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Today’s Vehicle Page: Assign and Prioritize Work from Technician View

by | Dec 30, 2016 | Best Practices, FAQ, SmartCheck, SmartFlow, SmartFlow Best Practices

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Setting Vehicle Priority and Order for Technician

Dispatching Vehicles to Technicians Made Easy

Utilizing the Today’s Vehicle Page’s Drag and Drop Capability will allow your Service Advisor to Assign Vehicles to technicians in the correct priority for your customers. Below we go over how and the common questions revolving this topic.

Solution
How to Assign a Vehicle to a Technician on the Today’s Vehicle Page

There are two ways to assign a vehicle to a technician on the Today’s Vehicle Page (TVP).

Method #1:

The first method is to use drag and drop in the Technician View of the TVP. You will have to make sure to click on the Technician symbol on the top banner of your TVP to use this method.

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You will see that any unassigned vehicles are shown in the “No Tech” column of the Today’s Vehicle page. From here you can determine which technician is best suited to complete the work and drag the vehicle by clicking on the dotted lines at the top of the vehicle tile to the appropriate place within the technicians already assigned vehicles.

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Method #2

The second method for assigning a technician on the TVP is through the workorder window. This is found on both the technician view and workflow view (SmartFlow users). The steps are :

  1. Click on the wrench icon on the vehicle tile to open the workoder
  2. Click on the Assign Worksheet button
  3. Click on the Default Technician drop-down and select the appropriate technician
  4. If there are certain jobs that need to be assigned to another technician you can change the technician on specific job lines

NOTE: This method will add the vehicle to the bottom of the technician’s list of vehicles 2016-12-30_12-19-16

How to Reassign a Vehicle to a Technician on the Today’s Vehicle Page

There are two ways to reassign a vehicle to a different technician on the Today’s Vehicle Page (TVP).

Method #1

To reassign a vehicle or certain jobs on a vehicle to a different technician, drag the vehicle from the existing technician’s column to the new technician’s column blog6

You will get the Assign Technician window. You can now either:

  1. Assign all unfinished jobs to the new Technician
  2. or determine whether only certain jobs are to be reassigned image2

NOTE: If any job has already been marked completed (indicated by the filled in circle in the workorder window) then you will not be able to reassign the job

Method #2

The second way to reassign the vehicle or a job to a different technician is from the workorder window:

  1. Open the workorder window
  2. Click on Assign Worksheet
  3. Change the Default Technician
  4. Change the specific technicians for each job if not the default technician

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Why does it sometimes appear that the vehicle order is different on the Technician View of the Today’s Vehicle Page and the Technician’s tablet?

REASON #1:

When a technician submits a vehicle it no longer appears on his tablet’s active vehicles screen but may still be assigned to the technician and on his list of vehicles in the Technician View. Below you see an example.

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Nimble Technician has 4 vehicles assigned in the following order on the TVP using customer name: Conner, Potter, Kirk, Daniels (see image left)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On the technician’s tablet you see the order appears to be: Conner, Kirk, Daniels (see image left)

 

 

 

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The reason Potter is missing from the technician’s list on the tablet is because that vehicle has already been submitted by the technician and now appears on his tablet’s Idle Vehicles Screen (see image left).

 REASON #2:

Certain workflow steps can be customized to not appear on the Technician View of the Today’s Vehicle Page. The common examples for when this would be appropriate are the “Waiting for Drop Off”, “Waiting for Pick-up”, and “Sublet”. We will go through a sublet example.

If a technician was assigned a vehicle and asked to perform 1 job but another job was to be repaired by another shop you may opt to use a workflow step called “Sublet” while keeping the vehicle open as a repair order.

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For our example, notice the vehicle (Conner) that has been sublet is no longer on the Technician’s list on the Technician View of the TVP (see image above).

Generally, the technician assigned to the job to be done will complete the job, mark the job done on the tablet and submit the vehicle from the tablet. However, if this technician completed his work but forgot to submit the vehicle from his tablet, the vehicle will remain on the tablet even though the vehicle has been moved to the “Sublet” workflow step (see image below).

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Since the vehicle cannot both be active on the technician’s workload and be sublet, the technician needs to be reminded to submit the vehicle from his tablet.

Current Process

The current process of assigning vehicles using paper racks, clipboards, and sometimes taking it a step further using white board organizational methods causes some or all of the following:

  • Service Advisors and shop foreman must manage the shop operations in their heads which is more likely to lead to mistakes
  • Assigning different jobs from one vehicle to more than one technician (based on skill-set) is time-consuming and inefficient
  • It is difficult to determine whether the vehicles with the true highest priority are being worked on
  • Non-digital vehicle tracking and organizing methods require constant manual update or they will be out of tune with reality

 

 

Best Practice

Dispatching vehicles to technicians using the Today’s Vehicle Page allows you to make an educated decision in real time based on technician previously assigned billed hours (shown at the top of the technician’s column), technician skill-set (shown by the individual jobs on the work order pop-up window), and based on other circumstances affecting vehicle priority (such as a special marker denoting a customer waiting).

The Today’s Vehicle Page will be kept up to date with this information as the technicians are working on their jobs, updating their progress on their tablets, and as the Service Advisor is checking a customer in, updating the Today’s vehicle page with the relevant special markers.

 

Quantified Benefits

Using the Today’s Vehicle Page to dispatch vehicles to technicians and set priority on these vehicles will lead to

  • The elimination of running back and forth between back shop and counter whenever a new vehicle needs to be assigned, a vehicle has to change priority, and when the status of a vehicle is unclear.
    • At 4-7 trips per vehicle and app. 3 minutes per trip, this is at least 15 minutes per vehicle
    • At an idle minute of $3.50 – $4.20 this can create amounts of $2,000 per week of unbillable time and unused opportunity
    • The time saved on internal clarification also leads to more time spent by Service Advisor educating the customer
  • Gaining trust and building credibility with customers
    • The ability for the Service Advisor to manage expectations about when the vehicle will be completed, and when the customer will be next communicated is simple with the amount of key information available to the Service Advisor on the Technician View of the Today’s Vehicle Page.
DST & Training

During the one-day Digital Supervisor Training, you will experience hands-on how to dispatch vehicles efficiently and effectively and how to benefit from the real time information available per technician as part of a new process the Service Advisor will need to develop muscle memory for.

Check out the location in your area, where you can sign up for the Digital Supervisor Training here

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