This document discusses resources needed to manage a dealership's facilities, equipment, and information according to dealer operating standards. It identifies three key resources: people like the service manager and shop foreman, equipment and materials like maintenance forms and computer systems, and information sources like product listings and maintenance schedules. Effective resource management is important for attaining standards related to customer experience, facility appearance, and fixing vehicles correctly the first time. This requires maintaining the entire dealership, providing technicians with proper tools and information, and ensuring convenient customer drop-off and pickup procedures.
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Resources
The Dealer Service approach to managing facilities, equipment, and information relies on certain
resources, too.
The Three sources of Resources
1. People.
2. Equipment & Materials.
3. Information.
People
Service Manager
Managing facilities, equipment, and information is one of the primary responsibilities of service
managers. In large dealerships, individual tasks may be delegated to qualified support personnel.
Shop Foreman
The shop foreman, in large dealerships, is a logical employee to handle facility, equipment, and
information management tasks.
As production supervisor, the shop foreman is routinely made aware of workshop needs in each of the
key resource categories.
The shop foreman needs some administrative skills to keep track of applicable inventory, repair, and
maintenance needs.
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Equipment and Materials
To maintain and track the tools of dealership operations, some of the tools themselves are
necessary for the managerial activities. These include:
• A supply of equipment maintenance schedule forms.
• A supply of equipment repair history forms.
• An appropriate number of microfiche readers.
• Bookshelves or cabinets to store service information and literature.
• Dealer computerized information system, for information storage and retrieval.
• Tags used for tool control, supplied to each technician.
• Tool and equipment storage rooms or areas that include tool boards and cabinets.
• Paint and cleaning supplies.
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Information
The following information is needed to perform effective facility, equipment, and information
management:
• Sources for product, customer, and employment information.
• Listing of required and recommended tools and equipment.
• Listing of vendors for recommended or required tools and equipment.
• Maintenance schedules and procedures for tools and equipment (compressors, fluid
dispensing systems, hoists, and so on).
• Recommended maintenance schedules for building systems (air conditioning, heating, alarm,
and so on).
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Resource Management and Standards Attainment
Dealer/Retailer Standards are a response to the high expectations of our customers.
As a dealer/retailer, you’ve made a commitment to meeting those expectations and the
dealer standards that match them.
However, once there is a commitment to standards, two things must be in place:
1. Business process.
2. The necessary resources.
These standards (Five) fall into two distinct groups:
1. Dealing with the customer’s retail facility expectations.
2. service expectations.
It’s not enough to build an attractive facility. There has to be a plan for keeping it attractive,
similar to the approach outlined in this chapter. Everyone in the dealership must buy into the
plan and support it fully. When the entire team understands that appearance, cleanliness, and
comfort are priorities, the job becomes easy.
But customer contact areas are not everything—the dealership’s maintenance and
housekeeping programs must cover the entire operation, including work areas and employee
areas.
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Employees who work in a substandard environment have little motivation or interest in maintaining
customer areas in the desired manner.
maintenance and housekeeping plan must be comprehensive enough to keep the entire dealership
looking its best all the time.
Service Expectations
Technical competence is so vital to customer loyalty that it is the subject of one of most fundamental
standards: Service Standard 14 reads simply.
Every attempt is made to fix it right the first time
How does resource management support the requirement to fix it right the first time?
• Intelligent workshop planning means that technicians have the necessary workspace to do a good job,
that traffic and internal circulation don’t get in their way, and that specialized repair areas are available
and conveniently located. It also means that diagnosis and quality control activities are fully supported
in the workshop layout, rather than being afterthoughts.
• The facilities appearance, housekeeping, and maintenance discussions contribute to providing an
optimum work environment, including lighting, workstalls, and workstations. These are all prerequisites
for quality workmanship.
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• Equipment repair and maintenance is a major concern when it comes to quality assurance. It’s a truism
that a technician is only as good as his or her tools, and that also includes organization and inventories
of special tools and shop equipment.
• Managing information storage and access becomes more important daily. If not now, perhaps in the
future, this will be seen as the most critical issue when it comes to work quality. To service and repair a
vehicle properly, technicians need up-to-date vehicle service histories, accurate and timely customer
information, and current product information.
Last, the discussion of site traffic flow and parking provides the resource basis for meeting standards 20
and 21.
• Standard 20: "There is a procedure for parking repaired vehicles in an area of the dealer/retailer
facility that is convenient for customer pick-up, for taking the customer to the vehicle, or bringing the
vehicle to the customer.“
• Standard 21: "There is a procedure to assure that customers can drop off and pick up vehicles at their
convenience."
Important parts of these procedures include identifying the numbers and types of parking and storage
areas needed, their location, and appropriate traffic flows.
If these decisions aren’t made in a systematic and logical fashion, either the customer or the dealership
will be inconvenienced.