Cees.

Europe

Developments in European repair
At the recent AARN Conference, Cees Schaap, manager of Akzo Nobel's Project Consulting Services, talked about the collision repair market in Europe and how it may foreshadow what will happen in Australia.
One of the key trends in the European crash repair industry at the moment is specialisation, said Schaap. "Shops are differentiating themselves and only doing one type of job," he said. In many European countries, such as the Netherlands, the UK and Germany, niche operators have sprung up, servicing one segment of the market, efficiently and profitably. "There are still lots of 'traditional' bodyshops; those that do all types of repair, such as you see in Australia, but you also see an increase in the number of specialists," said Schaap. "Rapid repair bodyshops, mobile repair networks, recondition centres and shops that only repair older vehicles are becoming more common."
Rapid repair centres tyReconditioning centres rely on corporate customers to provide them with work and again, channel high volumes of vehicles through the shop in a short amount of time. Other shops are specialising in different vehicle ages, or are repairing different aged cars using different levels of repair. For instance, cars of six years and older do not receive the full service and lower priced parts are used.
To properly facilitate these new directions in crash repair, high efficiency management practices have been implemented and equipment has been modified to suit the fast pace. Spray booths/baking ovens for instance have seen their dimensions increase to incorporate a lot more painting off-car. The motors are frequency-adjustable, contain air accelerators and automatic flash off switches.
Some large facilities have now installed professional carwash units at the entrances and exits of the workshop to speed up the detailing process and industrial ride-on floor cleaners are used to keep the workshop dust-free.
The layout of the shop is very important in such a high volume operation, said Schaap. Several different approaches to the design of a shop have been seen in Europe. The most popular, or at least the design that is most evident, and this is true also of Australia, is the 'row' model, where cars sit in rows along the length of the shop. U-shaped operations take this to the next level, allowing cars to enter the shop at one end and exit at the other, minimising excess manoeuvring. A development largely pioneered in the US is the 'line set-up' which arranges cars in a production line through the length of the shop. Schaap suggested some of the best operators are using a combination of the U model and the line set-up, setting cars in a production line format as they queue to enter the spray booths.