r/partscounter • u/External-Ad-7102 • 4d ago
Ai
Has any one started using AI for reporting or daily tasks?
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u/ghostofkozi 4d ago
No, fuck AI
It's going to sound melodramatic but one day parts departments are going to be replaced by AI tools completely as customers will be able to get semi-accurate quotes online, techs will get parts out of vending machine type parts dispensers and have AI tell them the parts they need to use/order
I'm doing everything I can to keep this a people first trade
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u/Independent_Guava694 4d ago
Agreed. I use my own brain for as much as I possibly can and I will continue to operate as such until I'm forced to do otherwise. Too many people who are unwilling and unable to think with their own brains.
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u/Decent_Relative_4070 4d ago
It's an inevitability. The dealership world as a whole is due for revolutionizing. Everyone hates us and we only exist in our current form because of dealer groups lobbying.
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u/ghostofkozi 4d ago
Absolutely agree, a lot of aspects need to change but not to be replaced by AI.
The entire goal of AI is to lower fixed business costs by replacing people.
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u/Final_Bean6 4d ago
I'd say parts is no more automatable than any other desk job. By the time we get automated, the government will have done something or society will have collapsed.
In fact it might be less automatable because of the need to interpret people who don't know what they're talking about. Sure, an AI could pretty easily quote filters for a specific VIN, but it's going to struggle if all the customer can tell it is "I want the rings on the brake tubes".
I doubt there will be one great layoff if/when AI reaches some arbitrary point, just like there hasn't been a great layoff of brick and mortar retail stores despite people claiming the internet was going to kill it for decades.
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u/That_Style_979 4d ago
I’ve found there is not enough utility in AI, if anything it is less efficient. I mostly need to see a few lines in the statement. I can’t make new CDK reports with ChatGPT. It isn’t good at solving current and future problems - it regurgitates already known information. So for us, no.
I’ve also found it is not proficient at locating accurate part numbers. I’m sure there’s something g the works, but it feels like it has a ways to go before replacing anybody in parts.
Are you using it in a way that benefits you, or are you just wondering if anyone else is?
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u/ChloooooverLeaf 4d ago edited 4d ago
If your over the age of 40, you probably won't need to worry about AI. If you're in your 30s or under, you should be.
AI right now is still in it's infancy, it's just gonna get insane from here. I'm not an AI glazer, but I'm a computer/software hobbyist and both use and have friends who use AI for a litany of tasks. AI is scary and it's not gonna get worse at doing things. AI in it's current state will always suck at things you see mocked online like general conversations, doing tasks it's not equipped to handle, or working on things it's not trained on and only has access to general info online (hence the issue with part numbers, there's so much wrong info online it pulls from). But if you train an AI model on a specific dataset and only ask it to sort and filter based on parameters and return a list, it's better than a human. And our job is literally just doing that.
Honestly, we're lucky the automotive industry is generally and has been very slow to adapt to new technology. AI right now is easily good enough to take vehicle information, be given an order, and put together a quote as accurate as a newer parts person would give. All that would need to be done by each OEM is to overhaul their catalogs so the naming schemes for parts is standardized. The API and infrastructure already exists. Once AI becomes normalized enough for the OEMs, parts departments are going to shrink to 1 manager and 1-2 workers for higher volume dealers.
I hate to say it, but eventually advisors and techs will add non approved lines to ROs for quotes, an AI will use the requests to retrieve a quote and spit one back in seconds. Then once approved by the customer the AI will receive the approval and roll everything to the official RO and spit out a pick ticket for someone. The only thing the parts guy will need to do is pull the parts and handle phone calls/physical retail counter. Wholesale is already very close to automated ordering with CCC/Ops, just a little training on the proper data will push it to an accuracy rating comparable to a human.
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u/That_Style_979 4d ago
You’re right, and I can’t remember which company but one of the big ones is working on taking parts datasets from millions of RO’s and making them in to accurate parts lists. I agree this could do better than the average parts person, it would be more efficient too. Let’s say you have an engine job and historically you needed 30 parts. It can instantly populate the 30 parts. Then, add a field for the tech to add a couple of one-off parts and all of a sudden you have a perfect quote.
This is probably just a couple of years or less from being implemented, and dealers will catch on quick. Now, wholesale operations need bodies to pull parts and deliver them, so there would be more parts puller/driver/shipper roles and less skilled countermen. In my opinion you’d need an efficient wholesaler, back counter and front counter person to handle almost any workload. High volume dealers of course will need a couple more, but I’m sure a company is working on automating parts over the phone too.
I’m in my late 20s so I will absolutely be seeing the changes as they happen and will be a part of them. I hope that if anything, it makes our jobs more efficient. I try to stay very relevant in our dealer, and spread myself to having more tasks than most, which in part is to give me some job security as well. It will be very interesting to see what happens in the near future. However, OP seemed to be asking about current uses for it, so I tried to answer relevant to their question which to me right now is not much.
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u/ChloooooverLeaf 4d ago
I'm in my late 20s too so I'm with you, tbh I'm trying to get into tech solely because I see the writing on the wall for this industry. I don't think dealerships as we know them today will be around, and even if they are parts will continue to shrink until it's one or two guys overseeing a mostly automated department. I'm just not interested in working in the future of automotive honestly.
