NO BUSINESS OWNER WANTS to take a step back — or even simply maintain the status quo. Everybody wants to move forward with a profitable business that has happy customers and productive employees.
How can it be accomplished?
Here is a look at nine key sessions:
- Parts & Service Departments Working Together — a Radical Concept Tuesday, February 28, 1:30 pm-2:45 pm
The normal conflicts between parts and service departments can be overcome by gaining a clearer understanding of the competing goals in each department and establishing common solutions to these conflicts.
Ron Slee, president of R J Slee & Associates in Rancho Mirage, California, said he'll talk about barriers — how they're both beneficial and dysfunctional — and what leaders need to do to recognize, overcome, and dismantle them.
He said that eventually it comes down to trust, and the different styles of management leadership that come into play. He said he'll list 10 causes of barriers between parts and service.
“For instance, you'd think it'd be common for inspections to be done to determine the task we're going to perform before we start work, but it isn't,” he said. “As a result, the mechanic makes the determination of what needs to be ordered. And he tends to have what I call ‘galloping diarrhea.’ He orders some parts, then in another hour he goes back and orders some more. He doesn't know what he's doing. That is a barrier that causes the parts department to get angry, and it causes the service department to say, ‘Well, the parts department never has the parts we need in order to finish our job.’
“You should get involved in inspections beforehand. You have specifically trained people to do them. Rather than have a style that's unique to each mechanic, you have one that's common for the department and better still, common for the company in multi-locations.
“I want to be able to have the mechanic stay in his bay, have a computer on which he can order parts through a network without leaving the bay. The parts departments will hate that because they don't trust the mechanic to order what's necessary. He'll order everything but the kitchen sink, and return what isn't used. Service will think, ‘Geez, the parts department never has any parts.’
“You think about Monday morning. There's a cluster of mechanics talking about the football game because there's only one person serving them back there. Well, stay in your bay and place orders through the terminal.”
- Simple and Inexpensive Hiring & Retention Tools Tuesday, February 28, 1:30 pm-2:45 pm
On average, two of three new hires will disappoint employers in the first year — they would probably rather work somewhere else. Ninety-five of 100 applicants will “exaggerate” to get a job.
How do you avoid making hiring decisions in haste and suffering turnover costs that even in a small business can add up to thousands of dollars each year?
Experts claim 80% of employee turnover is avoidable by using professional assessment tools to gauge the quality of job applicants.
Steven Sill, president of Aspen Equipment Co in Bloomington, Minnesota, says his experience has told him he can't make a hiring decision based solely on interviewing candidates and examining their credentials. For almost 10 years, he has been relying on a personality-profile instrument developed by Caliper, a Princeton, New Jersey-based company that employs a large staff of industrial psychologists.
He said it contains about 150 questions, most of which are multiple-choice, and takes about 90 minutes to complete. The $250 fee, he says, “is nothing compared to the cost of making a hiring mistake.
“We all put on our best suit and comb our hair nice and pretty for an interview,” he says. “It's kind of like meeting your girlfriend's parents for the first time. You're doing everything you can to do it all right. Well, this Caliper instrument digs underneath that veneer to what you're all about and what the motivating factors are.
“It's an extremely valuable tool. We put more and more weight into it every year. Originally, I put 20% weight on this. But we have found that when we looked at all the things we could assess from the guy sitting across the room against what they told us, they were almost always right. There were times when Caliper didn't recommend someone and we said (to Caliper), ‘Well, thanks. We appreciate your input. Here's $250, but we're hiring him anyway.’ But inevitably, everything they said came true.
“We won't even hire a mechanic without one — and mechanics are tough to find these days. We're a custom house, doing everything from a $300 ladder rack to a $400,000 crane, and everything in between. You might hire someone for a gopher position or one of little value. But short of the guy sweeping the floor, every position is valuable, and everyone can cost you money or make you money.”
Sill and Ronald Wolff, Caliper's senior vice-president, also will talk about retention issues, which revolve around the culture of the organization.
Does the company have integrity? Is it creating the type of environment that new people are looking for? Is it creating expectations of its employees? Which management styles are employees seeking and how does that differ from the style many businesses are using today?
- Truck Equipment Market Outlook & Industry Forecast Tuesday, February 28, 1:30 pm-2:45 pm
Stephen Latin-Kasper, the NTEA's market data and research director, said 2005 was a good year, although the rate of growth wasn't quite as high as in 2004.
“That's usually a pretty good sign that you're approaching a peak in the expansionary phase of a business cycle,” he said. “That's probably what we're headed toward. One of the things that's going to have a big effect on the timing of that peak is what practically everybody expects to be a rather large pre-buy in 2006, especially at the Class 8 GVW range, but probably also in Class 6 and 7. Medium duty isn't likely to be impacted by it all that much. Other factors will have things leveling out for those lighter medium-duty vehicles in 2006.”
