Research carried out by Trend Tracker has shown that the overall productivity efficiency of franchised dealer workshops is down.
The report suggests that a franchised technician attending 40 hours in a week should be employed on paying jobs for 36 hours.
The remaining four hours is accounted for by lost time including rectification of faulty work, collection and delivery of cars, and cleaning and maintenance.
However, the study shows two growing areas of lost time: unpaid diagnosis and waiting for work.
The report said: “Unpaid diagnosis appears to be especially prevalent for warranty work.
“Perhaps there is little that dealer workshops can do to overcome this problem, but they can do something about waiting for work, particularly running out of work before the end of the day.
“The solution lies with effective workshop loading and health checks to boost sold hours per job card.
“It also helps to measure labour utilisation to identify where time is being lost.”
