CCIF Vancouver Presentation Puts Onus for Change on Owners

With imperatives to improve profitability, the collision shop owner may very well be the barrier to future success.

That was, in part, the message of Steven Feltovich at the Canadian Collision Industry Forum event in Vancouver.

His presentation, “Collision Repair Planning for Rapid Throughput,” stated the imperatives that are driving the need for maximized efficiencies. These include the car companies, insurers, and the customer, but the bottom line is that a repairer must be fast, good, and be able to deliver on price and timing as promised.

This cannot happen in the traditional process model, he said. Getting an efficient model in place that reduces supplements and delays, both of which are wasteful, requires a change in thinking. He quoted statistics that any supplement, no matter how small, can cost a day and a half in delays.

“If you are still a technician-minded person, you need to change that, yesterday. You are going to have to be a businessperson to understand what profitability really means.

“Focusing on repair process planning, shops need the discipline to institute a detailed disassembly, estimating, and ordering process, in place of a haphazard system of partial disassembly, best guesses, and the subsequent raft of supplements when new damage is found.”

The most commonly ordered supplements, he said, were radiators, responsible for 24.7% of supplements; rear bumper brackets, with a 21.9% share; and front bumper brackets, with 19.4% share.

“The object is to drive back to zero the amount of time that any vehicle is sitting idle, or waiting for someone to work on it.”

And for those shops that have instituted lean processes and repair process planning, the imperative doesn’t end.

“The main reason that shops that have gone lean fall off the program,” he said, “is that the owner, management, stops pushing for it. Business changes and they end up going off the plan.”

The next CCIF is scheduled for Montreal, Que., September 25. Visit www.ccif.net.

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Canada’s Low-VOC Regulations Phasing In June 19

The first phase of Canada’s Low-VOC refinish regulations comes into force June 19, prohibiting the manufacturing and importation of products not meeting the standards.

A communiqu from Environment Canada states the situation unequivocally:

“For your information, we would like to advise you that the prohibition on the manufacture and import of products with VOC concentrations exceeding the limits set out in the Regulations comes into force on June 19, 2010 and that the prohibition on the sale and offer for sale comes into force six months later on December 19, 2010.”

The communiqu also states that “The purpose of the Regulations is to protect the environment and health of Canadians by introducing VOC concentration limits for 14 categories of automotive refinishing products.

“The Regulations prohibit the manufacture, import, sale and offer for sale of automotive refinish-ing products with VOC concentrations that exceed the applicable limits.”

The final version of the Regulations is on the CEPA Environmental Registry website at: http://www.ec.gc.ca/CEPARegistry/regulations/.

Background information on the Regulations is also available on Environment Canada’s VOCs in Consumer and Commercial Products website at the following address: www.ec.gc.ca/cov-voc.