Billings, Montana — February 12, 2017 — Nothing highlights the need for scanning like cold, hard data. Our US-based content partner, Repairer Driven News (RDN), reports on a repairer that gathered stats on ever repair order that came through his three shops “… to examine the necessity of pre- and post-repair scanning and whether the dash light can serve as an indicator of fault codes.”
According to the report, “McDonnell Group President Matthew McDonnell, who uses one of Collision Diagnostic Services’ asTech devices, shared the results with us last month. They’re presented here with the customers, insurers, and repair order numbers redacted to protect privacy, and minor stylistic edits for easier sorting. Gaps in the data typically indicate vehicles received at the shop but which have not yet received a particular step in the repair process.”
The RDN report notes that McDonnel’s company had already studied the variance between labour times given by different estimators at the company. Differences of up to several hours were noted. After an “extensive study of P-pages and OEM requirements,” the facilities were able to calibrate their estimates.
“The McDonnell Group later took an interest in scanning, and decided to perform a similar study to analyze the issue,” according to the RDN report.
“We were really the tip of the spear here,” McDonnell told RND, noting that scanning wasn’t getting much attention from industry at the time the study was initiated. The business began scanning every car and comparing codes, both pre- and post-repair. According to the RDN report, “49 out of 50 cars came back with codes related to the repair or collision.”
The McDonnell Group also looked into dash light data and “found that a vehicle typically needed a ‘pretty hard hit’ before dash lights would appear,” as reported by RDN.
A follow-up story by RDN notes that after insurers were shown the data, they “grew amenable to the idea” of scanning, with State Farm leading the way on agreeing to pay for pre- and post-repair scans, according to the story.
