Category: Blog – Diesel Engine News & Updates

Putting the principles of productivity into practice in your diesel repair shop is simply a matter of selecting a system, function, organizational unit, or an activity, then performing the productivity review, and creating a productivity improvement plan.

At Highway & Heavy Parts, we believe that knowledge is the key to making good decisions for your business. Because of this, we strive to continually provide our diesel repair shop customers and industry associates with useful, educational information that may help them improve their business.

Principles apply to productivity management like they do anything else you manage in your diesel repair shop. They apply to all levels of your business from the lowest level employees, to middle management, all the way up to the owner.

Productivity is the practice of getting the highest and best use from your resources. It means utilizing resources where they’ll do the most good, and doing so in the most effective and efficient manner to obtain the best possible results.

Every system can be improved. If you don’t believe it, you should. It’s the main premise which forms the basis for systems innovation. Even if you are fortunate enough to have a system in place that is on the leading edge of the diesel repair industry, and is better than anything the competition has, it can still be improved. You just have to ask yourself, which systems should you innovate first, and which ones can wait? It’s a matter of prioritizing them based on your customers’ needs and your repair shop needs.

Leadership means taking initiative, accepting responsibility, and setting a good example for your employees. If you want a first class diesel repair business, you must provide your employees with clear direction as to what they are expected to do, the method to achieve it, and the time to get it done. An essential component of leadership is good organizational skills, which define the functional components of the whole and the relationships involved. A skilled organizer constantly reorganizes as changes in the business occur, to achieve a sense of order and predictability.

At Highway & Heavy Parts, we believe that knowledge is the key to making good decisions for your business. Because of this, we strive to continually provide our diesel repair shop customers and industry associates with useful, educational information that may help them improve their business. Please take a moment to download and read this white paper. We hope you find it useful. Because we value your opinion, we also welcome any comments you may have regarding this white paper, or any suggestions you may have on future topics we can cover about our industry.

Systems are the foundation of any diesel repair shop business. But, how do you know if your systems are working? How do you evaluate them to determine if they are effective or not? Too many repair shop owners don’t know the answer to these questions. They are running their businesses with systems that produce a result, but there is substantial waste and inefficiency in those systems, because they don’t evaluate their effectiveness by measuring the results.

As we briefly mentioned in Part II of this blog series “The Importance of Systemizing Your Diesel Repair Shop – Part II”, system inputs, outputs, and costs comprise the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that need to be identified, analyzed and measured in order to determine the effectiveness of the systems that run your diesel repair shop.

As the owner or manager of a diesel repair shop, do you continually struggle with getting the optimal efficiency out of your work flow? Do the same problems and errors keep reoccurring? Has your revenue flat-lined? Is your business not growing like you expected?

The rate of new technicians coming into the industry is lower than the rate of technicians retiring. For many repair shops and fleets, this shortage is already a harsh reality.

It’s difficult to find skilled employees. Then once you’ve interviewed and hired them, it’s a challenge to keep them. And even if you’re able to keep them, maybe some aren’t producing the way you want. You should determine why this is happening. It could be any of a number of reasons such as they don’t have the right tools, job responsibilities or work hours changed, they don’t get along with a direct supervisor or co-worker, feel there’s no opportunity to advance, they’re bored, or maybe they don’t feel valued. You won’t know unless you ask.