By Barett Poley
Toronto, Ontario — November 23, 2016 — A training event for collision repairers and appraisers was held in Toronto and Montreal by Toyota Canada, with the purpose of diagnostic and estimating training for collision repair shops. The Toronto training session was held at the Delta East Hotel. The Montreal session took place at Axalta’s training centre in Pointe-Claire, Quebec.
The event was open to both collision repairers and appraisers. The course itself was designed for the experienced estimator or repair planner, with the goal of helping professionals improve the consistency of estimates, understand new technologies and repair procedures required by Toyota and justify repair times. This last item can be very important when it comes to effective negotiations with insurance partners. The Toronto session also included a presentation by Mike Anderson of Collision Advice.
In an interview with Collision Repair magazine, Paul Stella, Manager of Toyota Canada’s Collision Repair & Refinish Program, said that the main focus of the event was training on “how to properly diagnose and complete a proper estimate on vehicles, according to Toyota Specifications.“ This, he says, is not only for the training of the repairers themselves, but also to increase customer satisfaction and confidence in Toyota certified shops. The most important thing, from the perspective of Toyota Canada, is that the company’s vehicles are going back on the road with the same level of safety and passenger protection that they possessed when they rolled off the assembly line.
“The goal for us is to make sure that a vehicle is restored to original factory specifications,” says Stella. “It’s important to make sure that the collision repair shop is reimbursed for all those processes that they go through to fix the car properly.”
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| Darren Roche of Axalta, Jeff Pabst of Pfaff Autoworks and Phil Heuckroth of Axalta at the Toronto event. {source}<br/>{/source} Check out the gallery below for more photos! |
The event also covered alternative substrates and some repair considerations for each, how to document structural damage and some “not-included” items for structural components, how to document mechanical damage, how to examine vehicle systems, including SRS, steering, parking assist, and glass and last but not least, gow to negotiate refinish operations, including weld burn damage, inner structure colour, second colour setup and basecoat reduction.
{unitegallery Toyota_Training_Event_Nov_2016}
