Both repairers and insurers have begun to more actively monitorthe differences between the planned and actual events for keyprocess steps such as vehicle in, repair start, repair complete andvehicle out, with the goal to shave wasted time off of the claimand repair process and streamline communication between allparties.

The average days between vehicle in and repair start, and theaverage days between repair complete and vehicle out haveessentially remained unchanged over the last three years. Each averages slightly less than one day, whether the vehicle isdriveable or non-driveable, and remain an opportunity for theindustry to further streamline check-in and check-out.

Over the last three years, the average number of days from thedate the vehicle is brought into the shop to the date it is pickedup (a 24 hour / 7 day measurement), or “keys to keys” has grownfrom 9.26 days to 9.85 days.

As the data in Figure 1 illustrates, nearly all of that increasehas occurred in the actual repairs started to repairs completedportion of that overall figure, with an increase of more than halfa day.

With increases in both the average number of labor hours perclaim, and the average number of parts replaced per claim, it isclear that vehicle complexity is playing a part in driving upoverall cycle time (see Figure 2, below). The average number ofreplaced parts and average labor hours per claim have allincreased, supplement frequency has increased, and not surprisinglyrepair costs have gone up as well.

A comparison of the repair time by vehicle age helps underscorehow newer non-driveable vehicles have repair cycle times thatdramatically exceed those of the older models, while the differenceamong vehicle age groups for driveable repairs differs very little(see Figure 3, below).

The main drivers for this can be seen when comparing repaircycle time as well as repair cost, average number of parts replacedper repair, and average labor hours in Figure 4.

While the difference in repair cost for driveable vehicles aged currentmodel year is 15% higher than for driveable vehicles aged 7-yearsplus, that same metric for non-driveable vehicles is over 90%higher, driven by over 15 more parts replaced per claim and 17 morelabor hours per claim. Clearly newer vehicles are costingmore to repair than ever before, but do so especially when thevehicle is much more heavily damaged. This is apparent in howthe difference in each of these metrics has grown over the lastthree years alone; also suggesting that costs for newer car repairswill likely grow even further in the near future.

Perhaps the one bit of good news is that as more andmore vehicles are equipped with advanced driver assistancesystems such as frontal crash warning or avoidance, automaticemergency braking, and blind-spot detection, more of the highdollar high impact non-driveable crashes may be avoided.

Unfortunately, as repair costs rise, efficiency and the abilityto estimate when the car will be available for pickup, notsurprisingly, fall (see Figure 5). As repairers look to loadbalance among locations and specialize work, understanding theimpacts to cycle time and productivity will become increasinglyimportant. A shop handling more new model year repairs ormore non-driveable repairs could see significantly differentresults; factoring these differences in repair mix and performanceassessment going forward will be increasingly important.

Susanna Gotsch is director of analytics and productmanagement at CCC Information Services Inc. She previously served asCCC's lead analyst, and authored the company's CrashCourse Report series. She can be reached via emailat [email protected], or on Twitter @ccc_susanna.

See also:

Next generation hyperscaleexpectations

The expanding role oftelematics