Romain Automotive Group of Indiana has drastically reduced its employee turnover rate while increasing productivity.
But Romain President Mike Mintline acknowledged that the retailer’s method for achieving this feat may not be for everyone — at least not at first blush.
“Really, it’s hard to implement,” he said. “Most guys like to operate by the seat of their pants. And we don’t.”
Since 2003, the three-store group has used what it calls the quality education systems management philosophy, adopted from the teachings of entrepreneur Philip Crosby, who is noted for improving large corporations’ efficiency. It includes a series of team-driven processes that have led to Romain employees being more engaged by giving them a voice in dealership operations. It’s created a work force of problem-solving, longer-term employees, Mintline said.
In this system, a quality improvement team is installed at each store. The teams — made up of senior store leaders such as general managers, fixed operations directors, finance directors and business development center managers — essentially call the shots for the stores.
That differs from having all orders flow from the general manager and is “more consensus-driven,” Mintline said.
To address issues with store operations, employees are encouraged to submit error cause-removal forms. The forms must identify a problem but also offer a solution. The store’s quality improvement team is mandated to answer every form.
Once a form is submitted, a corrective action team, made up of a handful of relevant store employees, is formed to fix the problem, which must get the quality improvement team’s blessing.
Taken together, here’s how the team-driven process can work: An employee might submit a form that says customers wait too long to get into the finance and insurance office to complete paperwork and that they’ll know the problem is solved when customers don’t have to wait 10 minutes to get into F&I.
The quality improvement team then asks that employee to form a corrective action team, which could include an F&I manager, a sales manager, a salesperson and a service department employee. They will meet to find a solution.
In this real instance from the Romain group, the corrective action team recommended an additional finance manager, fax machines and scanners in the offices and an online schedule that all salespeople could access to schedule their appointments. After those recommendations were implemented, customer feedback improved markedly, Mintline said.
“And we don’t have anybody waiting for F&I around here,” he said.
There also are permanent teams, such as a facilities team that may make suggestions for how a store is decorated and a safety one that monitors potential hazards on dealership grounds.
Along with the ruling- by-committee setup, Romain has awards programs for employees. And it has adopted Six Sigma process improvement tools traditionally aimed at eliminating waste in manufacturing. Mintline said it has improved the sales process, leading to more sales per employee and a drastically higher retention rate for the group.
Romain’s Saturn roots helped the retailer adopt these different approaches, Mintline said, as the defunct General Motors brand’s personnel typically were more open to nontraditional processes.
Two Romain stores in Evansville and Terre Haute, Ind., are former Saturn dealerships. Mintline was running Saturn of Plymouth in Michigan when group CEO Ron Romain bought that store along with a Saturn dealership in Farmington Hills, Mich., in 2003. The teams approach began at the Michigan Saturn stores that year and soon migrated to the rest of the group, which sold 4,000 vehicles last year, up from about 3,700 in 2019.
Mintline stressed that more formal processes have been key to a successful, growing dealership group. While they may sound daunting or tedious, they make things smoother in the long run.
“It might be an hour more work now,” he said, “saving you 10 hours next month.”