how to make paint preppers more productive
- This topic has 7 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 8 months ago by .
- Posts
We have a slight bottle neck issue and I do not know how to address it to my boss and not be hated on by our preppers. They just cannot seem to get the work out fast enough for it to get painted. I never mind helping prepping if needed but this month has been a long one for me. Here is a rundown of our shop so you guys have as much info as possible.
I am one of three painters in our shop (our shop foreman is one himself)
We have three (yes three!) paint booths and two prep booths for priming/jambing
There are three prepppers who just do that, sand and mask for paint. Two more for jambing and priming, so a total of five!
On average there are anywhere from 60-75 cars in our shop at all times.
We manage to paint 45-50 of them a week depending on the size of the jobs for that week.
Everybody is hourly here
On Friday when the paint foreman was on vacation my boss mentioned to me that work was just not doing it in the paint department and that we are around 85-90% :blush: and that we are too top heavy in the paint department by one guy. I normally leave it to the foreman but it seems that he just felt like venting to me about it on this day. I do notice that the prep crew does like to prep in teams and I feel like it leads to a lot of socializing and less working. Anyway I really do not wish to see anyone lose their job since I cringe on all the times shops had made cuts to stay afloat and I seemed to be that cut, and wondering if anybody has any info on an article or something to help steer the preppers in the right direction. I just feel like getting together with the foreman and hashing out a plan without being an a hole to any of the guys, like maybe getting a power point presented to the boss and putting it on a Standard Operating Procedure or something like that. My boss is an awesome man and when he came to me on the situation I just feel like helping him out since he is a truly great boss.
Thanks in reading this and any input from anybody is truly appreciatedA couple things you could try is to see if you can get one man per vehicle to stop the socializing.The other is to talk to your boss about implementing some kind of bonus program per x number of hrs flagged.In our shop we have 2 booths/2 painters and all 16 bodymen prep(sand prime block etc) their jobs.When the work comes to us all we have to do is scuff our blend panels mask and shoot.
Thanks for your input Jayson. I took the time today to oversee some of their daily work habits and I did notice some things and you are right, they need to start just prepping one job at a time by themselves. I am also planning on talking to the boss about implementing a time log for everyone in the paint dept. so that they can see how long every person works on said job. This will have to force them to work on every repair by themselves and maybe implement a bonus system for every month they are a % above the goal limit.
Just having a quick look at your numbers does make it sound like you guys are very well staffed in the paint department. How many bodymen are there?
With there being 3 painters and 5 preppers, how much consistency is there? Does everyone do things their own way, or is there more of a consistent stream lined process that is followed every time? Do you have a rep from your paint company that might be able to spend some time at the shop helping you guys out, maybe adapting some ideas from the Lean process?
In the end it is always about money. If your paint department does manage to become more effecient, will the bodymen be able to feed you enough work to keep everyone busy?
that’s a lot of preppers. I think the formula out here is the incentive for advance. the places that seemed to have things rolling would have preppers who were young and wanted to be painters and they got to mix paint and jamb as well. They also had body men and painters assigned one helper/prepper. The incentive for everybody was that the painter/bodyman who worked on commission would either make more or less depending on his helper, that he personally paid when things were rolling. This kept production up, teams tight, and slackers out. Places that had life long preppers seemed to have slower times cause they’d get burned out on it. Just my opinions on what I saw.
[quote=”Ben” post=34498]Just having a quick look at your numbers does make it sound like you guys are very well staffed in the paint department. How many bodymen are there?
With there being 3 painters and 5 preppers, how much consistency is there? Does everyone do things their own way, or is there more of a consistent stream lined process that is followed every time? Do you have a rep from your paint company that might be able to spend some time at the shop helping you guys out, maybe adapting some ideas from the Lean process?
In the end it is always about money. If your paint department does manage to become more effecient, will the bodymen be able to feed you enough work to keep everyone busy?[/quote]
Ben to answer some of your questions, we have ten bodymen, and yes a rep from our supply jobber will be in Thursday to oversee and give his input into what could be improved. They all work and prep their own way and not really a stream lined process followed (like a Standard Operating Procedure). I’m pretty sure bodymen can keep up, however we are losing one of our top two bodymen as he is moving out of state.
Tech69, to answer yours, I do feel they are getting burned out as one of the issues as well. The two preppers that jamb/prime just do that. The other two just prep. Four of them are fairly young and I see potential for two of them to be a painter one day. The last prepper is in his fifties, and used to be a painter here, until he hurt his knee and I stepped in from there.
It seems like your paint department is over staffed for only having ten bodymen. How big are most of the hits you do? I would definitely eliminate the team preping- it’s not necessary. When I 1st entered the industry and was preping- 2 Painters, and I were pushing out about 210+ hrs a week in a 50 hour week on average. That was with a high standard of quality, any paint shop should be able to function at about 150% or better with no problems as long as the work is there.
A good way to do this is to separate prep stations from each other – still keep a visual eye on each of the stations, but separated work areas tend to keep each of your guys focused on each car to (hopefully) boost quality and productivity. Possibly a record in each station with details on the projects that come through.
I like the idea of some sort of “incentive” but I wouldn’t base it solely on how many cars come through each of their stations. It should be comprehensively assessed, so that quality, customer satisfaction, and quota are all taken into account. This gives three avenues of bonus-based incentive.
Just suggestions! 🙂
_____________________
[url=http://www.amcraftindustrialcurtainwall.com]www.amcraftindustrialcurtainwall.com[/url]
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.