Labor sales are the by product of everything else (See parts 1-5 of this series), so although you will be looking at that number at the end of the month and throughout the month, you must focus on the numbers that make up your labor sales.

Once you’ve determined, through efficiency calculations, what each technicians total flat rate hour capabilities are, you must calculate your totals for the shop for each technician and the total number of days/shifts. To determine the actual potential for the month, you must factor in vacations, average sick times, etc. .

Once you’ve determined your potential in the shop, examine your Hrs/RO to determine how many RO’s you will need to write in order to maximize your potential. Once you’ve determined how many RO’s, review your past months to compare that number with previous months. Do you normally write more than that? Do you write less? If you normally write more RO’s than you are capable of performing, realize that one of two things will happen. You will either have too much work and be unable to perform it with your current staff load, or more likely, you will perform that same work load, but in order to get all of the work done, your Advisors and Technicians will push everything through more quickly, and obviously, less thoroughly, just to get it done. Ultimately, your Hours/RO will suffer, as your technicians simply try to push more RO’s through.

If the number of RO’s you actually perform is less than your capabilities, realize that you are doomed to have an unsuccessful month unless you change something. There are a few obvious things to examine. 

Are you, in fact, technically overstaffed? If your operation doesn’t run smoothly, we tend to hire additional people to smooth out the day to day flow. The fact is, you either have the work load to support technician counts or you don’t.

If you do indeed have the proper number of technicians, are your Hrs/RO performing at what you believe is the peak? If not, which is normally the case, you need to implement strategies and processes to increase your Hrs/RO, so that you can maximize every RO.

Not to worry, at Auto University, our Fixed Operations specialists will work with your Service Team to help you identify where your operation needs improvement and customize solutions and processes that will ensure long term success!

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