Abstract: Coating defects are overcome which occur in the prior art as a result of positional tolerance variations between an automatic spraying device and a part, as the part, e.g., an automobile body, is transported along a conveying system into the spray booth of a coating station during a series coating operation using lacquering robots to apply paint. The distance between at least one fixed reference point on the coating apparatus and a reference point on the automobile body is measured during a preparatory coating operation and stored in the processing program of an operation controlling computer as a standard reference distance value. The reference distance is remeasured for each automobile body during subsequent series coating operations and then compared to the standard reference distance value. The processing program then corrects the movements of the lacquering robots as a function of the calculated deviation to elimate the coating defects arising out of positional tolerance variations.