this you need to estimate the average hours that will be sold per vehicle. Use current records (labor
dollars per vehicle divided by labor rate) or, if the dealership is new and has no track record, composite
data obtained from the division branch office. Then multiply your figure for hours sold by visits per day
to arrive at the daily capacity needs. In the example, the dealership sells an average of two hours per
vehicle.
2 (hours/vehicle) X 62 (vehicles/day) = 124 (hours/day)
 Next, determine how many man-days of labor capacity are needed to handle the expected daily service
volume.
124 (hours/day) ÷ 8 (hours/technician) = 15.5 (man-days)

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 Rounding to the next whole number, the sample dealership needs 16 man-days of labor each day to
handle its desired share of the service market. Assuming a single shift, it means a minimum of 16
workstalls. But, here’s where you need to consider variables that define effective shop capacity. These
variables include:
1. Length of normal shift—eight, nine, or even ten hours.
2. Extended business hours—two or more shifts, weekend service, one or more late nights.
3. Improved technician efficiency—equipment and techniques to increase output, multilevel
maintenance hoists, systems for delivering vehicles and parts to technicians, and computerized
dispatching.
 Keep in mind that there are only “General” stalls & don’t include other “Specialty” stalls such as:
1. Wash stall.
2. Quick-service stall.
3. Vehicle testing stall.
4. Wheel alignment stall.
5. Stalls especially designed for work on trucks, utility vehicles, and recreational vehicles.
 Add these specialty stalls to the general stall count to determine the total number of workstalls that
meets the unique circumstances of your market area.

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Multiple Stall Assignments Are Too Costly
In some areas, it’s still a common practice to assign two stalls to every technician. One justification for
this practice is that while one job is interrupted (to get parts or a customer authorization), the technician
can work on the other vehicle. Unfortunately, this practice is not economical because it unnecessarily
inflates building costs and land requirements.
But it also doesn’t make sense from a service sales standpoint. For example, with a labor rate of $75 per
hour, one stall sitting idle costs the shop $600 in lost income every day. Extend this figure out to a year
and that represents $150,000 in lost income. Even if technicians achieve an overall efficiency of 150
percent, there will still be $75,000 in lost income.

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See you in workshop layout next Part

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Thank You
Mohamed Shehata
www.linkedin.com/in/mohamedshehata
Auto Business way
Autobway@gmail.com