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I was curious what you guys thought about dispatching jobs. In my dealership it is a mess and even the service manager agrees. When a job comes in the writer writes the RO and places it on the counter. Customers who are waiting get a stamp on the RO identifying that. We have a pad of paper we write our numbers down on and the job is suppose to go to the next number on the list, unless it is a transmission issue, a corvette issue, or a hybrid issue(we have special techs for those jobs). The problem is tho that techs will watch what comes in the door, they then will manipulate there number to get the best job. It isn’t working because some techs get a lot of easy jobs and can make easy money. They recently made a change that I get all the free oil changes(because I make the least), which has a lot of the guys angry(not at me thank god). We all agree that change must come, and I was curious on how other shops dispatch.
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That’s a good question and leads into the flat rate discussion that seems to be ongoing on the forum. At the dealer where I worked we had a ‘team’ system where we had 2 teams with 4 techs on each team, each team had it’s own service writer in the write up area. Each team split the hours 4 ways at the end of the week no matter who did what. This addressed the issue of needing a ‘specialist’ to do this job or that, as long as you had one of those specialists on that team it didn’t matter. The system had it’s own issues such as sometimes it seemed that one person or more might not have been pulling their weight yet they still got their 25%. I addressed this issue by posting each techs hours individually within that team on a ‘leader board’, I didn’t use names just employee numbers so others didn’t know who was doing what. This helped with that issue a great deal because it was spelled out who did what at the end of the week and seemed to quiet things down a bit. In my opinion it took a lot of stress off of management because it made it so they had less complaints about who got what when work came into the shop. On the other hand if you were a team leader like I was you ended up doing a management job and not getting paid for it.
The RO’s where i work are dispatched usually by skill level. We have a board with our names on and the service writer will write down the customer name, vehicle and issue next to one of the techs names.
Our customer traffic consists on ‘waiters’ which can be inspections, brake jobs, aligments and so forth or ‘drop off’s’ which are the longer hour jobs.
We technically use a computer dispatch system, but really it’s only there to get rid of hard copy documentation. A tower operator still gives out the work according to capabilities and certifications which imo is bogus. What ends up happening are techs play the stupid game and in return gets all the easy money making jobs. Then you are left with the talented guys stuck with all the crap. With a dealership operation, at the end of the day all your service manager sees are numbers. If they can increase efficiency of the shop by dispatching work through strengths of each technician, they will do so just to squeeze another 5 hours per day through the shop. Having said that, I usually have my work cut out for me as I’m the lead driveability guy and don’t have to fight for work much.
The team thing that Eric mentioned is interesting. Haven’t ever heard of a system like that before. I would think that you’d really need to be able to trust your teammates and can count on them to produce.
[quote=”blacK20″ post=39098]We technically use a computer dispatch system, but really it’s only there to get rid of hard copy documentation. A tower operator still gives out the work according to capabilities and certifications which imo is bogus. What ends up happening are techs play the stupid game and in return gets all the easy money making jobs. Then you are left with the talented guys stuck with all the crap. With a dealership operation, at the end of the day all your service manager sees are numbers. If they can increase efficiency of the shop by dispatching work through strengths of each technician, they will do so just to squeeze another 5 hours per day through the shop. Having said that, I usually have my work cut out for me as I’m the lead driveability guy and don’t have to fight for work much.
The team thing that Eric mentioned is interesting. Haven’t ever heard of a system like that before. I would think that you’d really need to be able to trust your teammates and can count on them to produce.[/quote]
I have a similar system at my work. Each 3 techs get 1 computer and thats how we locate. But we alsoo have the service manager dispatching. Its suppose to be fair and equal according to the manager, but for some reason there are 4-5 techs out of 50 in the shop that consistantly book 70+ hours each week, and others struggle to hit guarantee in the slower weeks. When we ask the manager, well they say they are “hustlers” and thehy get the work done quickly. yet everytime I walk past them they are knocking out juice work, timing belts, brakes etc. Hardly ever do I see them get stuck with the crappy warrantee work. Thats the kind of stuff that makes me second guess myself about staying there for extended time. It is a union shop so it would be nice, but the stuff that goes on “behind closed doors” makes my hairs stand up sometimes.
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