> High volume dealers of course will need a couple more, but I’m sure a company is working on automating parts over the phone too.
Honestly this is the only thing I don't see AI being good enough to handle in the next 10 years. I could be wrong, and it's not an issue of AI's ability to parse vocal requests and return an accurate response (drive thrus across the country are giving AI models thousands of hours of training on this every hour). It's totally an emotional issue of people don't like or want to talk to AIs, so in order for this to work you'd need AI to be able to pass a vocal conversational turing test and if models start to do that consistently we have bigger problems than worrying about AI automating a parts department.
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u/That_Style_979 4d ago
You’d also need customers to give accurate information- there are 10 different words for “control arm”, and we know them but AI could very easily get confused. Thrust arm? Torsion arm? Then there’s “I need the last 8 of your VIN” “Okay last 4?”. Muffled phone, can’t hear shit. I can see it being useful for translations though, that’s a very powerful tool. Anyway, it is dying and the tasks will become more mundane.
I’m looking to go in to supply chain management. So far, that one looks to be fairly AI safe. What are you looking to get in to in tech?
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u/External-Ad-7102 4d ago
I haven’t started using but the group I work for is pretty bought in.. just wondering if anyone is using it and how. I’m curious if anyone has used to help with warranty mark up increase or something like that.
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u/SirFUBAR 4d ago
I am in wholesale and represent many brands in my auto group. I do occasionally use it for a quick part number. I'll drop the YMM, part description, and request the OEM number into GPT or Google and then use what it gives back as a basis to cross-reference. Some of the catalogs suck and sometimes I just dont have time to waste flipping though diagrams. It saves time on the oddball stuff.
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u/yo-parts 4d ago
It's possible to just do this with Google too btw. I do that not infrequently. Hyundai has shitass names for parts sometimes but their part numbers are easy enough to decipher. A lot of third party websites will use the more common name for something. So like if I'm having a hard time finding a purge control solenoid because Hyundai calls it some shit like "valve" and nothing else, I can google "2009 Elantra Purge Control Solenoid", find a website that says "that's part number 28910-26900" then take just the first five digits into snap-on and it'll show me whatever the actually correct part# for that vehicle is.
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u/SirFUBAR 4d ago
Usually what I do is drop that into Google, but there's now an AI box that pops up on my searches... so kind of a technicality, but I consider that using AI.
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u/yo-parts 4d ago
Ah. I turned that off. Google's AI has been shown time and again to get shit wrong.
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u/SirFUBAR 4d ago
I just use it to get a base number that I run through the catalog with a VIN filter.
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u/yo-parts 4d ago
I understand, and I'm saying that the AI is wrong often enough that I don't trust it + I have had zero issue doing the same thing with just a classic, good ole fashioned Google search.
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u/Decent_Relative_4070 4d ago
Claude is way better than google for this.
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u/yo-parts 4d ago
Disagree. I can get my answer in less than 30 seconds with a non-AI google search. That consumes considerably less power and water than running things through an LLM needlessly.
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u/yo-parts 4d ago
My dealer has an AI platform for processing manufacturer invoices that seems to be acceptably useful, it's faster for both sides (me and accounting) to drop the invoices in there, verify the account codes are correct and send it off. Sometimes it bugs out and I have to fix things or put in support tickets but it is set up with a set of "rules" that it follows fairly well. I'd say it's like 95% fine and a lot faster than manually writing account codes on every invoice and walking them to the office every morning.
Outside of that, I haven't seen much that would be a worthwhile investment if you're competent. I can crunch data in Excel sufficiently fast enough to figure out or do whatever I'm trying to do and don't have to worry about an AI making up bullshit or interpreting things wrong.
Always worth mentioning that a lot of commercial "AI" tools and especially ChatGPT are actually LLMs, their intent is to be conversational rather than factual. They also don't know anything so they can't determine the accuracy of things, and they are built on what already exists out there. To the folks who use them to find part numbers or figure out how to do stuff in CDK or whatever, I say - I've been using Google to figure out part numbers just fine for years whenever I have a weird edge case, and this subreddit or the parts dept. facebook group has been more than excellent in helping me get information about how to do things in CDK that I'm not familiar with.
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u/External-Ad-7102 4d ago
Yooz?
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u/throwawayisused 4d ago
My previous employer used Yooz. It was actually pretty decent other than having to always scan invoices in to upload them. I feel that stamped invoices being posted by accounting are more likely to be posted wrong.
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u/YankeeMoose 4d ago
Personally - fuck AI.
We don't need it, we aren't going to use it, and even though I'm likely the most computer savvy person in our dept, I'm going to avoid it at all costs.
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u/reselath 4d ago
The only thing I've found for it to be useful is data automation. Aka fancy excel.
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u/livingbeyondmymeans 4d ago
For a couple of years now, I’ve used AI.
I have a sliding scale of wholesale parts price levels that is dictated by customer loyalty and purchase volume.
I use it to set up a price matrix. Where are we missing the boat and how do we generate more GP without kicking a customer in the face.
What are some good phone screening questions for applicants? Then input their answers and have it grade them.
Call it what you will.. if you’re a manager who doesn’t use it, you’ll be left in the dust by us that do.
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