MIKE MONTEON
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Yup, every time I finish with every application I break it down as well. One painter just squirts acetone through it and sprays it out, then he breaks them down at the end of the day. Different strokes for different folks
I live in the Northern California area and in this area the Insurance collision business is where the big shops are located, dont get me wrong, there are some big restoration jobs, however insurance jobs are the busiest around here.
In my opinion reputation is king, and no matter what you do, resto or insurance if you develop a great reputaion you can be profitable anywhere. Money management falls in a close second to me.
[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.
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.
[quote=”P8ntstick” post=34465]Glad you liked the Cromax Pro… RR does match pretty well…[/quote]
It was just one time, but yes I enjoyed only painting a red panel in less than 40 min. I have not tried to blend any Cromax…yet lol. I heard blending is a little different but nothing I can get the hang of.
On a different subject, I have browsed through here and have not found any sections related to certain manufactures only. Like PPG, Axalta, BASF and so on. Figured it would help keep tips, tricks, and advice to its own paint line. Just a thought
Thank you for all the replies fellas. I do use the groundcoats that are recommended by PPG. If it tells me to use G5 I use it. Or G6 and so on. I do miss the yellow and red sealers right about now. Cannot use them now because of compliance issues.
On another note the paint distributor ran out of the tinted clear for the paint code RR since a third job came in, so the front office bit the bullet and called in a Cromax rep. I was surprised as to how well it covered with one coat of base and another drop coat over that. We sprayed a test panel and determined that one coat of tinted clear was all that was necessary and the job was done after two coats of clear. Overall pretty happy with the cromax experiment. I do not know if the front office broke any contract issues with PPG but given that no one could supply us with more of the tinted clear they felt they had no choice and the car had to leave today. Yet the owner probably will not pick up until Friday since customer never picked car up today but thats another issue haha