Take a few moments to play this game of “what if.” What if you could go back in time or had the power to arrange your shop any way you wanted? What would you do? Obviously, you’d want a workspace set up for efficiency. You’d ask for workspaces that allowed staff plenty of space to tend to their tasks comfortably, without bumping into one another or having to working in odd positions. You also might want a Step A – Step Z design where vehicles would make their way through your shop in a single direction. Finally, you’d want additional space for storage, break areas and training rooms.
The problem with hypothetical situations is that they’re hypothetical. If you have a real need for more space, you’re going to have to come up with a workable plan that you can afford. This begins with an assist from experts who can help you rethink your current space and provide solutions for better ways to use and store your working areas, tools, equipment and parts. Consider the following steps supplied by design experts and shops that upgraded their operations with changes to their physical environments.
Tip 1. Reconsider your customer waiting areas
Your waiting area says a lot about your business and especially how you want customers to see your business. It’s also a prime area to be reconfigured to open up space for the rest of your operation. Too often, shops dedicate unnecessary square footage that simply will never be used for customers, says Conley Abrams, owner of architectural design firm Abrams and Kaminski. His company has 15 years of experience in the automotive service industry. “A lot of body shops rely on an outdated standard of operating like a mechanical shop as though customers are going to wait there a long time while waiting for their vehicles to be repaired,” he says. “They have expansive customer area for people who might never be on site or only be there for 15 minutes or so.”
Abrams says a best practice for shops is considering how many walk-in customers they have, how many customers they have picking up vehicles and how long these folks typically wait. “If you’re thinking 12 people a week and no more than 2-3 at any one time, all you really need is around 200 square feet, enough space to seat five people comfortably,” he says. Abram says 200 square feet works in this example because you’re giving each customer 50 square feet of “movement,” which is enough space to move and sit while comfortably interacting with shop staff while maintaining a comfortable (and safe) distance from other customers.
He’s also quick to point out that, depending on your business, you may need far less. His own vehicle recently was damaged in a hit and run, and the shop he went to had less than 50 square feet of waiting area. “The owner wrote up the estimate and then walked me into his modest-size office where he went over the work. Essentially, he doubled up the activity he would perform in his office so he didn’t need the additional space elsewhere,” explains Abrams.
Tip 2. Resize your administrative area
If you’re thinking you should cut down on customer space and immediately turn over that footage to your techs and painters, Abrams says you could be very wrong. Instead, he said shops need to first consider their office areas. He notes that giving short shrift to your administrative and management staff comes with some serious consequences.
First, he says their attention to detail is just as important as a tech or painter’s. Forcing your office staff to work in limited space creates an uncomfortable atmosphere that makes it easier to enter incorrect information, miss calls and lose vital communications and paperwork. As it turns out, creating more space also means making better use of your current space.
Second, it’s easier to convert customer space to office space since the two areas are more similar to one another than your shop floor and therefore offer significant cost savings
Finally, there’s the issue of efficiency and sick time. Abrams says when people work too closely, they’re more likely to spread communicable germs. Since your office staff deals with customers, they’re exposed to any sicknesses they bring in. This can include exposure to estimators, blueprinters, managers and other office workers.
“Quality work them is just as vital as quality work from anywhere in your shop,” says Abrams.
He recommends the same kind of setup for your office staff as customers – around 100 square feet per person. This doesn’t mean investing in lavish, plus-sized desks or work areas. Instead, Abrams says these employees need unfettered access to computers, phones, filing cabinets and any other technology or equipment they require.
Tip 3. Invest in electronic storage
Speaking of technology, take advantage of tools that allow you to operate and store information in less space. One of the great benefits in the digital age is the reduction in paperwork, says Sam Wise, a consultant with Martial New Tech in Albany, New York. He says the shop management software shops use cuts down tremendously on the amount of space once needed for collision repair – which is heavier in its paper trail than mechanical repair.
Wise notes that shops could benefit further by implementing a data management program. According to him, seventy percent of the data collected by most businesses, including shops, is not organized properly, unnecessary and difficult to access. Wises say this leaves shops falling back into the habit of creating paper copies of some information to make it easier to find and investing in large servers or hard drives to store information. With some assistance from a data management group, Wise says shops could clean up their data, cut down on paper storage and remove onside data storage.
