Maximizing Expertise: How Role Segmentation Can Build A Winning Team

by Alana Quartuccio

“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson

This basketball legend may have been referring to a sports team, but the body shop team isn’t necessarily so different. A shop’s employees should all have the opportunity to use their individual talents and abilities with the end result being a successful repair – aka a win – based on all of their contributions. The typical shop employs a body technician(s), a painter, a detailer and an estimator. There’s nothing wrong with that set up. But what if those roles, and the overall repair process, were broken down further? In other words, what if the whole process was segmented in such a way that professionals could focus solely on the parts they excel at best, therefore helping to make the entire process more efficient? 

At the end of the day, it is how one plays the game. Just like how a coach shouldn’t waste his best pitcher’s energy by putting him on first base, a shop owner shouldn’t have his best A-tech vacuuming a vehicle. In an industry that is already trying to survive with a shortage of players, a shop owner has to play to their strengths and recruit the right people to the right roles.

There are shops who have been implementing role segmentation for a number of years and say that it has truly revolutionized the way they repair vehicles, speeds up productivity and keeps employees happy.

Total Care Accident Repair (Raynham) segmented their repair process more than a decade ago, and it’s been game changing for their operation. 

“Segmentation allows us to have our highest earners who possess the most skill working on the most complex repairs most of the time,” says Brian Bernard, owner. The entire process is broken down into steps and staffed accordingly by skill level. 

“We have a dedicated blueprinting team, so I have two writers and two others performing disassembly. They work together to take cars apart and document with supplements. It’s a very thorough process. Some may take a half-hearted approach to blueprinting; we do a very thorough job of it. Our blueprinting teams are dedicated to that one role. That’s the first key. Obviously, there’s a bit of a transition period while we wait for insurance authorization and then parts, then the car gets routed to the next stage. If a car needs framework, it will go to a frame technician. If it doesn’t, it will get routed to one of two other spots. We have a section we call engineering, which means structural work where the frame machine is not needed. There’s a third area set up for smaller jobs that can bypass frame and structural, which we call the body department.

“We create three different routes depending on what the car needs. And then each of those routes is staffed appropriately. I have three guys who are capable of performing framework. Only those three guys perform framework, and I would never let anyone else perform this work. They have all been to frame school and are all I-CAR welding certified technicians. The same applies in the structural area. They are trained, certified and experienced to perform that type of repair. The frame and structural work requires more experience and training. A junior person can do lower-skilled work, so the third path takes cars in for body work, such as small dent repair. There’s a wider variety of people who can perform smaller, faster jobs. After those repairs are done, the car goes to a prepper, then on to a painter, and then to a dedicated assembly team and on to a detailer. Each of those areas are staffed with different people.”

In a world where it’s difficult to find and pay for good help, the shop benefits from this setup as they can leverage their higher-skilled and higher-paid employees on more complex operations, while less complicated tasks can be performed by a number of junior technicians who are still gaining experience. The Total Care Accident Repair team is made up of 16 people, including Bernard. 

Efficiency and cycle time have improved substantially. 

“By segmenting, everyone knows where vehicles are,” Bernard notes. “Faster moving cars can bypass slower moving cars in the repair process. Touch time has improved because each of these bays is staffed by somebody. There’s a manufacturing assembly-line type of environment here. One person will do their portion of the work and hand it off to the next person, who specializes in their portion of the work and then hands it off to the next person after that. There is no wait time in between these hand-off periods. It’s not going in and out of the building, just from one bay to the next where someone is staffed and ready to work on the vehicle.” 

The whole concept comes from what Bernard refers to as lean manufacturing. Long before he – and his now-retired business partner, Jack Lamborghini – opened Total Care Accident Repair, the two of them worked together at a different shop where they began to learn about this concept. “We read everything we could get our hands on, and we visited shops that were in the process of implementing lean repair systems,” Bernard recalls.

It really clicked when they went to Michael Giarrizzo, CEO and president of DCR Systems, who is noted for pioneering this concept. “Michael gave us our ‘a-ha’ moment when we visited his store in Ohio and had conversations with him about what he was doing. That’s when it clicked for us.” Learning from Giarrizzo and other colleagues is what led them to put this in place when they launched Total Care Accident Repair.

