Flat Rate Repair Tables?

Hi JM,
Cat did release Flat Rate Guides back in the day--do not know if they still do--I would think they would.
Some were almost unachievable as Cat did not allow time for fetching tools from/to the tool crib, your own tool box etc.
At The Dealer we adjusted these times as per our own experience over many jobs.

One that I was involved in that comes to mind was the old 8 speed semi-automatic transmissions in the 600 series scrapers.
Cat time 27 hours--full strip clean, recon and reassemble.
Our time, 120 hours semi experienced fitter, 96 for experienced--I did dozens of these in the day and never really bettered 96 by any significant amount for full strip/clean with metal contamination.
Their charts removed parts that did not get re-fitted or even reco'ed, and fitted parts that were never removed etc.

Some of our site mechanics reckoned we took too long, especially when the lead times for transport 200 miles each way to from Dealer/site was taken into account. They set out to better us--failed and could not see how we could do them in the time we did--they took 150 hours.

Cheers,
Eddie B.

As an Industrial Engineer I would also be curious about this. In speaking with others on this topic at a couple shows it is my understanding these tables existed in much the same form as they did/do for other large companies such as GM, Ford, John Deere, etc. It would be neat if someone had copies of the old job standards to look through. I've spent many years setting standards, mostly in the meat and food industry. Most folks take a dim view of this type of work and I've had many "experiences" such as vehicle damage, physical fights in facilities, and all sorts of verbal confrontation. None the less I've enjoyed the 100+ facilities I've worked at in North America. Hopefully someone with detailed knowledge of how CAT used to do this chimes in. Thanks.

Bryan

I was shop foreman or service manager at the local Deere ag store for a total of about 8 years, & the only time we used flat rate was for warranty work, which of course was all JD would pay. They did allow for "cleaning time" on a warranty claim, which could be used to pick up part of the slack. In the facility we had & the mechanics we had most of the time, flat rate was mostly unattainable. I personally got to the point I could do some jobs like hyd. pumps & valves in pretty close to flat rate, but for the most part, pretty unrealistic...I would bill out jobs with a consideration of what the customer should have to bear-if the mechanic took an unreasonable amount of time, I would adjust the bill & call the rest "training time"...this of course was a source of some friction with the boss at times, the shop just never was as efficient as it could have been, but I had too much conscience, I guess, or just an aversion to getting my ass chewed by an unhappy customer...it's a line you just have to walk. I was able to keep the quality of work to a pretty high level by watching the guys like a hawk & doing a lot of the tough stuff myself. At that time, ag dealers hadn't really woke up to the fact that they had to pay a technician comparable wages to the industrial & oil field shops to keep the same caliber people. So it was always a problem to keep a good guy, I got tired of seeing good mechanics move on for a better wage.
(One of the reasons I don't miss the corporate situation...self-employment has its ups & downs, but I only have to answer to one guy...)

As an Industrial Engineer I would also be curious about this. In speaking with others on this topic at a couple shows it is my understanding these tables existed in much the same form as they did/do for other large companies such as GM, Ford, John Deere, etc. It would be neat if someone had copies of the old job standards to look through. I've spent many years setting standards, mostly in the meat and food industry. Most folks take a dim view of this type of work and I've had many "experiences" such as vehicle damage, physical fights in facilities, and all sorts of verbal confrontation. None the less I've enjoyed the 100+ facilities I've worked at in North America. Hopefully someone with detailed knowledge of how CAT used to do this chimes in. Thanks.

Bryan

[quote="bryani289swmi"]As an Industrial Engineer I would also be curious about this. In speaking with others on this topic at a couple shows it is my understanding these tables existed in much the same form as they did/do for other large companies such as GM, Ford, John Deere, etc. It would be neat if someone had copies of the old job standards to look through. I've spent many years setting standards, mostly in the meat and food industry. Most folks take a dim view of this type of work and I've had many "experiences" such as vehicle damage, physical fights in facilities, and all sorts of verbal confrontation. None the less I've enjoyed the 100+ facilities I've worked at in North America. Hopefully someone with detailed knowledge of how CAT used to do this chimes in. Thanks.

Bryan[/quote]

I have a 1958 book if you're interested - got it in pdf form too if you want.

Thanks for the responses. I wondered if some other brands flat rate books were realistic. What was explained is understandable. My biggest gripe are shops that will provide a detailed estimate; perform repairs, and then not even come close yet honor their estimate....
Had a buddy have new axles and such done on a Steiger tractor once; bill was 4 times the original estimate; shop could not document any mechanics times etc., my friend figured out they just billed him for 8 hrs per day 6 days a week when it sat inside their repair bay, even though they didn't touch it! Ouch! He lawyered up on that one and won.

Thanks for the responses. I wondered if some other brands flat rate books were realistic. What was explained is understandable. My biggest gripe are shops that will provide a detailed estimate; perform repairs, and then not even come close yet honor their estimate....
Had a buddy have new axles and such done on a Steiger tractor once; bill was 4 times the original estimate; shop could not document any mechanics times etc., my friend figured out they just billed him for 8 hrs per day 6 days a week when it sat inside their repair bay, even though they didn't touch it! Ouch! He lawyered up on that one and won.

RONM, one thing working for your self is that you always know who is turning up to work LOL

Our local dealer here used to budget on 40 hrs to rebuild a D9H tanny. You had to have your a$$ hanging out to do that!

Cheers djcat

The reason CAT and others often do not including time to get tools, parts, cleaning, etc is that as shops aren't set up the same and any time added into the base would be only good at the place the study was performed. In a case such as this it is done to keep the standard "pure" for use in multiple locations. Often a percentage range is recommended as an allowance for the retrieval of tools and parts. As in the case of the 40 hours for the transmission repair they might say the typical range for tool and part retrieval is 13% - 19% on this type of job. The dealer could then use that range to get a better idea of a total time target. If they used 17% the total job time would be estimated at 46.8 hours (1.17 * 40 hours). Also the standards are the perfect case scenario. This is also to keep the standard pure as if items are added to the base time it becomes useless as an overall tool in multiple locations. The standard rate isn't meant as a tool to beat groups and individuals with although it has often been used for that. In a non-machine paced process such as equipment repair 70% could very well be a great achievement. In a machine paced process 70% every day could very well earn you your walking papers over time.

OM, if I had a nickel for every time a Plant Manager said I was going to be the cause of a union drive I could have retired years ago! But as I think about it I can't come up with a single confrontation in my top 10 that took place in a union facility. The larger and stronger unions all have IE's and they are usually competent. If the plant never had standards previously they would often challenge the first ones implemented. Once you proved that the studies had been done correctly they would let me go through without issue.

At one point we had a new identical process we installed at 3 plants around the country. I set the standards and a year later one plant was sold and the new process with it. This process was not the reason the plant was sold, we just had excess capacity as the sales forecasts proved far too high. Well the company that bought the plant eventually tried to challenge us in the market with a product identical to ours, except that their labor costs were substantially higher. They ended up selling the plant back to us about 5 years after they purchased it. I went back in and saw a big difference. For our original standard we had 23 people producing 1700 cases/hr. The process hadn't changed but they were using 31 people at 1250 cases per hour. There were even a few people still on the line from when we installed it originally! They said that over time they slowly added crewing and reduced the rate for unknown reasons. Those same people had the line back up to the original rates in less than 6 weeks.

Jaluhn, I sent you a pm on that 1958 information. It sounds really interesting to me. Thanks.

Bryan