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Permalink Reply by Tod Collins on July 20, 2011 at 10:51am

There are many factors that go into that discussion including how well the parts department is laid out against the service department, how well you support the counter people with technology and runners, how helpful or needy the advisors and technicians are, how well parts are organized for easy access, how good are the internal processes, etc. I have never seen a true ratio and keep in mind that ratio would go out the window as would the one's I'll give you, in stores that have less than three people simply because we ask those guys to wear many hats and we sometimes don't have the volume to support the numbers we're trying to get to.

In my current store, we run two back counter guys and twenty five technicians including an integrated quicklane but the system is set up to support those two. Three years ago, we had more than thirty techs with these same two parts people. We have a stand alone front counter with two more counter people that can help support the back during those busy times and vice versa, we utilize parts drivers and shuttle drivers to run parts to the techs, we have good cooperation between parts, service and techs,  and most communication to the back counter is by email, allowing the two on the back counter to stay focused on the task at hand and not the phone. These two are both ex-managers and both have more that 20 years of experience with Ford.

I think its far more accurate to look at the department as a whole and there are several benchmarks that have proven accurate over time. In my department, I look at each one every month and I trend them in a spreadsheet and look for improvement against themselves. What it doesn't do is tell me where those resources should be distributed such as the back counter, front counter or drivers. Also keep in mind that these numbers get skewed if you work in a high line import store, large diesel operation or heavy truck industry.

The first number I look at each month is how many pieces each person in the parts department is producing. I include all parts people including drivers as well as myself in each of these equations. I'm looking for about 1500 pieces per employee. When we drop to around 800 pieces I'm starting to consider that I'm over staffed. If we exceed the 1500 pieces per person per month, I'm starting to look at individual work loads and whether we might be under staffed. Pieces are nice because it takes the dollars out of the equation. If you have someone that is selling engines compared to someone that is selling spark plugs, the field is somewhat leveled and quite honestly it doesn't take much more time for either. I put more credibility on this benchmark than the other three just for this reason. In my store, the back two guys produce 6000-8000 pieces consistently every month, the front counter guys between 1200-1800 pieces per month. I couple of days vacation will make these numbers change very dramatically but it can also be used as an early indicator of a brewing problem with an employee.

The other three staffing 'tests" are financial benchmarks and you'll see these used by various parts guru's as well as Nada and twenty groups and have been used for years and adjusted from time to time for market price changes. These include sale per person (47,500), gross per person (12,500) and cost of goods per person (25,000).  Using the engine example again you can see that it would dramatically affect all three of these numbers. I track these numbers as I do the first and spreadsheet them over time to see trends. If I have a large variance, I'll look at the product mix to determine possible causes but I don't spend a great deal of time on these numbers as I do the pieces.  

Sorry for the lengthy reply. Hope that it helps.

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Permalink Reply by Scott Stevenson on July 20, 2011 at 5:43pm

Todd,

Thank you for that reply....it was very insightful.  I do have to ask, however, if your back guys consistently produce 6-8000 pieces, wouldn't that fall in to your category of being understaffed?  Also, would either RO count or RO lines, for the back counter guys, be an additional way to appropriatley measure them?

 

Thanks,

Scott

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Permalink Reply by Tod Collins on July 20, 2011 at 6:42pm

Scott,

 

I think in alot of cases 6-8K would be considered understaffed. I judge that by whether there is a back up at the counter, the complaints by the techs, conversations with the service director and our level of mistakes. In my case those are all negligible. If that changed, I wouldn't hesitate to move someone into a slot on the back counter.

As far as using lines or RO counts, I have never seen a good study on either but it would be interested to see the statistics.

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Permalink Reply by Leonard Buchholz on July 21, 2011 at 10:08am

Tod,

That is really a great post on so many levels. I had not thought of a counterperson (front or back) on a per piece transaction before and that was eye opening. Most of the business still uses the Industry/NADA dollar per person calculation because that is what the EOM is...how much did I make...rather than a metric that expresses how much did I produce.

One thought sprang to my mind as I reread your post and that is you have several "layers" of help when needed. For example, you said that the front counter helps when the back gets busy and that you have drivers and other personnel run parts. That is one area the failing Dealerships struggle with. From my perspective,when we look at processes and personnel in a store, we find a lot of "job rigidity" in stores that struggle.

I think that quite a few stores would benefit from adopting your thinking and strategy. It sounds like you have a great system in place and it works well. Congrats.

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Permalink Reply by Bert Martin on September 10, 2011 at 9:16am

Why have a back counter? Eliminate the back counter and put the parts person in the shop with a computer.

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Permalink Reply by Tod Collins on September 12, 2011 at 9:53am

Bert,

We tried to have a parts guy in the middle of the shop and I think its a great idea when the shop is running at or near capacity. But having a parts guys in the middle of the shop creates logistical as well as staffing issues within the parts department. It is the next logical step to increase shop efficiencies but should be thoroughly discussed with all parties involved including DP/GM because it's not as simple as just moving a body.

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