UTILISATION
Utilisation is a function of the technician hours actually spent working compared against the time the technician is available to work.
Utilisation % = (Hours Worked / Hours Attended) X 100
Benchmark: 85% – 90%
Hours Worked is a function of the amount of work available to the Service Department. The Hours Worked value is obtained from your Dealer Management System from your technician clocking, and is based on the assumption that the technician clocking is disciplined and accurate.
Hours Attended is the standard technician value (MU factor) entered into the Dealer Management System based on a 9 hour working day.
Utilisation is a measurement of how much of the time attended by technicians was actually spent working.
A technician can influence his Utilisation achievement by the rate at which he works (clocks). The longer a technician is “clocked on” the higher their Utilisation. Accordingly, if technicians receive their total daily job cards all at once they can pace themselves and still achieve the benchmark ratio of ±88,9% even though their clocked time is not all productive.
The workshop foreman can control the technicians work pace by allocating one job at a time with an expected completion time.
Any attended time that is not utilised cannot be stored to be used at a later stage and is lost.
This “lost” potential time is referred to as Idle Time.
Idle Time and Utilisation
Idle Time is salary paid to a technician for time that he did not actually spend working.
Idle Time = Hours attended – Hours clocked
1 hour daily Idle Time is to be anticipated as technicians attend 9 hours a day working for 8 hours as they are entitled to a 30 minute lunch break and two 15 minute breaks
If a technician has excessive Idle Time:
- is the technician being allocated enough work?
- is the workshop booked to its potential available hours?
- is the technician’s time wasted collecting parts or getting the vehicle into his work-bay?
- is the technician doing tasks other than selling labour?
- is the technicians time unaccounted for?
Non-productive hours
This refers to time where non-productive labour is performed – for example, workshop maintenance, downtime, rework on comeback repairs, on the job training, internal training, or rectification work (” free” work performed without a job card).
Utilisation over 90%
- Technician Utilisation over 90% is only possible if the technician has worked overtime.
- Working overtime can only be justified when Utilisation is already at 90%
It is crucial that Dealer Principals and Service Managers understand that Utilisation is a function of clocking and do not assume that because their Utilisation is at the desired benchmark that technicians are in fact productive.
Simply stated “Utilisation is a measure of your ability to convert your technicians available time into revenue”
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