Brian Drews is the parts manager at DeNooyer Chevrolet in Kalamazoo, Mich. He spoke to Aftermarket Business World about the challenges presented by the high number of recalls announced by GM this year.
How heavy has the volume been for the GM recalls?
I would say as far as volume, if you were rating at a scale of 1 to 10, definitely a 9. We've had to hire additional staff just to handle the recall business, and that includes service writers and customer liaison people to handle customer contacts, appoint scheduling, and things like that. We have a service advisor now that just oversees the recall, because it's like a new segment of our business. We had recalls before, but they were spotty. Now we have different ones every single day.
Have there been any issues or delays in getting parts for the recalls? If so, how long?
With the ignition switch on the Cobalt there were 60-day delays for some of those parts initially. That's down to 30 to 45 days maximum now. Availability has improved.
In some cases, GM will do a preshipment of parts to us so we can schedule people as needed and just go through the stock. The more common scenario is that the customer has to come in with a recall letter, we open a repair order and then order parts at that time.
What do you see as the biggest challenge facing your parts department right now?
Right now, it's keeping up with the daily changes of the GM recalls. Every day there are some new recalls introduced, and every day they restructure some of the old recalls. It may be ordering procedure changes, or it may be actual part number changes because they've decided they have run out of one part, and another will work in its place. We are constantly monitoring changes every day on recalls, and that's huge because it takes up so much of our time right now.
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