VIEW FROM THE REPAIR BENCH I BY STEVE FRANCE 4 KPIs to Drive Repair Output
Y ou need a highly productive staff to manage the flood of rental returns and school repairs that pile up over the summer. As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, crafting financial incentives to ensure your rental fleet is ready is one critical step toward a productive shop. Effective KPIs are another. Using key performance indicators (KPIs) as a daily measuring tool of your repair staff’s effectiveness will increase your bottom line — and theirs. KPIs offer a non-subjective way to tell your techs they’ve done
manner. Every instrument should have a repair ticket with a check in and invoiced date — the time between these is the measurement. Every shop will have slightly different expectations here, but about one week is a standard goal. KPI #4: Quality of finished work. This KPI applies in shops where a foreman is inspecting every completed repair. This foreman has their own KPIs and every time a tech presents an instru- ment for final approval, time is taken away from the foreman. Don’t get me wrong, these in- terruptions are intentional and necessary, but I want to instill an unusually high attention to detail. I don’t measure the number of times an instrument is brought for help solving a problem, I’m only referring to the number of times a repair is presented for final approval. The measurement is simple, it either passed or it didn’t. If it passed, I offer an incentive of $5 for that instrument. If it didn’t pass, no financial gain to the tech- nician. Keeping a note on your phone or setting up a quality con- trol matrix in your repair software keeps track of what instruments receive the reward. These four simple KPIs will drive the productivity of your re- pair shop and ensure the mounds of repairs you’ll have this summer are done in an effective and timely manner. MI Steve France is a veteran instrument repair tech- nician and educator based in St. George, Utah. He operates Premium Music Products, where he develops Tech-Oil Lubricants and provides advanced training through Repair Masterclass for band and orchestra repair professionals.
good or have room to improve. The right KPIs, however, can be tricky. Here are the four KPIs I use in my shop to ensure every tech is operating to their fullest potential. KPI #1: Time at work/time at bench. Clocking in and out for the day is easy and gives you the total amount of time at work. Repairs are never completed by technicians who don’t show up, but it’s impossible for any tech to be at their bench all day long. Phone calls, triage, parts ordering and more detract techs from their bench every day. It’s essential to also track time at their bench. The old idiom of “everything left unmeasured will never improve” applies. If you’re not tracking their bench time, the amount of time they spend there will never increase. Instead, the amount of time it takes them to do the other nonproductive tasks will increase.
It’s not easy to measure bench time. Software tools help and have proven effective in my shop, but before the software, a simple chess timer proved effective. A chess timer measures the time each player takes to move — I simply rela- beled each side of the clock to “Making $” and “No $.” As the day goes on, every tech could see exactly how much time they were spend- ing at productive tasks versus nonproductive tasks and their focus immediately improved.
“Using key performance indicators as a daily measuring tool of your repair staff’s effectiveness will increase your bottom line.”
KPI #2: Bill rate per hour worked. This one uses a technician’s total hours at work (not their bench time) and is divided by the amount they billed out. Our goal is five-and-a-half hours of billed work each day during the nine normal months of the year, and six-and- three-quarters hours over the summer. The remainder of time is taken by those nonproductive tasks, and that’s normal. Set a real- istic expectation and this KPI becomes a driver, not a hinderance. KPI #3: Timely repairs. One factor of customers offering their repeat business is getting their instrument back in a timely manner. This includes the store owner getting their rental returns done in a timely
24 I MUSIC INC. I MAY 2026
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