Jerry Diorio is an experienced technician with decades under his belt working at flat rate shops, and he too has found Giarrizzo’s process to be a game changer. In fact, it’s what led him to seek opportunity at the Rockland-based The Collision Center, a DCR Systems facility where he has served as the general manager for the past five years. 

“I worked 35 years as a flat rate technician,” he explains. “Through flat rate, you find a way to make money and do things as quickly as possible, not necessarily guided by the manufacturer’s instructions, but you have to have some pride in your work, so you try to do your best. I heard about this lean process for about 15 years. I always thought I was kind of doing it as I tried to organize myself. At age 60, I got tired of the flat rate world and decided I wanted to work for a company that implements this process. DCR Systems is the only one that I knew of in Massachusetts that has this environment.

“Michael wasn’t comfortable with uncertified repairs and wanted to put the client first, making sure they had a certified repair done according to manufacturer instructions,” Diorio explains of Giarrizzo’s concept. “We perform a lean system versus a production type shop. In a production shop, they bring in 10 or 12 vehicles in a week, fix them all up in one week. In the lean shop, we bring in one car at a time. We develop a 100 percent blueprint for it with repair instructions that are specific for that one vehicle. We have specialized people in certain areas, such as framework, body work and paint.” 

Like Bernard’s facility, Diorio’s operation is also set up to play to the strengths of the employees’ skill levels.“With this process, everyone touches the car in a different way.

“For example, all my BMW technicians are trained in BMW. We don’t feel the need to use a high-skilled laborer to disassemble a vehicle. You can take someone out of a vocational school who is a C- or B-level technician to disassemble and bag and tag. For the back of line reassembly, you probably need a B-tech to read the bags. Everything is itemized, and there’s photos and videos to follow. Everyone is guided. Every car gets the same treatment, whether it’s a bumper job or a larger $20,000 hit.”

Adopting the process doesn’t come overnight. Bernard says it took awhile to get all of the technicians on board with the process at his former shop when they made the transition. They spent months discussing it and getting ready to put it into place. “We went from having start-to-finish technicians to blowing that all up and changing it. We talked about how we would accomplish this. We closed one weekend, re-laid out the entire shop in a different format and then opened Monday with the lean manufacturing segmented repair process.” Total Care Accident Repair has operated only using this process since its inception. 

As Diorio explains, the concept can help shape a young budding technician and keep them motivated to learn more. 

“We try to get at least one or two out of vocational schools,” he states. “We can bring them into this process and cross train them. Start them off with the basics of disassembling a car. We don’t need an A-tech to disassemble a vehicle. We’ll start them off with repair planning and blueprinting where they get their feet wet. They may never see that car again until reassembly where these vocational techs can communicate with the reassembly team and be shown how it’s done. It helps give them confidence in what they are doing.” 

Not only can this inspire tomorrow’s technicians, helping to bring new people into the field, but it’s making technicians happier today. According to Bernard, “It reduces chaos in the shop environment. Everyone knows what to work on next. We have a visual system to support that. Technicians know what their role is, and if you can eliminate chaos, it means everyone is having a better day.” 

It also helps shop culture in allowing people to have time for vacation and personal time. Bernard points out that employees may be specialized in their roles, but there is still cross training involved, so there is backup for every role. Maintaining I-CAR training is always important. 

“By segmenting the repair process, we are able to ensure a more consistent higher-level of quality in the cars that leave here. Don’t let someone perform work that they struggle at. Having people work in the area they are best at increases quality, and nobody gets in over their head.” 

Bernard’s advice to a fellow shop owner considering it? “I’d tell them they have to be committed. Nobody wants to try and then fail. You need your technicians engaged and you have to educate them as to how and why things will be different. It takes time to get them on board, and there is no shortcut.” 

Diorio would also like to see others in the industry adopt this process. He’s found his technicians to be a lot happier in this environment, where they have less stress and can go home at 4pm and spend more time with their families. 

It all boils down to fixing cars right. “It’s not about the speed of the car going through the process. It’s about the correctness of the car being repaired. We are fanatics about customers’ cars being correctly repaired. 

“It’s basically slowing down to go faster,” he continues, stressing how taking care in every step ultimately results in “a happy customer, happy technicians and a nicer job.” 

Want more? Check out the August 2024 issue of New England Automotive Report!