Make your shop a model of efficiency

Motor, Jun 2003 by Cerullo, Bob

An inefficient layout of service tools and stationary equipment could be sapping your shop's productivity and profitability, perhaps without your knowledge. Don't despair. Professional help is available.

There probably is no one on earth who knows your shop better than you do. When you live with a place for two, three, ten or 30 years, you really get to know it. You know the best place to have the wrecker drop a vehicle with a detached ball joint. You know which bay is best for the car with an engine job that will probably take some time. You know where to stick that snow-covered van so it won't slop up the whole shop with slush. In short, you become an expert on your own shop.

But you also know the mistakes. You know, for example, that you have trouble getting around the wheel alignment machine ramps, or that one of your in-ground lifts blocks access to a perfectly good bay that, because of its inaccessibility, has become a repository for junk.

No doubt there are some very successful shops that have evolved over the years without a well-thought-out plan, with those shop owners having done a pretty decent job of getting the most out of the space they have. However, there are any number of shops where costly mistakes in space utilization have been made. Unless you have the financial resources of a large dealership or mass marketer, those mistakes can simply be too costly to correct. So you live with running a shop that's far less efficient than it could be. And whether or not you realize it, that translates into lost profits.

Planning Pays

There's a better way, one that will save you time and money and make it possible for you to efficiently use every square foot of your shop. Start an accordion file and label it something like "My Future Shop." Make slots for notes on "Tools & Equipment" you might eventually need. Jot down any problems with the placement of "Heavy Equipment" such as lifts, the wheel alignment rack or the inspection dyno. If the sign out front needs perking up, the washrooms need a paint job or the waiting room is grossly uninviting, file those under "Things To Do."

The hardest part of keeping a file like this is remembering to make entries regularly. If you do, you'll find that in just a few months the list of things you need, the things you'd like to have and the things that need to be done has grown quite large. You'll then find it a good idea to establish priorities as to what must be done ASAP and what can wait. The danger is in the "what can wait" category, because those things generally get put there because they're expensive. Don't fall into that trap. Cost is not necessarily the best way to decide on which shop improvement gets done. The questions to ask are: Do I need it? and Will it pay for itself?

Impulse buying might be fine for the supermarket checkout, but it's not a good way to go when purchasing expensive shop equipment. Take the time to research how the equipment will help your operations once you have it in the shop. Visit other shops that have similar equipment and find out how it's working out for them. If you can't honestly answer Yes to the hard question, Will this expense pay off? then you probably shouldn't buy it. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of a major shop improvement, but you may spend years regretting it, not to mention paying for it.

Getting Planning Help

Granted, you know your shop, but you may not be aware that even a small change in your shop layout can give you more space and more working bays. For example, there could be unused space in your shop that may be ideal for an additional lift. Here's where professional shop planning comes in.

I contacted Rotary Lift, which offers a free Computer Aided Design service for shops purchasing Rotary equipment. A similar service is available from Snap-on through its Equipment Solutions Division, and from Bend-Pak, as well. Challenger Lifts will provide a layout service when you have the potential to buy six lifts.

Prior to meeting with the Rotary people, I drew up a floor plan of my own shop. The building is 100x100 feet with an office in front, a parts department, a machine shop, a rear office and a welding shop. There are in-ground and above-ground lifts, a wheel alignment rack on a twin-post in-ground lift and an above-ground inspection dyno. The rest of the tools and equipment are more or less movable.

Working through the local rep, I gave my drawing to the folks at Rotary Lift. I wanted to see what a computer layout could tell me about the way our shop is set up and how it could be improved. I asked them to provide four different floor plans that started from scratch-that is, plans that didn't show merely additions to the existing layout.

No shop owner ever complained about having too many lifts. It's been proven that it's more economical to leave a job in progress on a lift while you wait a reasonable amount of time for parts than to close it up and take it down because you need the lift. So my first request was for a plan that would tell us best how to add more lifts to the existing shop without knocking down walls. Rotary provided me with a precise CAD version of my drawing (Plan 1 on page 42).