The shop across town went from a mess to a money maker in under a year

I drove by Miller's Auto Body for years and it always looked rough, with cars sitting outside half painted. Then about 8 months ago, they got a new manager from a big shop in Columbus. Now the lot is clean, the paint booth is always running, and they're booked out for weeks. The difference is they started using a real scheduling board and stopped letting customers rush them. It's proof that good systems beat just working harder. Has anyone else seen a shop turn around that fast just from getting organized?

3 comments

3 Comments

patricia31719d ago

Wow, @johnr73, that reminds me of a diner that did the same thing with their grill orders.

olivia_allen13d ago

We switched to a digital board, Trello actually, and color coded jobs by status. Red for waiting on parts, green for in progress, blue for QC check. Just seeing that visual stopped three guys from all starting on the same easy job while a big repair sat untouched. Our average turnaround dropped from 9 days to 5 in a month.

johnr7319d ago

That scheduling board idea is a game changer for sure. We cleared out our backlog just by putting all jobs on a big whiteboard where everyone could see them. It stopped the daily chaos of people asking what to work on next. What kind of board did they end up using?