After an accident at the end of the year, I took my car to the dealership where I had bought it. Once the necessary repairs were reviewed, I started talking with the Service Advisor about trivial matters. At one point, he mentioned that he had “a bunch of timesheets pending to be processed” and that, because of that, he wasn’t in the mood to think about his upcoming summer vacation.
This reminded me of a similar case: a workshop manager who boasted about having an innovative, paperless time tracking system. At the end of each day, the mechanics would manually log their hours, but on a screen.
In both cases, a clear situation was repeated: time spent manually entering data, with all the errors and inaccuracies that come with it. Another example of how the equation of unproductivity operates.
Time that is paid for but never billed
In the automotive industry, it’s increasingly important to identify these unproductive situations and view them as an opportunity to improve. If you’re spending more time compiling information than analyzing it, or if you’re uncertain whether the data entered is 100% accurate, you’re sidelining the strategic value of your role.
The difference between a patch and a solution
True control over workshop time has three pillars:
- It must be real, reliable, and accurate.
- It must be recorded in real-time.
- It must generate conclusions to make decisions.
There are various patches and ideas to address each of these items: you could chase each technician to ensure they enter their data, or you could walk around the shop all day entering information, or, as the Service Advisor did, spend days entering data into spreadsheets to draw belated conclusions. In each case, investing effort into one aspect causes the other two to become unbalanced.
Real solutions, like the one you can find through this link, aim for a balance of all three points. Only this way can you rest assured that the data is being entered, it’s accurate, and it’s useful.
Communication is key
When Job Clock is implemented, it’s essential that the whole team adopts it. Success is closely tied to the tool becoming part of each role’s daily routine. That’s why clear and genuine communication about why a tool is being introduced is key.
In one implementation I worked on, for instance, the tool was resisted because it was seen as a constant “watchdog” in the shop.
The problem wasn’t the tool, but how it was communicated. Adoption improved once it was demonstrated that the actual goal was to identify training needs, improve infrastructure, eliminate inventory -related delays, implement incentive programs, etc. The goal wasn’t to penalize those who were less efficient; it was to ensure everyone had the same conditions to be equally efficient.
Back to the beginning
This article came about after my conversation with a Service Advisor, who might still be filling out last month’s spreadsheets. Its purpose is simply to prompt us to ask ourselves, regardless of department or role, whether what consumes the most time and effort is truly what is expected from our position.
