Innovative tool offers unique insight into error codes. 

One of the exciting innovations making a debut at this year’s AAPEX Show is the online platform, Technician Nation. Bosch calls it a community of vehicle service trends. “We were able to create this by looking at the user behaviour on our scan tools,” Alison Accavati, Technician Nation Managing Publisher, Bosch Automotive Service Solutions told CarCare Business. “Every time a technician plugs in a scan tool and scans a vehicle, we’re anonymously recording that. As a result, we can see the top trends.”

The data can be displayed by date range (all of October, for example), by top vehicles, or top codes. “This matters to technicians and shop owners because they can have context around service in their area,” Accavati explained. “They can see the top vehicles trends in their area, and maybe that helps them plan parts or tools or training. Maybe that helps them with selling a service. If someone is on the fence about getting their transmission replaced, they can refer the client to this data and prove that it’s a common issue with that customer’s vehicle.”

Technician Nation is a free subscription, and subscribers can have reports sent to them via email. Currently, the American side of Technician Nation is well represented, and the company says they’ll be flipping the switch on the Canadian side later this year.

ADS Series

Bosch also featured a new (launched this summer) diagnostic scan tool—the Bosch ADS Series model 625 and 325—at this year’s AAPEX Show. Research was done with technicians to design an exclusive all new intuitive and easy to use user interface. “It’s for techs, by techs,” Jack Ogden, Diagnostics Product Marketing, Bosch Automotive Service Solutions told CarCare Business magazine.

At AAPEX Bosch was offering a preview of a new feature that will soon be available for the tool. “The new Bosch Repair Source is a suite of technical information—the whole package—that will direct you toward the exact technical data you’re going to need for the exact vehicle the technician is working on,” Ogden explained.

The new resource allows the technician to find components, look at the OE recommended maintenance schedule for the vehicle, typical labour rates (US only for now), technical service bulletins, repair procedures, drawings, exploded views of components, and any other technical information needed in order to complete the repair.

“What this means is that instead of leaving the vehicle to access a computer for this information, everything comes to you via the scan tool,” Ogden added. “And you don’t need an extra subscription to get the extra information.”