01 Nov Recon Time vs Time-to-Line

“What is the difference between managing Reconditioning time and Time-to-Line? The active involvement of the GM.  If you are still trying to hold people accountable for the reconditioning cycle instead of TTL then I have some great news.

Recon is of course a vital part of getting cars to the front line ready but it is only a subset of the Time-to-Line.  At one time, GM’s were happy to have the UCM, Service Manager, Inventory Manager looking a spreadsheet for accountability and metrics.  But now, there are three strategic reasons for the GM and/or Dealer Principal to take an active role in Time-to-Line that make it easier to stay on top of the real metrics with less effort.

• Impact on Gross
• Inventory Turns
• Safety Recall Exposure

1. Holding cost is real and is quite easy to calculate.  We have found that even where the dealership thought they were doing a good job getting cars through recon, once they went to workflow and automated their processes metrics, the actual Time-to-Line was substantially different that what they assumed. In fact,  so far with hundreds of systems installed,  we have found no exceptions and the difference in Gross rages from $200,000 to $800,000.
2. Inventory Turns – whether you have a Velocity strategy or a Time-to-Line strategy or both they are really about the same point. Getting cars to the front-line to increase selling days.
3. Recall liability is no longer something that the GM/DP can assume it being handled. There must be a policy in place and it must be monitored.

In all these, the GM/DP should be able to set goals based on best practices recommendations and dealership specific Time-to-Line metrics.  We do know that when the GM is setting the targets and monitoring results, everyone’s attention to accountability goes way up.

Steps to make this work:

• Get a good look at what other dealerships are doing who have made the move to Time-to-Line.
• Work with RR to map your processes into a workflow that makes the most of best practices, your current staff, resource limitations, physical constraints and your vendors.
• A dealership specific workflow system is built with the flexibility and expectation that processes, people and responsibilities are going to change.
• Training/Launch/30/and 60 day reviews
• 120 day Performance Progress Report with the GM and RR Executive (daily TTL/Recall Report to GM Started) “