Insurance Quality Parts
Best Practices

What is meant by "Insurance Quality Parts"?

What is meant by Insurance Quality Parts?

To Collision repairers, it means a new, undamaged part, with no imperfections and typically primed for immediate use. For a recycled part to match this, the part may require additional preparation and/or repair to remove imperfections such as scratches, paint chips, orange peel, or stress cracks.

It is important to recognize this is not a profit centre for collision repairers; it is simply to make a part usable per the CEG outline.

1. Auto Recycler Best Practices
Slide Presentation The best practices for auto dismantlers/recyclers are described in the following slide presentation. There are 30 slides in all. It will take 10-15 minutes to go through the entire presentation. We recommend that you take notes where applicable.

In each slide, the content has finished loadin when you see the little red square icon like this:

2. Communication
Car-Part
  1. Utilize/refine features of Carpart.com to promote use of recycled parts.
    • List parts pricing on CarPart.com to reduce delays, increase accuracy, and eliminate unnecessary calls.
    • Collision facilities are encouraged to use identifiers to remove poor quality providers which promotes business to reputable recyclers.
  2. Increase training to promote features such as instant messaging.
    • Allow for meaningful communication when using digital platform.
3. Quality
Quality Vs Price
  1. Recognize that balancing “quality” with “lowest price” is the driving factor for replacement parts.
    • Modifying the price of parts to match quality promotes usability which helps overall repair cost reduction.
Delivery
  • Educate your employees on cycle time KPIs to improve service delivery expectations.
  • Provide sufficient details to better educate recycler parts policies, expectations & standards of performance.
Recycler
  1. Establish a quality control process based in industry business practices – dismantle, process, packaging, inventory, and storage.
    • Quality control review of parts at time of delivery.
  2. Provide education around quarter panel joining techniques.
    (rolled flanges) that makes the use of recycled not economical.
Collision
  1. Establish quality control business practice for the timely review of parts at time of delivery.
Images
  • Improve overall quality of images.
  • Provide quality images to support confidence in part grading.
4. General Best Practices
Part Pricing
  1. Parts price should consider the cost to incorporate insurance quality.
    • Industry will see a financial benefit to utilizing recycled parts (eliminates industry subsidizing costs to bring part to insurance quality).
    • Increased profitability will reduce incentive to price match resulting in less sales lost to OEM.
    • Potential for a higher percentage of recycled parts usage.
Collision
  1. Promote constructive dialogue between recycler and shop to:
    • Determine cost/time needed to bring to insurance quality, adjust price accordingly vs hours of repair.
    • Clarify policy that recycled parts that are prepped/painted are not returnable (cannot be resold).
Recycler
  1. Increase the professionalism of interaction with collision facilities by:
    • Setting expectations on parts quality and timing (improved overall service).
    • Build understanding that recyclers are service providers, not simply order takers.
  2. Establish quality control business practice:
    • Before packaging and delivery to reduce conflict and ensure clear lines of dialogue.
  3. Adopt higher standards for increased service/sales levels to:
    • Demonstrate a progressive industry focused on quality and service.
  4. Improve your process for dialogue and pricing:
    • To eliminate parts return and freight issues as more parts will be utilized in the repairs; with less returns, there will be less lost freight charges.
Hourly Rate
  1. Repairs to be factored at $85/hr:
    • When repairs are required to bring a part to an insurance quality.
    • Anticipate a recycled part will require some re-work to bring to insurance quality.
    • Promote communication between collision and recycler to ascertain the correct price inclusive of repair consideration to ensure price will not result in a net loss to either collision or recycler.
Pre-Pricing
  1. Part pricing should anticipate costs to make the part usable:
    • Only “A” parts are listed on Car-Part.com.
    • If the shop wishes to use a lower grade part, they will need to contact the recycler directly.
Older Parts
  1. The sale of parts 10 years and older:
    • Requires a conversation between industry to determine the needs of both parties.
    • Increased dialogue will result in greater overall satisfaction and part utilization.