On any given day, my business conversations typically focus in on one of three topics: dealers who are ready to give up on recon spreadsheets and the extra managerial oversight; dealers not ready to admit they have a recon problem; and finally, dealers who have
Vehicle reconditioning is an essential process for every used car department. It not only gets vehicles ready for consumers’ eyeballs, but when it gets them front line ready fast, it can mean more gross on every sale. Every used car manager knows this intuitively. I’m
Having met with dealers at NADA, I’m reminded of Dale Pollak’s 2010 article, “Reconditioning – The Last Bastion of Old School Management.” While this is still generally true, there are finally straightforward solutions and verifiable success stories that have remedied this situation. However, getting reconditioning
Quick Quiz: Who is really responsible for time to line? Used car manager F&I Manager Fixed Operations manager All of the above If 1,2 and 3 are not being measured as a start-to-finish workflow process, Time to Line performance cannot realistically be measured and managed.
Time-to-Line (T2L) should be the single most important objective that defines your dealership’s culture. This objective should bind all recon resources together from the time vehicles are acquired to the time they hit the front-line. And, to institutionalize a true time-to- market culture, tools for
In our first of three articles discussing how to drive time and cost wastes out of the reconditioning process, we took a look at how lean manufacturing workflow principles when applied to automotive reconditioning, improves outcomes. That article outlined the fundamental processes for how
Buyers for pre-owned cars are spending money again, and across the country dealers are feeling cautiously optimistic about this continuing. At the same time, the online competitive landscape demands new ways of reaching buyers through search powerhouses, like AutoTrader.com, Cars.com and, now, Google. With all
On the road to more profitable used car operations, an increasing number of dealers are aligning their resources and processes to operate at best-practices level of reconditioning performance.Their recon operations, like yours, can cut cycle time by half,getting their inventory frontline ready in three to four days, adding a week of selling time and increasing inventory turns by a factor of one to three.
Metrics based on verifiable facts, and not opinions, is the only way to ensure you have airtight accountability in your recon process. If you include the third dimension of managing the ups and downs of business cycles, then these same metrics are vital to both
If you still run your recon department on “gut feel” and not metrics, you’re losing money. Metrics — hard performance data — is the road map to flowing gross from your recon to your bottom line. Manage by the facts and you’ll flow significant gross to
