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Re: Refurbished oil
"larry moe 'n curly" <larrymoencurly@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:1164095050.605441.131890@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...[color=blue]
>
> Ray O wrote:[color=green]
>>
>> I have worked closely with aout 50 or so and have advised them on the
>> pros
>> and cons of using traditional, group, or teams dispatch and production;
>> how
>> to analyze and improve work mix, how to analyze and monitor technician
>> and
>> shop productivity; and of course, the benefits of sending all technicians
>> to
>> factory training classes and maintaining the proper technican skills mix
>> to
>> control their cost of sales.
>>
>> A smaller dealership service with less than 10 technicians generally
>> cannot
>> justify someone dedicated to just oil changes, and so regular line
>> technicians generally perform all of the work, including oil changes.
>>
>> Medium and large dealership service departments are more likely to use
>> advanced production techniques and/or employ union technicians and so
>> hiring
>> someone dedicated just to oil changes is pretty much precluded.[/color]
>
> One of the automotive technical schools that runs lots of infomercials
> here, Universal Technical Institute ([url]www.uticorp.com)[/url], says that their
> students start working at local dealerships long before graduating.
> Is this a common practice, and if it is, what sort of work do they do
> at the dealerships?
>[/color]
Toyota sponsors the Toyota Technical Education Network, or T-TEN through
local community colleges. Toyota provides the schools with factory service
manuals, some special service tools, the curriculum for the courses that the
technicians take for factory certification, some cars and trucks. The
technicians who enroll in the 2 year program have to get an internship at a
Toyota dealership during their second year, after they have taken a couple
of generic automotive courses and while they are taking Toyota-specific
courses.
The advantage for the dealership if they give the student a full-time job
after graduation is that the student will have already taken most or all of
the courses offered to dealership technicians, with just time and real-world
experience needed for the tech to become productive. The advantage for
Toyota is that in theory, their dealers will have an easier time finding and
hiring technicians with a better understanding of how automotive systems
work instead of mechanics who are just part-changers.
The work the interns do at the dealership varies widely, from sweeping
floors to doing simple work on cars. The dealers who take training
seriously usually give the intern a week in the parts department and then
either assign them to work with an experienced technician or team or have
them work on cars for the used car department doing stuff like checking
brakes, changing fluids, etc. I'd say that most dealerships have interns
doing maintenance and inspections on used cars because they do not have the
time constraint that they do with a customer's car, and since the used car
department does not pay the same as a customer does, the service department
will assign the lowest-paid person to do their work. Service department
work can be divided into 2 general categories: maintenance and repair.
Maintenance work tends to be more profitable than repair work, which is why
you see so many places that do oil changes, brakes, shocks, mufflers,
tune-ups, etc.
The interns generally do not work on customer vehicles unless they are under
the direct supervision of an experienced technician. The practical reasons
for this are that the interns are usually not capable of diagnosing problems
and doing repairs by themselves, and the line technicians would all quit if
the lucrative maintenance work was assigned to a new technician.
--
Ray O
(correct punctuation to reply)
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