IMPROVING THE EFFICIENCY OF VEHICLE AFTER-SALES SERVICE UNDER THE CONDITIONS OF MODERN SERVICE STATIONS

Abstract

The article considers an applied problem of improving the operational efficiency of a vehicle service station by combining process analysis, standardization of repair operations, digital scheduling elements and calculation of queueing-system parameters. The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that modern service stations operate under uneven customer demand, increasing complexity of vehicle systems, shortage of qualified technicians, unstable availability of spare parts and higher customer expectations regarding repair time and service transparency. In contrast to approaches limited to a general discussion of service digitalization or separate recommendations for workplace organization, the paper proposes a consistent method for evaluating service-station efficiency through the interrelation of technical, organizational and economic indicators. The methodology is based on timing of typical operations, development of the process map “request - reception - diagnostics - repair - quality control - vehicle handover”, calculation of workstation utilization using the M/M/c queueing model, comparative evaluation of the baseline and improved workflow, and sensitivity analysis of vehicle time in the system depending on the intensity of arriving service requests. Using an illustrative production case of a service station with four work bays, it is shown that reduction of non-productive transitions, preliminary spare-parts preparation, online appointment scheduling, prioritization of service jobs and introduction of quality-control checkpoints can reduce the average waiting time in the queue from 40.1 to 11.7 minutes, while the average vehicle cycle time in the system decreases from 110.7 to 68.8 minutes. The results confirm that improving service-station performance should not be interpreted only as increasing the number of work bays or personnel, but primarily as optimizing workflow, reducing time losses and stabilizing the quality of operations. The practical value of the study lies in the possibility of applying the proposed method for operational audits of service stations, justification of changes in shift planning, identification of bottlenecks, development of KPI indicators for service advisors and repair teams, and preparation for the implementation of a digital service-order management system.