The 5-step framework for deciding if ADAS belongs in your shop

Bringing ADAS calibration in-house is a capture-rate decision. Not an equipment decision.

The equipment pitches start with the kit price. The right starting point is five questions about your shop, in order. If you cannot answer them, the kit price is the least of your problems.

Question 1: What is your ADAS-affected job count?

About 65% of collision repairs need at least one ADAS recalibration. A shop running 50 repair orders a month is sitting on roughly 33 ADAS-affected jobs. That is your opportunity pool. Everything else is math built on top of that number.

Question 2: What is your capture rate?

Of those ADAS-affected jobs, how many are you actually identifying at blueprinting and billing the calibration on, whether you do the calibration in-house or sublet it.

Industry calibration penetration sits around 28.3%. Most ADAS work is missed entirely. Capture means caught at blueprinting. This is the number you control with process: estimator training, blueprinting discipline, scan tool workflow at intake.

Question 3: What is your in-house share?

Of those captured calibrations, how many do you keep in-house versus sublet. That number drives the operating math.

Capture rate is a process problem. In-house share is a capital problem. They get fixed with different tools. A shop doing 4 ADAS jobs in-house but seeing 25 or 30 ADAS-affected jobs a month has a capture problem first, an in-house share problem second, and a volume problem not at all.

Question 4: What stage does your in-house volume actually justify?

Stage 2, basic tools and existing techs trained up, breaks even around 6 in-house ADAS jobs a month. Stage 3-4, dedicated bay and dedicated tech, needs about 26.

If you cannot reach those numbers at minimum, that stage is not your move.

Question 5: Does the equipment pay back, and do you have a lever that can bend it?

Kit cost against the monthly cash the build throws off over sublet, then layer the cycle-time lever on top.

Stage 2 hardware runs $15,000 to $25,000 and pays back fast at real volume. Stage 3-4 runs $50,000 to $80,000 and the math is tight at the threshold. On the headline math, Stage 3-4 only pencils for shops already running like Stage 4 shops.

The lever is cycle-time. In-house calibration saves up to two days of keys-to-keys on every ADAS-affected RO. Those days only turn into cash under two conditions.

One: you are capacity-bound. You are turning work away or stretching cycle on the cars you take. Days back free up capacity to take more.

Two: you compete on cycle time. Your local market has shops running long on ADAS files, and your shorter cycle pulls DRP scorecard position or steals cars from the slower competitor.

If either is true, those days back become incremental cars at full severity. A Stage 3-4 build that did not pencil at the threshold starts to. If neither is true, the days back are goodwill. Real, but not cash.

Where this all lands

Most shops that work these questions honestly land in the same place. Stage 2 is the move, and the first job is not buying equipment. It is raising the capture rate on the ADAS jobs already coming through the door.

The full walkthrough, with every number, every threshold, and the two-case Stage 3-4 framework, lands tomorrow in the ADAS Decision Playbook.