Thanks to the Automotive Management Institute (AMi), I recently had the opportunity to take one of their new online course offerings on the hottest topic in the collision repair industry today: scanning.

Did you know that today’s Ford F-150 has over 150 million lines of code? And newer vehicles are expected to have 200 to 300 million lines of code in the future?

Did you know that not every trouble code will trigger a light on the dash? Because there are 15,000 potential trouble codes and typically only a dozen or so dashboard lights? And that this is the reason why OEMs are now strongly recommending or requiring that body shops perform a pre- and post-repair scan to help diagnose and clear trouble codes and perform other repair operations?

The course had a nice combination of voice-narrated informational slides and video of experts explaining the importance of scanning. There were also videos of body shop personnel talking about personal experience with scanning and offering real-life examples.

I highly recommend you take this course, as it was very educational for me. I knew the basics of scanning before taking this course, but now I actually understand it more in-depth. As former BodyShop Business technical writer Mike West once said, knowing the reasons why you do something is often critical to doing the job correctly.