The Solution
We started looking at how we could keep technicians in their bays and keep parts moving without requiring people to make those trips.
That’s where Relo came in.
Instead of technicians walking to the parts department, they submit their parts requests electronically. The parts department picks the parts and loads them onto a rack, and Relo takes the rack directly to the technician’s bay. When the technician is finished, Relo can return the rack to the parts department.
At first, there was some apprehension. We heard, “There’s no way this is going to work. It’s going to break. It’s going to be more of a hindrance than a help.”
But once it started working, the response changed. Technicians no longer had to walk from one end of the shop to the other with a grocery cart full of parts. They could stay in their bays, keep working and have the parts brought to them.
We track Relo's productivity just like we track our technicians. In one month, it made 437 trips and saved us 53 hours of technician time.
For us, that time matters. We need to make up the time we spend on diagnostics, programming and the increasingly complex work today's vehicles require. If we can eliminate technicians walking back and forth to the parts counter, we can give that time back to them.
It has also helped reduce the physical strain on our technicians. Instead of carrying heavy parts and batteries across the shop, Relo can move them for us.
Ultimately, we found that the biggest obstacle wasn't whether Relo could work in our shop. It was our mindset about whether we were willing to change the way we'd always done things. Once we got past that, we found a better way to keep our technicians working and our parts moving.
“437 trips to the technicians saved us 53 hours and created almost $8,000 against our effective labour rate in one month.”