Part of his recommendations is moving fully to cloud storage, an issue that some shops have struggled with since they’ve long been suspicious of anyone wanting access to how they run their businesses and having access to their private information. While Wise says he understands that he says moving to cloud actually is safer and provides a number of other benefits to shops, other than just opening up space,
Tip 4. Right size your repair areas
How much space should you dedicate to a work stall? Your paint department? Detailing area? That depends first on the size of your business and the amount of work traffic it can attract. Since every shop is going to be a bit different. For a redesign of an existing business, Abrams says the best place to start is not with a firm like his but with a paint company or equipment vendor already familiar with the business.
“The beginning of any change starts with a budget if you’re considering big changes, but you don’t want to set up a budget until you look at your shop and what its product and revenue numbers and where they can be,” says Abrams. “The quickest way to get to your best layout design is with someone who knows you and your market.” A number of paint companies offer online design services free and can assist with finding your numbers and identifying any operational areas where you can improve – especially those that can do so with better use of space.
There’s a good possibility they’ll point to some design baselines you should consider immediately. For example, each tech should have two stalls, each with a dimension of 13 feet wide by 23 feet long (longer for shops that see more full-size trucks). As far as paint and other areas, this will depend on your particular business model, your market and your revenue goals. Again, look to your numbers, make a plan that you work out with a designer or industrial architect.
Tip 5: Invest in mobility
“Mobility adds a dimension to space that enlarges area,” says Abrams. Before assuming that the profundity of that claim will take significant time to dissect, Abram says the concept is simple: once you can move something you’re not as confined by walls. For shops, this translates into investing in mobile equipment wherever possible. That means mobile work trays, wheeled toolboxes and moveable part carts.
“Having carts and anything else with wheels we can move freely has made us more efficient and frees up a lot of space in our shop, which is pretty small,” says Rick Farmer, owner of Westco Body Repair in Sacramento. Farmer further notes that mobile units pay for themselves in efficiency more quickly than any other shop product and end up taking up less space than permanent benches and some traditional shelving.
Domenic Nigro, owner of Nigro’s Auto Body in Philadelphia, says one of his best purchases was mobile technology – specifically a pair of Guniwheels. A Guniwheel is a universal wheel and tire that can replace damaged or missing wheels and allow repairers to more easily shift vehicles through their shops or move vehicles that would otherwise have to sit until the wheels were replaced, saving appreciable time and space.
Tip 6. Rethink your storage
Once you’ve replaced some items that previously took up space on your walls with mobile options, you can put those walls to better use with new shop storage options. Consider adding wall mounted bin systems to help organize supplies in less space and thus increase usable floorspace. These bins come in an assortment of configurations and sizes that both you’re your floors open and make your operation more organized.
While you’re scanning your walls, consider storage ideas that, while they may put some items out of easy reach, open up even more room. For example, shelving with hydraulic lifts can help put some of your heavier equipment, parts and supplies safely up high near your ceilings and where they can then be lowered when you need them. Farmer invested in these shelves last year and claims they are easy both to afford and install.
Tip 7. Mandate organization
If you’re truly going to maximize your available space, Abrams says employees must be involved and fully buy in. Employees need to accept electronic solutions and not fall back to paper copies of documents. They also must keep their work areas clean and organized. Opening up space will produce no benefits if workers simply fill them with parts and supplies that should go elsewhere. Farmer adds, “Once we knew we had to make the most of our space if we were going to make more money, my workers started coming up with their own suggestions on opening the floor up. This is their space. They have good insight on how to open space up; plus they were doing some of these things at their own homes and garages.”
If you think that redesigning your workspace might be a costly venture with limited results, Abrams says that the opposite is true. Most redesigns are affordable and will boost your bottom line. He explains, “People are more productive where they’re comfortable. Finding ways to make changes where your options may seem limited is a place most auto body repairers have a lot of expertise. Most have survived for years by shifting their businesses from one repair technology to another, one change to another. This is no different.”
