Welcome to the final installment in this series on Understanding the Service Numbers. Up to this point we've provided a little insight into how to truly understand your business by understanding the numbers that make up your business. I encourage you to make comments as to what you liked, didn't like, require more information on or anything on this topic in general, by clicking here.

When your operation has reached that point of running on all 8 cylinders, you will begin to consider physically adding on to your service operations? facility. Before you spend all of that capital, read on for yet another cost saving tip.

Firstly, are you running flat out for 24 hours? If not, it's too soon to build.  At Auto University, we can customize an organizational chart and help implement the structure and operational layout for your operation.

If you're not quite at the point of needing to move to a 24 hour operation, but still find yourself bursting at the seams, there are a few other options you have before building more bays.

Dealers tell us that adding a "night shift" that has an Advisor, parts counterman, and a few technicians, simply can't generate enough revenue to justify itself, and/or that the market itself just isn't a 24 hour kind of market. More difficult of course, is finding technicians that want part time work. This can be true, so you do have a few more options.

Have you extended work hours, with split shifts, allowing each bay to produce more hours in any given day? That is to say, if you have a shop of 10 bays, logically you can only employ 10 technicians working an 8 hour day. (Remember the available time here is 80 hours (10 technicians X 8 Hours Available = 80) If you were to move from 8 hour days to 10 hour days, you would have to move your technicians from a five day work week to a four day work week and hire more technicians, but you would effectively create 20 additional available hours (10 technicians/day X 10 Hours Available = 100). You could also move to 13 hour days, and a 3 day work week, creating another 30 available hours (10 technicians/day X 13 Hours Available = 130). By elongating the work day, and shortening the work week, not only do technicians have more days off, which certainly helps attract new technicians to your company, you eliminate the need to build a bigger facility.

One last note on the extension of hours is this, many dealers have experienced that being open later into the evening doesn't always generate what they expected. Rather than staying open any later, perhaps your market would be more condusive to opening earlier. Who determined that 7am would be the earliest we could open anyway? At one dealership we implemented opening the operation at 5 am and closing by 6 pm. The fact is, the facility is there for 24 hours/day, 365 days per year, whether or not you utilize it to that extent is entirely up to you.

To get the help the forces you to use it to that extent, contact Auto University now!