Car Repair Sparks NV

The only way to achieve consistent, quality repairs is to establish clearly defined goals and communicate them to your staff

By Nathan Tarr
1/1/2000

I'm busy as can be painting cars and have more work than I know what to do with dollar signs in my eyes. Then, BAM, I'm attacked by shoddy bodywork sent over to the paint shop. Pinholes, bad featheredging, wavy bodywork, you name it.

I've got to stop and analyze the problem. Should I send it back to the body tech? Should I attempt to keep the repair moving forward and fix it myself? No matter the solution, I've been slowed down, the body tech has been slowed down, the repair has been slowed down and everybody loses.

Worse yet, if I'm busy enough, I'm on autopilot, so I may miss something that's unacceptable and paint the car only to then be saddled with a nasty redo. In this instance, I'm going to lose money, the shop's going to lose money and the customer is going to become irritated when she wonders why her car isn't done. All this happens because good quality control methods weren't in place.

'A' is for Accountability
Everybody has the ability to make each person's job easier or harder. Each person in a body shop is accountable to another.

The office is accountable to the body techs. Every car that comes into the shop needs to have a thorough estimate written. All too often, a weak, incomplete estimate is passed off to the body techs. Now is as good a time as ever to let your managers know that it's th...