He said two GVW classes might grow slightly in 2007, but the industry as a whole is going to experience a “crash” in 2007 because of the decline of Class 8 sales after the pre-buy.
“You'd prepare for the downturn in 2007 just like you'd prepare for any other downturn, whether it's preceded by a pre-buy or not,” he said. “In this particular case, it's more easily predictable than past downturns have been.
“You want to make sure that you keep your labor employed somehow if you don't want to lose them — especially skilled labor. So you want to make some plans about how to utilize that labor in a productive, profitable way. If you don't expect to be producing as many vehicles as you had in the previous year, some of them are probably going to have to consider layoffs. More importantly, they're going to have to think about how much inventory they want on hand and do as good a job of controlling that as they can, and try to cut costs as best as they can.
“Not everybody is going to have to worry about that. The Class 8 guys are going to have to make significant adjustments from one year to the next. Other GVW ranges aren't going to be that badly affected.”
- How to Get the Right Data to Make the Right Decisions Tuesday, February 28, 3 pm-4:15 pm
Valid statistics, trends, and forecasts are extremely valuable to industry professionals who conduct market research. It can be difficult to find reasonably priced, credible sources of data and to understand how the data is collected and reported.
Latin-Kasper will host this session to help members gain a better understanding of domestic and international data sources, data management and analysis, forecasting, and market intelligence.
He'll direct members toward the sources of data they need to put into their planning processes, instructing them on how to use the Bureau of the Census Web site at www.census.gov.
“It's an extremely large Web site,” he said. “There's not just a ton of information. There's about 10 tons of information. Many people wade into it and never really find what they're looking for. I'm going to help people understand how to get through that site and get the data that's publicly available that would be of use to them. That wouldn't be just for our industry — it'd be for application markets, for suppliers, and whatever else you might want to look at to fill in the blanks in your plan. It's all there. It's just a matter of knowing how to find it.
“I'll also remind them of the algebra they've forgotten since high school or college and apply some very simple data transformations to tell them sales histories so that they can be related graphically to other data series they should be making comparisons to.”
Latin-Kasper also will discuss what can be done with the NTEA's directory and talk about its market information programs.
“We have an extremely powerful sales-analysis tool by application market and geographic area called the Application Market By State and Metropolitan Area Report,” he said. “I will guess that 200 of our 1500 members are using it. At a price of $100, there's no good reason why all of them shouldn't have bought it. Most of them would find it very useful.”
- Shop Management — Best Practices and Customer Relations Wednesday, March 1, 8 am-9:15 am
Slee will examine what work-order process management should look like from beginning to end — communicating with the customer, the inspection process, job segmentation, job scheduling, assignment of work, management and supervision of the work, the process of ordering parts, special tools and tooling, service reports, the closing of the job and invoicing, and tying them together with a phone call.
“The first thing is repair determination,” Slee said. “You do that in dialogue with the customer. It's going to be what I call a foreman-function inspection. It's a combination of the customer's diagnosis as well as a determination of what the cause is, rather than necessarily tracing the symptom.
“The analogy I typically use: Your left arm is numb. Your chest feels like an elephant is sitting on it. You go into the doctor and say, ‘I need a quadruple bypass.’ And he calls up the hospital and gets you scheduled — which a lot of shops do by not having any kind of structured inspection to verify the diagnosis of the customer. The doctor should send you places to get a test to determine what needs to be done. Maybe it's a single bypass. Maybe it's a quadruple. We're going to do the same thing.
“From there, we're going to prepare a price and time estimate, using either flat rates or job standards. We're going to call the customer to get approval. That which doesn't get approved I'll leave within the body of the work order and note that it was denied, so that I have a record in the work order.
“I'll put it into a job queue. That allows me to look at backlogs, determine staffing, and OT levels. Then I can assign it out to specific skills according to the tasks and manage the timeliness and schedule of it. To that degree, I'll be talking about work-order segments — the short side being no less than one-half hour and the long side being no more than eight hours, so I can maintain scheduling integrity.
“For instance, I could say to you, ‘Come pick up your truck on Thursday at 2 o'clock; it'll be ready.’ And if it's not ready, the time frame from that point forward is on my nickel and not yours. And then comes the closing and invoicing process leading up to a phone call three to four days after the job is concluded to determine if we did what we said we were going to do, if we did it within the time and price we said we would, and if the vehicle is operating properly.”
- Trailer Towing Considerations for Class 1-4 Trucks Wednesday, March 1, 8 am-9:15 am
The use of trailers in conjunction with light (Class 1-4) commercial vehicles is growing at a rapid rate. In many cases, these trailers are used to transport relatively heavy loads, such as compact construction equipment. If the operator is not familiar with all of the aspects associated with the use of trailers, the result may be an overloaded or otherwise unsafe combination vehicle (truck and trailer). Session attendees will review factors that must be considered when operating a combination vehicle.
