The Service Provider study group of the Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) has introduced a new task force with hopes of creating a service department workload prioritization Recommended Practice.
Chaired by Scott Witt from Virginia Truck Center, the committee has a tough task ahead.
The task force defines its purpose as follows, “Provide a logical and systematic approach to scheduling workload that takes into consideration the available manpower, their skill levels, the complexity of the work, and the urgency of the customers needs.”
During its first official meeting Monday at the TMC Fall Meeting in Orlando, an active discussion highlighted a variety of issues that will need to be addressed by the RP.
One key issue is the relationship of workload to capacity, and how a service provider qualifies capacity in its operation.
A service provider can’t really use and best practice for new repairs if it is staring at a two-week repair backlog, attendees note. Witt’s committee will attempt to create a standardized definition for capacity as it relates to a shop, and will hopefully build its best practice from there.
The initial discussion also focused on the concept of a prioritization metric or algorithm, which would help service facilities categorize which repairs need to be moved to the top of a workload list. Multiple attendees noted triage and diagnostic assessment programs as a possible method of identify repair severity and needs, and Study Group Chairman Kenneth Calhoun of Truck Centers of Arkansas suggested referring to RP 1604 “Rapid Repair Assessment” to guide service providers through that process.
