By Mitch Schneider. Intermittent automotive service problems are one of the few things capable of terrifying and paralyzing folks on both sides of the service counter. Everyone is terrified of something. It’s a fact of life. Probe deep enough, look hard enough and you will find a phobia that is if not paralyzing, then, at the least, debilitating. If that fear isn’t enough to inhibit your ability to act, I’ll bet it is significant enough to ensure that at least some of your actions fall out of the realm of what most of us might consider “normal” — whatever normal means.

What would you say is the most valuable tool in your auto repair shop? If you did not answer your shop management system, then you could be missing out on many opportunities to streamline your business and maximize success.

By George Witt. I remember my first job as a Service Advisor in a dealership, before shop management computer systems.  The training was intensive— “Here’s your clip board, there’s your work area, the doors open at 7am.”   It was “Lightning Bolt Training” at it’s finest.

By George Witt. It gets plenty cold in Nebraska and we have a saying that “the only thing between us and the North Pole is a barbed-wire fence”. The wind blows constantly on the Prairie.  I’m in need of a new Winter coat and this is not a place to cut corners on price. 

By George Witt, AAM. There are some who will argue that there is a Great Division now forming in our Industry between the shops who don’t attend training, don’t buy tooling and don’t stay current in the business and those shops who do. They say that the untrained shops will finally fade away, unable to perform the most basic repairs. The trained shops will survive and prosper. The day of reckoning has finally arrived, they conclude. 

By George Witt. Occasionally, all shop owners have to deal with personnel problems of one sort or another. It may be keeping the shop clean, work quality, attendance or any of a number of other things.