The scorecard says you are slow, but not why
The monthly scorecard from one of your insurer work providers shows your average key-to-key time has gone up and you are now below their target. The account manager wants to talk about it. You look at the figure and wonder which jobs caused it, and why. Was it parts? Authorisations? The paint booth being down for a week? A few heavy repairs?
The provider's report gives the outcome. It rarely gives the reasons, and it arrives weeks after the jobs finished.
Stage times exist, but nobody adds them up
Your management system records when jobs change status, at least some of the time. The data for a cycle time breakdown is mostly there. What is missing is anyone turning it into a view of where the days went: waiting for authorisation, waiting for parts, in the workshop, waiting for a sublet, waiting for collection.
- Each work provider defines key-to-key and cycle time slightly differently.
- Statuses are not always updated on the day, which makes stage times unreliable.
- Blocked time (parts, authorisation) is mixed in with working time.
- Reports are run occasionally, by hand, in a spreadsheet.
Take one job: the car arrives on a Monday, authorisation takes until Thursday, parts arrive the following Tuesday, the repair takes three working days, and the customer collects the Monday after. Only a small part of that was spent being worked on. The scorecard shows the total; your own report should show each piece.
Why it matters to see it first
Work providers use these measures to judge repairers. A shop that can explain its figures with evidence, and show what it is doing about them, has a better conversation than one that is surprised by them. Some of the causes sit with the provider itself, such as slow authorisations, and those are worth raising with data.
Internally, a cycle time view shows where to put effort. Speeding up the workshop helps little if most of the days are spent waiting for parts.
How we build a cycle time report
- We read job status history from your management system, and fill gaps from other sources such as parts receipts, authorisation dates and handover records.
- Each job is broken into stages you recognise: waiting authorisation, waiting parts, in workshop, waiting sublet, ready awaiting collection.
- Key-to-key and cycle time are calculated using each work provider's own definition, so your figures line up with theirs.
- Weekly views show averages and the slowest jobs, with the stage that took longest highlighted.
- Jobs likely to breach a provider's target are flagged while they are still open, not after they have finished.
- Reports can be filtered by work provider, repair size and month.
| Stage | Usually driven by | Who can act |
|---|---|---|
| Waiting authorisation | Engineer and provider response | Front office, provider |
| Waiting parts | Supplier availability | Parts person, supplier |
| In workshop | Loading and capacity | Workshop controller |
| Waiting sublet | Sublet supplier diaries | Controller |
| Awaiting collection | Customer availability, excess | Front of house |
A different conversation with the account manager
When the scorecard arrives, you already know the figure and the reasons. You can show that most of the extra days were in authorisation, or that three heavy repairs with back-ordered parts skewed the average. Inside the shop, the weekly view tells you which stage to work on next.
Status updates also improve, because people can see what the data is used for.
The report also helps with decisions that are not about any single provider: whether to hold more stock of common parts for makes you see often, whether an extra painter would shorten the queue, or whether waiting for customers to collect finished cars is adding more days than you realised.
Is this your situation?
- You find out your cycle time from the provider's scorecard.
- You cannot say which stage adds most days to a typical repair.
- Different providers' figures do not match your own.
- Reports are built by hand in a spreadsheet, occasionally.
- Jobs breach targets without anyone noticing in time.