Jack Klepinger, regional manager for Wells Cargo Inc in Phoenix, Arizona, will talk about trailer aspects — specifying the trailer, trailer types, functions, size, GVWR, GAWR, load factors, axles, hitch weight, and load distribution and securement.
Richard Klein, consulting engineer for the National Association of Trailer Manufacturers, will talk about tow vehicles, hitches and capacities, tow ratings, accessories such as sway-control devices, ratios of tow vehicle to trailer for good stability, and driver aspects (necessary licenses, braking, steering, and swaying).
Klein said he typically observes problems in the compatibility of tow vehicles and trailers.
“The reason I see problems is that the tow ratings in the past two years have gone up for no good reason,” he said. “It's become a ratings game within the tow-vehicle manufacturing community. I did a comparison of the 2003 Ford F-150 pickup to the 2006, and they've gone from an 8800-lb towing capacity to 9900-lb capacity for the same engine and everything else. They're just using a marketing strategy of trying to outsell the other guy for tow rating. They're not considering the braking and stability aspects. They're not considering anything other than horsepower. They get a little more horsepower in the engine and say, ‘OK, we can bump the tow rating.’
“We have just started the SAE Subcommittee on this issue, because it's uncontrolled. There are no criteria the tow-vehicle manufacturers are using. The poor public, when they go out to buy a tow vehicle and look at the tow rating, can't compare apples to apples because the criteria Chrysler is using might be completely different than what they use at Ford and GM. So there's not a level playing field in the establishment of these ratings.”
- Using the SPEQ Plan Manual as a Training Tool Wednesday, March 1, 9:30 am-10:45 am
The NTEA recently introduced its latest business resource: the Sales, Productivity, Earnings and Quality (SPEQ) Plan Manual. This tool provides truck equipment distributors and manufacturers with reference and training materials key to critical aspects of their firms.
Doyle Sumrall, the NTEA's director of strategic operations, and James Carney, the NTEA's executive director, will discuss how to integrate this important instrument into an employee training program.
“We'll walk them through the five sections of the manual and introduce them to what's included and show them parts of the PowerPoint presentation that are included with the manual,” Carney said.
The SPEQ Plan Manual was conceived and prepared by the NTEA staff with input from the Board of Trustees and the Services Committee, led by ex-chairman Jim Kraschinsky and current chairman Dennis Jones.
- Increase Profitability the SPEQ Plan Manual Way Thursday, March 2, 9:30 am-10:45 am
Learn how to achieve financial success by mastering certain strategic areas of your operation outlined in the NTEA Sales, Productivity, Earnings, and Quality (SPEQ) Plan Manual. Discover how you can employ these five key factors — barriers to entry, decommoditization, employee productivity and profit focus, and internal profit understanding — to increase financial results. Presented by Albert Bates, chairman and president of the Profit Planning Group in Boulder, Colorado.
- Shop Productivity — How to Maximize Production in a Non-repetitive Environment Thursday, March 2, 9:30 am-10:45 am
Sumrall said that as he travels the country and meets with members, almost everybody talks about the need to improve cost control because of diminishing margins and pricing that is fixed by the marketplace.
He says that although 2004 was good for most in the industry, the preceding three years left an indelible legacy. Companies wanted to examine how they could do a better job internally and streamline the operation. That's what led to the addition of this session to last year's program.
“I'm going to focus on the challenge we all face in today's world: We're so busy, but we know there are things we'd like to change and improve,” he says. “I'll go over some straightforward planning steps — how you can go out and look at a process and develop a map of how things are flowing in your shop. Whatever that is — whether it's the retrieval of parts to do a job or drilling a frame — we'll look at it in a systematic way and derive a concept of where you want to be in the future. What are the changes you want to achieve? We'll set some realistic goals and discuss how you communicate that within your organization, whether it's a three-man shop or a 30-man shop.
“The need to get everybody involved and set the plan for what you're going to change is an event-driven sequence, as opposed to saying, ‘Well, tomorrow we're going to get this done.’ You've looked at it, decided on the net income, put some measurements in place, and here are the events you need to move yourself there.”
This year's presentation will be tailored to upfitters, Sumrall says, because “their world is changing every day. One day they're working on a dump body and the next day they have a service body and the next day they're mounting a liftgate.
“What I'm going to try to do is paint a picture for them where they see that the activity they're engaged in is a constant process. I want them to take a step back and look at what's going on. The process is more than the individual activity. And then I want them to envision how that process can be refined to increase productivity and consistency. That's where the money is for them.”