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How many of you have a cabinet to store oil filters in your quick lube? Do you see a lot of loss of oil filters that way? How do you track it and where do you write off the filters that grow legs and walk away?

We have been keeping a stock of the most common filters in cabinets in our shop for about 2 years now.Shortages get charged to service dept. In that 2 year period of time, we have "lost" a total of 20 filters at most,and probably half of that was due to honest error, not theft.Well worth the time savings for our techs.We do an inventory on the filters monthly just to keep on top of it,rarely come up short.

David,
We finally seem to have hit on a system that works for us. The lube rack has an inventory of filters. For each vehicle he sends in a parts request like 52/5 of 52/5S meaning a PF52 and 5 regular oil or a PF52 and 5 synthetic. We charge out the appropriate filter and oil then put the parts request that was sent in a basket. The next morning we get the parts requests from the previous day out of the basket and pull the corresponding oil filters to restock the lube cabinet. The filters are sent over to the lube rack, he restocks and does a quick inventory and any "shortages" are discovered and resolved at that point using PDA.
Thanks,
Gerry

[This message has been edited by Gerry Laughlin (edited 03-06-2008).]

[This message has been edited by Gerry Laughlin (edited 03-06-2008).]

We keep a cabinet of filters at the lube rack, too. Parts re-stocks it daily, and does a daily inventory.

The occassional shortage is charged off to shop policy...the loss is so small compared to the time savings that its hardly worth mentioning

Cheers
DD

We do as OldIrish. Never had a problem.

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I've done the same as Old Irish also. I also set up the LOF operations to automatically show the part on the RO. Parts just selects the part, click, it's on the RO. Parts did an inventory weekly and charged any missing to service. Very few lost.

This is the second dealership that I have a filter cabinet up at. We also do air filters and wiper blades. If it is a fast mover like pf47 we have a case or two out there, where others are just a couple. We only stock one air filter of each number, and those are only the 12 fastest movers. The wiper blade rack has 2 of each blade. We use the AC/Delco all seasons plus. The inventory has always been very close, within less that 2%. The upsales to air filters and wipers are better, because even if the lube rack is busy, they don't have to run up to the parts counter and get them. At my previous dealership, we even had a small stock of fast moving bulbs to fix turnsignals and other things.

Our entire facility is monitored live inside and out with cameras 24/7 and everyone knows it. This is very, very inexpensive to do today and addresses many issues in addition to the one you mention here. I cannot imagine running a shop today without cameras.

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Tom Ham
AutomotiveManagementNetwork.com