DuPont Performance Coatings (DPC) has partnered with The Body Shop, which specializes in “lean” collision repair. The agreement between the parties covers the sharing of The Body Shop’s Star-Link Collision Repair System, a Kaizen centered “lean” business model that was developed by John Sweigart and Brad Sullivan over the past 12 years. The model is currently practiced in all of The Body Shop’s Pittsburgh and New Jersey locations, as well as in several other independent repair shops in the United States and Canada. DPC is partnering with The Body Shop to offer a refined version of the model to DPC body shops.

The Body Shop operates a customer-focused group of collision repair centers with plans to continue rapid expansion over the coming years. Sweigart and Sullivan created the Star-Link Collision Repair Network, made up exclusively of repairers who are committed to genuine improvement through Kaizen. This group exists to promote to the customer a substantially better offering, and to work together through shared learning for the sake of a better collision repair industry, according to the company.
 
“We realized very quickly that DuPont Performance Coatings shared our vision,” said John Sweigart, CEO, The Body Shop. “We effectively help existing repairers create genuine improvement using a lean model and the answer is not just in the application of lean tools and courses, but through a hands-on, ‘learn by doing’ approach. The key to transform repairer operations is to focus on teaching, learning and problem solving.”

“DPC chose to partner with The Body Shop because of the organizations companywide commitment to process improvement and the ability to practice it internally and transfer it to others. We visited The Body Shop locations six times in 12 months and significant process improvement occurred between each visit,” said Steve Trapp, manager, DuPont Collision Services Development. “The Body Shop practices what they preach, they are continuously improving. Our customers will learn a lot from John Sweigart and the Star-link team.”

DPC will offer courses at NACE, SEMA and other events featuring the learning from exposure to The Body Shop.