BORDER PAINTS HOSTS MARKET DAY AT AXALTA
Standox importer, Border Paints, treated a large contingent of key body shop owners and management to an on-site event held at Axalta’s state-of-the-art training centre based in Midrand.
The focus of the day was for attendees to experience some of the world’s most advanced body shop workflow management systems and to workshop incorporating AI into the body shop. Border Paints CEO, Bruce Cumming, outlined their vision for the industry’s future and how they aim to partner with body shops to meet the challenges.
“Over the years, Border Paints has served leading repairers in the industry based in the Eastern Cape,” he said, “and now we are ready to expand our innovative offering over a much wider scope.” Whilst guarded about the details, he said that “something big is coming.”
The Border Paints Head Office, based in East London, supports customers through an expert technical team led by Chris Steyn. Behind the scenes, they are backed by dedicated Customer Service, IT and Reporting, and Finance and Administration teams.
Cumming was upbeat about the success of the one-day event that also included a high-profile technical demonstration for express vehicle repair production and quality excellence.
Jeremy Locke, Locke and Partners Managing Director, showed their Business Solutions Intel (BSI), a comprehensive suite of modular tools that work together to achieve optimal workflow efficiency through assessment, action and operational control, all in one platform. It’s not an audit tool, but a continuous improvement engine.
While most software programs tell you what’s wrong once a year, BSI acts as an aide-de-camp throughout the body shop to enable smarter decisions, higher profitability, and continuous improvement in real-time.
The six BSI modules include:
BSI Base: Addresses assessment, benchmarks and uses an “AI LEAN expert” to increase the knowledge base.
Workflow tools: Lean Kanban OS optimises production management as the AI learns each individual shop.
- Elite Lean: A modular, data-driven component designed to optimise every aspect of the body shop’s performance.
- Capacity planner: View what your shop can actually produce in real-time.
- QRG/SOP Manager: Once you know the best standard for your shop, lock it down.
- Network and benchmarks: External reference points of global, national and regional data that grow as the network grows.
During a practical demonstration, Speed Revolution was showcased with the use of the innovative Fast Cure Low Energy (FCLE) patented technology that offers condensed respray times and a spraying cycle to hard-dry to polishable in under one hour. This is all achieved without the experience of running a spray booth heat cycle, which costs on average approximately R80 per hour to achieve in diesel utilisation costs alone, and this price keeps escalating with the fuel increase.
Guests were shown the application cycle, which saw Christopher George, technical service demonstrator, complete a local area repair in just 40 minutes from start to finish with FCLE technology materials.
Story and pics by Ian Groat
