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Gen X and Gen Y in the Dealership: Tire Dealer Software as Putty in Their Hands

06/25/2010, 9:44am (EST)
By AJ McKenna

Fred Taylor was the father of ‘scientific management’ and his ‘minute men’ defined the ‘one right way’ to perform manufacturing operations. That system worked well until workers grew tired of jobs that were defined like this: “I put the yellow wire into the blue hole.”

 
My former colleague, Brendan Duffy, our top engineer back in the 1970’s, preferred another management technique. For Brendan, Kick in the A (KITA) was the only effective approach to motivating employees. Here’s Brendan: “I like to motivate them with a promise: ‘Do good work and you might get to keep your job’.” On returning from a supervisor’s course which taught that promising honey might work better than threatening vinegar, Brendan said he was a changed man. However, the very next week, when Joe Bourke made a soldering error, Brendan exploded with “KITA is the only thing that works.” According to Joe’s account, the hair rose on the back of his neck and he dropped the soldering iron down on top of a perfectly good printed circuit board.
 
A few years back, a famous manager – it might have been Lee Iacocca, but I’m not certain – came up with the concept of Management by Walking About (MBWA). Anything Lee would suggest would be of immediate interest to me, as I am one of his many true believers, believing that he was the outstanding auto industry leader we saw in the second half of the 20th century. The notion was that you learned a lot more from just observing and asking questions and your team liked the attention and was on its toes for the next tour. What most appealed to me was the idea that you could manage without having to actually do anything. What was not to like about a style that rewarded the naturally lazy?
 
Just this week, I read an article in the electronic edition of Tire Business describing   Joe Henry’s concept of Management by Generations. If you have ever had the pleasure of raising a family, you won’t need to read very far to feel a resonance from Joe’s approach to running a shop. His idea, developed on his website is grounded in the real world. Our parents grew up in one world with one type of expectations for workplace behavior, we grew up in a different one, and the later generations live in a world we could not have imagined, even as recently as the 1980’s. We need to adapt our management styles to the generational groups to which our employees, not to any of the old notions of good and bad, right and wrong that our granddads lived by.
 
I noticed in Joe’s analysis a strong emphasis on the Gen Xr’s and Gen Yr’s expectations of transparency and truth in their dealings. They are not necessarily better people than their forebears, but they have little tolerance for BS; they want the plain facts without any management puffery. Brendan Duffy would be in his element, provided he could keep his foot quiet!
 
Best of all, from the Signal Extraprise point of view, this new work force is tech savvy and adaptable to new electronic systems and devices. Tire dealer software systems like eXceed™  will be putty in the hands of this new cadre of colleagues, who will adopt them and mold them to telling effect. We may be leaving them a big national debt but if we treat them in the manner recommended by Joe Henry, they could be the next “Greatest Generation.”
 
AJ McKenna
June 25, 2010

Ohio Legislature Kills Free Trade

05/05/2010, 12:33pm (EST)
By AJ McKenna

Luddism in the land of the Wright Bros. and Right Stuff

 

While the fortunes of States have changed since California’s reign as the Golden State, the status of Ohio has endured through thick and thin. It was, is, and will remain the bell weather state, reflecting the mood of the nation as a whole. Who can forget the famous political battles that have kept us up late on the first Tuesday of November every Leap Year? So too, we have seen the emergence of Ohio as a test ground for startup restaurant chains, because financial backers know that what works in Ohio stands a great chance of working nationwide.
So it is no laughing matter when the State that gave us the Wright Brothers and The Right Stuff decides to enact legislation that will have the effect of driving customers away from tire dealers and other aftermarket businesses. That is exactly what legislation that is working its way through the Ohio Capitol will do, unless it can be stopped. Here’s how it works. Suppose you are a Toyota driver who needs urgent work done because of a recall. Right now you can have the work done anywhere you choose, including your favorite tire dealer. When (or if) the new law passes the Ohio legislature and is signed into law by Governor Strickland, your recall can only be handled by the Toyota dealer.  Talk about rewarding the guilty! It would be like mandating that you must get your next mortgage from Goldman Sachs.
Back in October I wrote about an initiative that Congressman Joe Barton was leading at the federal level, which would eliminate this type of ridiculous unfair advantage enjoyed by the car dealerships. Barton introduced the federal Right to Repair Act, which would make it mandatory on automobile makers to supply information and parts to tire dealers and others. This initiative in Ohio flies in the face of the Congressman’s legislation, and will result in restrictive trade practices, turning the OEM-franchised dealers into an oligopoly. 
As my mother always said about her little convenience store:  “Lord can I just have a very small monopoly in this little village.” How do we expect rational car dealers to react to their local monopoly power? Do we expect them to announce unilateral cuts in the prices of service? How do we think they might react in a ‘free trade’ situation where every service location can compete on equal terms for the motorists’ business? Which model will work in the best interest of the consumer? So why, then, is Ohio taking this totally anti-consumer stance to protect car franchises?
I can’t imagine why any politician would wish to hurt constituents in this manner, particularly in an election year. But we know politicians are not fools. A look at financial contributions to the election campaigns of the Ohio politicians pushing this measure might be instructive.
The argument that only the franchised can do the work makes no sense today in the interconnected world where tire dealers can deploy advanced information technology, such as eXceed™ software for tire dealers, that gives them access to all of the tools and information to do the work.
Congressman Boehner, you are a red blooded believer in free trade. Can’t you use your good offices and stellar approval in Ohio to talk some sense into the locals?
 
