Running a successful multiple-shift shop can help get more vehicles in and out, but it takes proper planning, hard work and employees with dedication.
If managers of multiple-shift collision repair shops had a theme song, it would be have to be that old standard, "A Good Man Nowadays Is Hard To Find," with Eric Clapton's "Around Midnight" as backup.In an industry where demand for skilled workers far outdistances supply, competent painters and body technicians tend to shun the second shift. "Good people don't need to work nights," says Doug Powles, manager of the paint and body shop at Freund International, an International Truck dealer in Huntley, Ill. But Powles is quick to add that all three of the painters on his 3 p.m.-to-midnight shift are good people. "But they're hard to find. Real hard," he says. "Sometimes you come across a 'vampire'-somebody who really enjoys working nights. Or maybe a guy wants to be with his [pre-school] kids during the day, so he wants to work nights. But that's rare."This raises the question: What would prompt a shop owner to add a second or third shift if staffing is so difficult? The answer, of course, is workload. In Powles's case, the trucks continually roll into the shop, and he has to roll them back out-fast-because his customers depend on those rigs for their livelihood.The shop has an 80-ft. heated downdraft booth that accommodates two trucks simultaneously, and it's always full. Expanding the shop would be the ideal scenario, but that wasn't in the cards, Powles says. So two years ago, the shop went to a two-shift, 17-hour-day, six-day-week operation. "It's the most efficient use of space," he explains, "and allows us to get out the maximum amount of sheet metal." (For more on maximum use of space and ideal shift schedules, see "12-Hour Shift is the Answer.")Likewise, an overwhelming workload compelled Amato's Auto Body in San Diego to go to a multi-shift schedule a little more than a year ago. The 15,000-sq.-ft. shop specializes in European, Japanese and high-end cars. "We had to do it," owner Paul Amato says. "We're a $4 million operation that's booked six weeks in advance, and the 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. or 5 p.m. day just wasn't working."The result is an overlapping four-shift schedule that has the shop humming 12 hours a day Monday through Saturday and eight hours on Sunday. The Monday through Saturday shifts and the number of people working them breaks down this way: 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. (six); 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. (two); 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (10); 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. (three). The shop is only open to customers Monday through Friday.There are three painters at Amato's shop. One works Monday through Friday, the second works Tuesday through Saturday and the third Sunday through Thursday. Amato says the keys to the success of this setup are the Sunday crew and the 6 a.m. crew."The four Sunday people do mostly jambs," he says. "And they get everything ready for Monday. It really saves us a whole day."Likewise, the four preppers who come in at 6 a.m. six days a week are critical to the production-intense shop. "Thanks to them, our painters can start right in painting when they arrive at 8 [a.m.]," Paul says.The multi-shift setup gives the shop an extra workweek each month. "We actually get five weeks out of every month, not four," he says. The shop is well equipped, with two downdraft booths and one cross flow, two frame machines, a jig bench and a floor-pulling system. Each shift operates on the team concept, and each man works only on his specialty-prepping, bodywork, painting or detailing.Although Amato claims to have experienced very few problems with the year-old schedule, he does admit that the shop recorded 60 lost workdays in October. He has a policy to deal with such situations: Any unexcused absence Monday through Friday must be made up on Saturday. "Also," he adds, "payday is Monday at noon. You would be amazed what that does to eliminate absenteeism on Mondays."The Sunday crew is sometimes difficult to staff. Although no one likes to work on Sundays, the upside is that the crew has Friday and Saturday off. And Amato makes allowances for family commitments. "I have one painter whose son plays soccer on some Sundays, so I usually let him off for that," he says.Amato's better-than-average benefits package helps attract better-than-average people to staff his four shifts. He offers profit sharing plus a 401k, with the shop matching 50 percent of the worker's contribution, as well as health insurance (including dental), life insurance, five paid holidays, five paid vacation days, and membership to a nearby gym. Everyone works for an hourly rate, with no commissions.Such perks leave the 21-year veteran of the auto repair business with a relatively stable workforce and few headaches, notwithstanding his 13-hour days. "My biggest challenge is getting up at 5 a.m. to get here and open up at 5:30 [a.m.]," he says. "But then I walk across the street to the gym and work out, and I feel great."Unlike Amato's, which does not do any direct repair program (DRP) work, Fischer Body Refinishing in Troy, Mich. is a DRP for most of the major insurance companies. "About 95 percent of our work is insurance," says Kevin Byrnes, the shop manager.With 54 employees working in a 25,000-sq.