Capturing the Lost Profit: Profit Sharing with Employees Kihei HI

Promise your employees a share of the gross profit from paint and materials, and your shop will suddenly become less wasteful.

By Mike Jones
9/1/1998

With tighter controls on labor prices and increasing pressure on profits made from the sale of parts, each area of a shop needs to generate a profit. And the paint shop can be the primary culprit in the area of lost paint and material profit - an often misunderstood and mismanaged area. Profits in this area are usually small or non-existent. But where does the expected profit in this area go?

$ If you have a liquid waste drum in your paint shop, look inside, that's your money in there.

$ If your body technicians use primer as body filler; that, too, is your money.

$ If your painters don't mix their own paint - or, sometimes, even if they do - look around for all the partial cans of paint in your paint shop; your money is in those cans.

$ Look around in your paint shop and metal shop. Do you see sanding discs stuck to the floor, partial rolls of tape scattered around, half-full cans of body filler or molding clips on technicians' benches? This is more of your money.

$ Do your painters color sand and buff every job? The money it takes to pay for the extra material that gets sanded off and ends up on the floor comes out of your pocket.

Maybe we aren't recognizing what's going on, but we see all these things on a daily basis. Yet, when asked about the reason for a low profit, we usually have plenty of reas...