How to Better Manage Your Employed Mechanics to Ensure Their Productivity

Managing a fleet of auto mechanics is more than just about assigning them the tasks, supplying them the tools for a job, and once they are done – making an entry into the time log, and calling the day off:

“Guys, your work is done for the day, see you tomorrow…”

*Garage doors closed*

You need to manage them in a more comprehensive way – in a way that ensures they work productively. Because if your employed auto mechanics are productive,automatically your shop’s maintenance productivity increases.

So how do you do it?

Here are four ways to better manage your employed auto mechanics to ensure their productivity…

Keep record of everything

As an owner or manager of an auto repair shop, it is your responsibility to note down the details of what each of your mechanic is doing throughout the day and how much time they are spending on each activity.This will help you determine what percentage of your mechanic’s time is spent on doing productive work and how much time they spend performing trivial tasks. Where you feel any adjustments need to be made, strategize accordingly.

Work on capacity planning

Capacity planning is a practice, where you take into account the maximum billable hours available at your service each day, and then organize your shop’s workflow to churn out optimum productivity. Following the practice, you will have time slots allotted for each task – a set time for completing diagnostics, a time window to return to the customer with an estimate etc.

However, make sure you don’t go too aggressive or become too rigid in your approach, as it can strain your relationship with your employees.

Set repair time standards

Visit your shop’s activity log and work out the average time it takes to complete a repair job. Set this as the standard. Next time a repair job comes in, monitor the completion status. If there are any observed variations between the time expensed and the standard repair time, coordinate with your staff to address the deviation.

Provide clean and healthy working environment

Provision of clean and healthy working environment can reduce fatigue among your employed auto mechanics, which contributes to increased shop productivity. Keep the workstations well ventilated and well-lighted and supply your staff with tools that help reduce human effort.

How to Better Manage Your Employed Mechanics to Ensure Their Productivity