-ft. production area, Fischer's registers sales of $9 million annually. Owned by the Suburban Collection, Fischer is in a motor mall, where nearby dealerships supply a constant parade of vehicles needing repairs.For the past four or five years, the paint shop has operated two overlapping shifts: 4:30 a.m. (and Paul Amato thinks he has to get up early) to 2 p.m. and 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Four painters come in at 4:30, and eight painters arrive for the second shift."Overlapping shifts work much better than a 'blind handoff,' where one shift comes in and the other one leaves," Byrnes says. "We tried two nine-hour consecutive shifts for two or three years. We're getting the same production out of this setup but without the headaches. We had supervision problems at night, and we found out guys at night look for reasons not to paint cars." He also had parts problems-nobody worked the parts department at night, so if a painter or technician needed a tool or part, it wasn't available.The Fischer facility bakes all vehicles. It has four downdraft booths and 12 prep decks, and the early arrivals get the equipment up and running. "It takes good preparation to run a multi-shift operation," Byrnes says. "And that's what we get from the early shift. We run one big team here, not a night and day thing. The car doesn't wait-it's simply handed off to the next shift."A working paint foreman oversees the second shift, and the 4:30 a.m. group is largely self-supervised, although there is a senior painter. "We have strong supervision and great personnel with a lot of tenure," Byrnes says. "That's why it works."This brings us back to that "good men are hard to find" theme song. Listen to Doug Powles again: "It's always going to be a struggle finding quality people. Everybody is hurting for painters, and young people aren't coming into this industry-they'd rather sit in front of their computers. You need self-motivated people with skill, knowledge, integrity and the personality to work at night. That's a tough combination to find."12-Hour Shift is the AnswerIn a multi-shift operation, the ideal shift length is 12 hours, says Alec Jezewski, the president of C-Desk Technology, which markets staff scheduling software called Visual Rota that Jezewski developed years ago.Jezewski is a former stress engineer for a British railway company who created the software for his wife's nursing home. He discovered that setting up a schedule-or "roster," as it's called in England-for a nursing home was not all that different from scheduling for other businesses. He soon left the railroad industry and began marketing his software full-time.From his office in Newark, a town located just north of London, Jezewski works with large and small companies around the world. Right now, he's dealing with a Nestle's chocolate factory in South Africa that wants to convert to a 24-hour, 365-day-a-year operation. He'll be happy to talk to you, too, no matter how small your operation.From his experience, Jezewski has concluded that 8-to-5 businesses switching to multiple shifts should opt for 12-hour schedules instead of eight-hour shifts. "It's a lot easier to change people over to a 12-hour schedule, and it's easier to manage," he says. He cites this typical example for an employee working 12-hour shifts during a 14-day period:two day shifts followed by three days off;two night shifts followed by two days off;three days shifts followed by two days off.That's seven, 12-hour shifts in 14 days, and it gives the employee 12 weeks off per year, including 26 weekends, plus holidays.All that time off can be a real boon to someone who wants to pursue other interests, Jezewski says. "Many people on 12-hour shifts have second jobs," he explains. "I know one man who runs a pub in his spare time, and another who has a craft business."One key to a 12-hour schedule, he says, is to have a designated backup for each person. "This is important for staff morale. That way, the person who is going to miss his shift knows exactly who to call to replace him. And everyone assumes the backup job in turn."When implementing a changeover from a single- to a multi-shift operation, the time needed to do so increases per employee as the number of workers decreases. "You have to factor in holidays, shifts they can work, idiosyncrasies of the people and the work involved," Jezewski says.He has determined that it takes 30 minutes of planning per person if 50 to 100 workers are involved; one hour if 20 to 49 are involved, and about two hours for less than 20. This includes the time of a professional scheduler, such as himself, and the time of management. "I know scheduling," he says, "and management knows the people."When determining whether to change to two or more shifts, the owner of a business needs to consider several factors. First, Jezewski says, if you're running an operation where equipment is extremely expensive to operate and space is also expensive (a chocolate factory in South Africa, for example), you should try to use the equipment and the space 24 hours a day. Another example of this is the Freund International facility in Huntley, Ill. and its huge, heated booth.Equipment and real estate aside, workload is the most obvious consideration. If it's heavy and predictable and the income is high, the business owner should seriously consider more than one shift. "For example, in a hairdressing salon, the labor is relatively cheap and the income is high, so you can over-staff," Jezewski says. "But in a bakery, the profit is low, so you understaff."Finally, anyone working in a multi-shift shop should pay close attention to proper nutrition. "It's particularly important to drink plenty of water," he says. "You need to stay hydrated to help stop infection and perform your job properly. I recommend a half pint of water, in some form, every two hours. I myself drink that much during the day."After work, Jezewski likes to stop for another pint of a somewhat stronger brew at the local pub-a pub perhaps operated by someone whose regular job calls for those optimal 12-hour shifts.You can e-mail him at [email protected].
