Collision centers face no shortage of challenges

Parts shortages are causing long delays for collision centers in getting damaged vehicles repaired and back on the road. The shortages have resulted in the rethinking of new shop processes and creative detective work to find parts, while also highlighting the need for good communication with customers as well as body shop staff, according to panelists at the Sept. 27 Fixed Ops Journal Forum.

The two panelists who focused on managing the parts shortage were Bill Condron, fixed operations director at Sawgrass Ford in Sunrise, Fla., and Matt Whittenberger, collision center manager at Diehl Automotive in Butler, Pa.

Here are edited highlights.

Current business climate for collision centers

Condron: We've seen an exponential growth in auto body repairs in the last six months. Things are coming back. I don't know that the auto body business is bad business. I think we're evolving and we're having to change how we conduct business in order to be profitable. But I think there's still room for someone to be successful.

Whittenberger: It's a different time to be in the collision industry. Definitely not a bad time. I think that if you're not playing all the way in, yeah, it'd be a great time to get out. But I think it's the perfect time.

Challenges facing collision centers

Whittenberger: We have to source parts from so many different vendors compared to what we used to pre-COVID. We order parts and they'd be here the next day from the same vendor. Now we have to search different avenues to find the parts to get the jobs done and we're also having a difficult time with being fully staffed and have been for some time.

We have to search for parts that are on backorder by calling multiple vendors, by calling multiple dealerships, by just searching far out, way further than we'd have to prior to COVID.

We're busier than ever and we have more business than we've ever had, but not the amount of people to keep up with the demand.

Condron: Our parts guys are spending a lot more time on the Internet looking for parts. We're shipping parts from further away than we ever did. Parts were getting better for a while. What we're seeing now, there's almost been a second wave of parts getting hard to get again.

We could hire three more people every day [in the collision center]. And during the pandemic, it took us eight months to hire somebody to wash cars. It's really wild.

Whittenberger: That's the problem — we can't have a rhythm because it's so difficult. The process changes on a case-by-case basis and it's a fight every day. We've actually added on to one of the shops just for parts storage because we had so much additional work in process due to vehicles being disassembled and not having the complete parts kits to put them together. We have to have a lot more parts storage, and that's one of the ways we were combating it by making additional room to store these parts.

Condron: We're looking at cars when we're trying to schedule customers. We're disassembling and reassembling a lot of cars just to make sure that we got all the parts that we need for the car and making sure that we have enough stuff to bring the car in and work on it. We have cars everywhere; we're trying to minimize that as much as possible. And if we can keep a customer driving, then we're trying to do that.

Condron: We have 50 people here. We have dedicated teams and the writers are talking with their technicians, the shop foremans are talking with the parts people and the writers to make sure they know what today's work is.

Whittenberger: We're communicating more now than ever. We still need to communicate even better; we need to keep improving it. We're starting each day with a morning production meeting in the shop and the communication continues all day. Things are fluid throughout the day. The communication just never ends.

Whittenberger: We have to communicate greatly with the customer. And not only do we have to communicate with the customer, we have to document the communication with the customer. And the reason why is we might be having a conversation with the husband that has the phone number on the file, but the wife dropped the vehicle off and maybe they didn't talk. And we also have to communicate not just with phone calls, but text message updates as well.

Condron: The key is in the beginning when you're talking with [the customer], you have to set expectations. You have to let them know there may be hidden damages and maybe pieces we can't find. There may be parts delays that will be out of our control. We'll do everything in our power to get your car on the road. But there may be some delays that may be longer than everybody could expect.