I worked for 13 months as a parts department manager for a multiline GM dealer a few years back. In the 5 years before I came there, the department was run badly and had NEVER broken even, much less showed a profit. I showed the dealer how much dead inventory we had, and how his previous managers were losing the return allowances they hadn't used. Then I showed him that, with less that $100K in inventory, we had over $30K in obsolescence--parts on hand that hadn't turned in 12 months.
I got the dealer to agree to return the $30K which was above and beyond our accumulated return reserve...at a cost of 30%, which was right at $10K. So when the numbers came in for my first year's operations, if not for the $30K return and its $10K cost, we'd have made money for the year. BUT since it was a loss, I was fired a month later. So the NEXT manager came in with a "clean" inventory, and because I laid the groundwork for him to MAKE money, he's been there ever since.
I did what was right, made the hard decisions that needed to be made to set the place up for profitability, and still got the axe because things didn't turn around quickly enough. The guy who followed became a "hero" by reaping the fruits of the seeds I planted. But that's all water under the bridge, and if I had to do it all over again, I'd still do the same things...because they needed to be done, no matter the personal consequences. [And six months after I left, the boss finally got wise and fired the $5k a month consultant who was bleeding the parts and service departments while hurting our Customer Service Index ratings. If THAT 5K a month had been available, I'd have shown a profit within 12 months despite the $30K return.]
So I'll always sleep well at night knowing I did the right thing...but integrity is hard to use to pay the mortgage and utilities.
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Today's Featured Article - Oil Bath Air Filters - by Chris Pratt. Some of us grew up thinking that an air filter was a paper thing that allowed air to pass while trapping dirt particles of a particles of a certain size. What a surprise to open up your first old tractor's air filter case and find a can that appears to be filled with the scrap metal swept from around a machine shop metal lathe. To top that off, you have a cup with oil in it ("why would you want to lubricate your carburetor?"). On closer examination (and some reading in a AC D-14 service manual), I found out that this is a pretty ingenious method of cleaning the air in the tractor's intake tract.
... [Read Article]
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