| What is the Digi-Lean System? |
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So what is a Digi-Lean Business Operating System? A Digi-Lean Operating System combines digital tools and technologies with Lean business processes that can result in DRAMATIC business operating and financial improvements in a collision repair business!
Digital tools and technologies have been in use throughout the collision industry since the early 1980?Beginning with the ARMS system, somewhere around 1982 collision repairers began investing in and implementing digital tools to help them operate their businesses better. Since then digital technology has become an integral part of every collision repair business, every company that participates in the claims and repair process, and in every vehicle that is repaired in a collision repair business. While most of these digital tools were designed to benefit all aspects of the claims and repair process they were designed in a vacuum. What I mean by this is, these digital tools were designed to operate as a stand-alone system or as part of a single business process instead of being designed to fit into the complete repair process performed by a collision repair business.
Today a typical collision repair business uses at least 15 digital tools. Here is a brief list of digital tools typically being used in a collision repair business on a daily basis.
Electronic estimate system
Digital camera
Two or three Digital claims management systems
Computerized paint scale and measuring system
Computerized frame measuring system
Personal computers
Laptop computers
Network servers
Web sites
E-mail
Digital temperature control systems
Digital telephone systems
Digital voice mail systems
Computerized shop management systems
Computerized clip and material management system
The problem with all these wonderful technologies is that most of them operate a stand-alone system and have not been designed to operate as a system, or as a part of a Lean business process.
With the advent of new technology, more than 20 years of collision industry and process experience, and Summit Software?s continued development of their Digital Performance and Workflow System, collision repairers can now move from stand alone, analog and paper based processes into an integrated, digital based, lean business operating system.
A Brief History of Lean
The concept of Lean is not new to the industries outside the collision industry and, for the most part, consists of many common sense approaches and concepts.
The first person to truly integrate an entire production process was Henry Ford. At Highland Park, MI, in 1913 he married consistently interchangeable parts with standard work and moving conveyance to create what he called flow production.
As Kichiro Toyoda, Taiichi Ohno, and others at Toyota looked at this situation in the 1930s, and more intensely just after World War II, it occurred to them that a series of simple innovations might make it more possible to provide both continuity in process flow and a wide variety in product offerings. They therefore revisited Ford's original thinking, and invented the Toyota Production System.
Lean Today
As these words are written, Toyota, the leading lean exemplar in the world, stands poised to become the largest automaker in the world in terms of overall sales. Its dominant success in everything from rising sales and market shares in every global market, not to mention a clear lead in hybrid technology, stands as the strongest proof of the power of lean enterprise.
This continued success has over the past two decades created an enormous demand for greater knowledge about lean thinking. There are literally hundreds of books and papers, not to mention thousands of media articles exploring the subject, and numerous other resources available to this growing audience.
Lean and the Collision Repair Industry
Beginning in early part of the 21st century a few individuals and collision repair businesses began learning about and implementing Lean business processes. Since that time it is estimated that less than 1000 collision repair businesses in North America have attempted to implement Lean business processes into their collision repair businesses.
I believe lean is to the collision industry in the 21st century what ARMS was to our industry in the 1980?s. Those shops that choose to go down the lean path will be more successful that those that do not. And just like the ARMS system of the 1980?s, those shops that choose to implement the Digi-Lean System will be even more successful than those that focus on lean only implementations.
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