Choose a consistent start and finish, declare calendar or working days and compare similar repairs. Then investigate the longest cases using parts, approval, production and delivery events. Review open repairs too, so a completed-job average does not hide a growing backlog.
Define the clock
Arrival-to-delivery measures the interval from the vehicle entering the shop to its handoff. Arrival-to-production-complete ends earlier. Estimate-to-delivery starts earlier. Each can answer a useful question, but the numbers are not interchangeable. Label the interval beside every result.
Calendar days include weekends and closures. Working days exclude days the shop defines as closed, including relevant holidays. State whether you subtract timestamps or count dates, and whether the starting date is included. Otherwise, two reviewers can produce different answers from the same repair.
For example, Friday at 9 a.m. to Monday at 9 a.m. is 72 hours, or three elapsed calendar days, in a week without a clock change. A Monday-to-Friday shop counting working dates after arrival through completion would count one working day. An inclusive date count would differ. Keep one declared method throughout the comparison.
Read the repair timeline
| Event | Elapsed day | Review question |
|---|---|---|
| Vehicle arrives | Day 0 | When did the measurement start? |
| Approval hold begins | Day 2 | What decision is needed? |
| Required part due | Day 3 | Could work proceed without it? |
| Approval and part received | Day 6 | What still prevents progress? |
| Production complete | Day 9 | Is the vehicle ready for handoff? |
| Vehicle delivered | Day 10 | When did the measurement end? |
Arrival-to-delivery is ten elapsed days; production completion-to-delivery is one. The approval wait runs from day 2 to day 6, four days. The overdue-parts interval runs from day 3 to day 6, three days. Those intervals overlap, covering four elapsed days together, not seven.
Even four days is not automatically recoverable delay. Other necessary work may have proceeded while the approval was pending. Ask what operation was blocked, whether everything else needed for that operation was ready, and when it could realistically have started. Record the evidence before assigning a cause.
Separate work from waiting
Two elapsed days in paint do not mean two days of technician labor. Stage duration can contain active work, waiting, handoffs and interruptions. Estimate hours describe planned or booked work; job timers describe tracked work. Neither is a direct substitute for elapsed time.
Review the stage history alongside assignments, timers, parts events and approval records. A repair may wait inside a stage without changing its label. Another may move backward for additional work. Keep that history in the review rather than reducing every repair to one straight sequence.
Also distinguish a completed repair awaiting pickup from unfinished production. Both occupy space, but the useful next action differs. One may need a customer handoff; the other may need a part, decision or technician.
Compare like with like
Define the group before calculating a result. A September delivery review can include repairs delivered during September and measure each from arrival to delivery, even when arrival was in August. Open repairs need a separate age review because they have no final delivery interval yet.
Check scope and work mix before comparing teams or periods. Inspect unusually long cases alongside the average, and keep missing dates visibly incomplete. A missing arrival timestamp is not a zero-day repair. Choose one operating change with an owner, then review later repairs under the same definition.
If repeated waits begin before production is ready, revisit capacity and booking decisions. If the evidence points to parts follow-up, use the parts management checklist to examine ordering, receiving and unresolved problems.
Use the recorded events
AutoHound's production and labor reports provide several views of the same work. Cycle Time tracks arrival to delivery. Stage Dwell reconstructs time in each stage for delivered vehicles from their history between arrival and delivery.
Hours by Stage groups tracked hours by the stage recorded when each timer started. Read it alongside Stage Dwell to investigate work and waiting. Touch Time shows tracked hours per day in production and flags untimed jobs. Incomplete tracking should prompt a records check before a performance conclusion.
Blocked and Waiting surfaces open repairs that are blocked, off site at a vendor or waiting on authorization. The production board adds current blockers, parts signals and assignments. Confirm the report's displayed basis before comparing it with a separate worksheet; the example here is a review method, not a claim about a report's day-counting formula.
Shop checklist
- State the start event, finish event and reporting period.
- Record calendar or working days, date or timestamp counting, and inclusion rules.
- Define the repair group and any exclusions.
- Flag missing or inconsistent dates before calculating results.
- Review stage history separately from estimate hours and tracked work.
- Record approval, parts, sublet and pickup waits with start and finish events.
- Mark overlapping holds and identify which operation each actually blocked.
- Review open-repair age alongside completed-repair cycle time.
- Assign a supported improvement, an owner and a follow-up review date.
All worked examples are illustrative, not customer results or industry benchmarks.