AJ McKenna
May 5, 2010

 

 

 

America Fights back

04/12/2010, 4:17pm (EST)
By AJ McKenna

It Ain't Over 'til It's Over

America Fights Back

 

Try as they did, the fat cats on Wall Street seem to have failed to drive the resilient US economy over the cliff.  It is easy to resent those empty suits that add no value to the economy and walk away with multi-million dollar bonuses as a reward for flittering away our hard-earned retirement funds.  These geniuses have delayed my retirement by at least five years.

But the great American economy is still out there, alive and well and clawing its way back to growth and prosperity.  Just look at the most recent financial report from Munro Muffler and Brake.  A recent issue of Tire Business (See the whole article at www.tirebusiness.com/subscriber/servicezone/ServiceZone), reported upbeat results for the retailer, with Sales up 11% in March, after increases of 9% and 4% in February and January.

With those kinds of increases out there in the aftermarket, it is no surprise that dealers are once again thinking of making significant capital investment decisions, and we at Signal are seeing real signs of that.  Our year-to-date bookings for 2010 are right up there with historic highs and are way ahead of our numbers in the past few years.  How sweet it is.  Now if we can just find a way to keep those Wall Street wondermen from coming up with more self-serving brilliant ideas like Collateralized Debt Obligations, maybe we can start rebuilding this great country and leave our kids with as much as our parents left us.

Signal’s great year to date is a part of the improvement of the economy, but it also has something to do with our sparkling new line-up of products, which we have been working on in the back rooms since 2005 and which are just now beginning to be rolled out in volume.  If you are one of those dealers that is ready to modernize your whole operation, you might want to take a look at eXceed™, TireTrader® and our supporting cast of technology. 

After all, you don’t want to miss the next wave in tire dealer information technology which will revolutionize how tires and service are offered in the aftermarket.

 

AJ McKenna

April 12, 2010

 

Old Friends are Best

02/23/2010, 9:30am (EST)
By AJ McKenna

Americans are cutting out that monthly payment

 

In a recent survey conducted on behalf of AutoMD, a new auto repair resource, it was reported that car owners are ringing in the changes when it comes to their plans to replace their current vehicles.  For as long as I can remember, people thought of their car payment as an on-going monthly charge, no different from the house mortgage or school taxes.  When we get this one paid for, we go buy the next one, a virtuous cycle that kept Detroit and its competitors busy rolling out the next ‘new thing’. 

When Karl Yastrzemski was enjoying his MVP year, that year’s World Series telecast was frequently interrupted by Petula Clark breaking into song telling us “Plymouth is out to win you over this year”.  The ads said nothing about the cars, but assumed that many of us would be shopping just for the sake of having a new payment.

Those days seem to be long gone.  According to the recent survey, Americans in droves are planning to keep their old cars for 50,000 miles longer or, in many instances, ‘until they die’.  The cars, that is, not the owners!  This is bad news for auto manufactures and maybe even for the broader industry, but, if every cloud has a silver lining, this one is smiling down on our customers, those tire, battery and auto servicers whose mission it is to maintain vehicles after their owners realize that going back to the car dealership is a very expensive proposition.

A substantial majority of surveyed owners report spending between $500 and $1,000 a year on vehicle repairs, excluding what they are spending on replacement tires.  So it looks like this new pattern of owner behavior opens up a whole new cornucopia of opportunity for our customers in the aftermarket service sector.

Sometimes the dealer may need to refit his or her business systems to take advantage of this break.  Perhaps the dealership needs technology to assist him or her in attracting, capturing, serving and retaining motorists.  That’s where the new Information Technologies come to your aid.  Modern IT systems, such as Signal’s highly regarded eXceed™ family of products were designed specifically to support the dealer that wishes to aggressively target this burgeoning base of owners.  Owners  who are reluctant to throw money into the new car pit at a time when vehicles are better built and safer (well most of the time), and the investment of $500-1,000 a year will keep them happily motoring in the old vehicle, while they save on the cost of that relentless monthly payment    

 

Better Late than Never but Best Early

01/19/2010, 12:44pm (EST)
By AJ McKenna

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