Touch time is the share of a repair during which someone is actually working on the vehicle, versus the time it just sits. Most vehicles spend far more time waiting than being worked on, and closing that gap is one of the biggest efficiency gains available. Here is how.
Touch time is the portion of a repair during which a technician is actually working on the vehicle, as opposed to the time the vehicle simply sits waiting. Most vehicles in most shops spend far more time waiting than being touched, which means the repair takes days while the actual work might be a fraction of that. Touch time matters because waiting is wasted capacity. A vehicle sitting in a stall, not being worked on, is occupying space that could hold a moving repair. Improving touch time, the ratio of working to waiting, lets a shop complete more repairs in the same building without working any faster. It is efficiency, not speed.
To improve touch time you have to see where vehicles wait, because the waiting is the opportunity. Common waiting points: - Waiting for parts that were not ordered early enough - Waiting for supplement approval before work can continue - Waiting for a technician to become available - Waiting between stages because of poor handoffs - Waiting for information someone has to hunt down - Waiting for a sublet operation to be scheduled and returned Each of these is a vehicle occupying a stall and producing nothing. The waiting is rarely because the shop is lazy. It is because of gaps in process: parts not ordered, approvals not chased, information not at hand. Seeing where vehicles actually wait is the first step to reducing it.
The two biggest sources of waiting, parts and approvals, are also the two most addressable. - Order parts as early as the estimate and supplements allow - Do a thorough teardown early so all damage is found at once, not in stages - Submit clean, well-documented supplements that get approved quickly - Chase approvals rather than waiting passively for them - Know which vehicles are waiting on what, so nothing is forgotten A thorough early teardown is the underrated lever here. When all the hidden damage is found and supplemented up front, the shop waits once for approval and parts, rather than discovering damage in stages and waiting repeatedly. Finding everything early collapses multiple waiting periods into one.
A surprising amount of waiting comes from handoffs and hunting for information, which are pure process waste. - A vehicle finishing one stage and waiting to be picked up by the next - A technician stopping to find a part, a procedure, or an authorization - The office interrupting the floor to ask about status - Information living in someone's head rather than on the job - Rework caused by unclear instructions or missing documentation These delays add up because they happen on every job. A technician who has to stop and hunt for the repair procedure, or wait for someone to answer a question, is not touching the vehicle. Keeping the information a repair needs attached to the job, and making handoffs clean, keeps hands on the vehicle instead of hunting for what they need.
Touch time also suffers when work is unevenly distributed, so some technicians are idle while others are overloaded. - Match work to available technicians so no one is waiting for a task - Avoid overloading one stage while another sits idle - Sequence work so technicians move smoothly from one job to the next - Keep the bottleneck stage fed so it never starves - Plan so a finished task hands off to a ready next step A shop where one technician is buried while another has nothing to do is wasting capacity on both ends. Balancing the workload keeps more hands on vehicles more of the time, which is exactly what touch time measures. This is a scheduling and visibility problem more than a staffing one.
Touch time cannot be improved if it is not visible, so measurement comes first. - Track when vehicles are actually being worked versus waiting - Timestamp status changes as they happen - Identify where vehicles wait most, so you fix the biggest delays first - Watch the ratio over time to see whether changes are working - Use the visibility to spot bottlenecks forming A shop that measures where its vehicles wait can attack the biggest delays deliberately rather than guessing. Without measurement, waiting is invisible and improvement is accidental. With it, the shop can see that vehicles pile up waiting on parts, or on approvals, or between stages, and fix the specific cause. Visibility turns touch time from a vague idea into a lever you can actually pull.
**What is touch time?** The share of a repair during which someone is actively working on the vehicle, versus the time it sits waiting. **Why does it matter?** Waiting is wasted capacity. Improving touch time lets a shop complete more repairs in the same space without working faster. **What causes low touch time?** Mostly waiting on parts and approvals, plus handoff delays and information hunting. **How do I improve it?** Order parts early, do a thorough early teardown, submit clean supplements, reduce handoff delays, balance workload, and measure where vehicles wait. **Is this the same as cycle time?** Related but different. Cycle time is total elapsed time. Touch time is the working portion of it. Improving touch time is one way to reduce cycle time.