4 - 10 hour days

[bspro1131]

Our DP wants me to look into switching to 4-10 hour days. We are currently open Mon-Fri 7:30 to 5:30. I am looking for suggestions or advice on how to make this smooth with techs, writers etc... Thanks for your help.

[This message has been edited by bspro1131 (edited 05-28-2009).]

[TheOne]

7am to 6pm hour lunch

work three schedules two weeks each then move to the next

mon tues wed thurs
wed thurs fri sat
mon tues fri sat

multiple three day weekends
every six weeks euals a five day weekend without taking a vacation day.

The techs will resist at first, but will come around. Make sure you schedule enough work.

[bterbo1]

The One - could you be a little more specific. Let's say you have 45 techs and are open from 7am - 7pm M-F and 8am - 5pm Sat. How would you work the schedule? Did you see any loss in FRH produced in the beginning? What were your biggest challenges?
Thanks

[btk]

We run the same schedule-we extended Saturdays to mirror mon-fri- as far as open and close hours.
In your shoes I would split the 45 techs into 3 teams of 15- that way using the rotating schedule- you will have 30 techs on any given day.
Personally our production went way up instead of having 22 techs and a split crew mon and saturday. we now have 15 techs that can produce more and they dont have to split the pie as much, worked great here and everywhere else I have been, we produce alot more hours on Saturday as well

[btk]

The only problem that occured was the diagnosing of vehicles and getting them back to the same tech, we had a meeting about it and all the techs agreed to claim diagnoisis when the part is installed,who ever intslls the part gets the diagnosis unless something really extreme

[bspro1131]

We have 10 techs and are adding 2 more. What percent did your hours go up or your production %. Thanks for your help.

[btk]

Production went up from about 98 % to 130 %

For me I made the decision to switch to 4-10 because I inherited a shop that the ro count was dropping and there was just 2 many techs here on tues -fri and saturday, the busiest day we just were not capitalizing on all the cars coming in.Since going to 4 10s-last 6 months-we have had 3 record service months and a 4 coming. It was an easy transition here, lay off some techs or try 4 10s-the techs loved the 4-10 idea-not so much likes the layoff possiblity

[TheOne]

btk is giving great answers. I will keep watching in case additional input is needed