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Teaching: A metal fabricator’s secret sauce

A pipe fabricator’s success relies on speed, quality work, and a very good teacher

Why did Bob Moehlman become a pipe welder? The president of Superior Pipe Fabricators (SPF), a 12-person shop in Los Angeles, turned to his granddaughter in the front office. “Did you hear that? Why did I get into this business?”

Moehlman chuckled. “Am I going to tell him what got me into this business?” He paused, and I could tell his granddaughter had heard this one before. “Well, you know, one day many years ago, for some strange reason, her grandmother’s stomach started swelling.”

Moehlman turned 70 last year, but he doesn’t act it. He’s been welding pipe for more than 50 years, he sees no reason to stop now, and thank goodness for that. He has welding roots that go back to his dad rig-welding in the 1940s, to the war, to when his mother welded warships.

Moehlman and his business partner Perry Morse (who retired in 2010) opened SPF in 1984. The shop’s key selling point has been about quality work and short lead times. “Historically, if you had a small job and if you were in a hurry, you brought it to us,” he said. “But the labor in Texas, Louisiana, and Utah is cheaper. So if it was a huge project, customers went out of state.

“Still, some of our major [refinery] customers are talking about doing more work here in LA, and our efficiency factor is making us more competitive with those who are out of state. We did a big stainless job about a year ago, and our price was cheaper than [what was quoted by companies] in Utah. I was really surprised. Their labor is less expensive, but my efficiency factor is so good.”

SPF’s work ranges from process piping for hospitals to chemical and power plants, solar arrays, and, of course, oil refineries, many of which are on the islands off of nearby Long Beach. Location matters for the big oil companies, mainly because they need to send inspectors to examine contract work. It’s a lot easier and cheaper to send an inspector across town than across the country.

Thanks to his parents, Moehlman grew up in LA’s welding community, and he remembers at least seven large pipe fabrication shops around town. All had a foothold in the refining business, but many also took on a lot of nuclear plant work. When that work started to dry up in the 1970s, he said that some just couldn’t transition back to the refining work. Welding for the nuclear business was slow going. Documents outnumbered welding passes, and welders spent much of their day keeping track of their work.

“Refinery work isn’t like that,” Moehlman said. “Sure, you need certifications on your rods, you have quality control, you have X-ray inspection, but it’s not such a tedious thing. For nuclear work you sometimes made just two welds a day. For refining work you’re making 15 to 20 welds a day. So how do you take a guy with 15 years under his belt doing two welds a day and tell him, ‘Hey, you need to pick up the pace.’ Nobody wanted to work that hard anymore.”

SPF’s efficiency doesn’t come about through some secret sauce, just by using some common-sense practices, being willing to be flexible, and working extra hours to get the job done. The most important work happens on the front end. The company develops drawings and checks them to make sure they have the right components. A quality control person checks all arriving material to ensure the pipe is the right schedule, material type, and grade, then places paint marks on pipes that show which should go with which job. He’s basically identifying the puzzle pieces.

Each pipe welder has two rotary positioners. The welder strikes the arc and works his way around the weld, using shielded metal arc, flux-cored, gas metal arc, or gas tungsten arc welding, depending on the job. As the welder works, the helper loads the next pipe onto the second positioner so it’s ready to go as soon as the welder finishes the previous weld. This minimizes arc-off time.

Statistically, SPF’s workers should have at least a fair amount of gray hair. But they don’t. Some employees are in their 20s, many are in their 30s, and its most-senior workers are in their upper 40s. The company’s youthful employees include Moehlman’s son and granddaughter, and at this writing, it looks as if the business will stay in the family.

So how did SPF get such a youthful workforce? Moehlman’s teaching skills probably have something to do with it. Before launching the company in 1984, Moehlman spent many years pipe welding at other companies, 15 years as a teacher at the Local UA 250, and seven summers at Purdue University to study teaching techniques.

A UA shop, SPF sends new hires to the local to take classes on the basics of welding. They then come back to SPF, and Moehlman teaches them the rest. When it comes to teaching methods, Moehlman is not one for details. “I just go out and show them,” he said. “It usually doesn’t take that long.”

There, perhaps, is the secret sauce. The ability to teach may be one of the most powerful tools in metal fabrication; it’s a skill that will never be a commodity. A fabricator could have the fastest and most flexible automation, but unless the automation is proprietary, there’s nothing stopping the shop down the street from buying the same thing. But Moehlman and others like him do something different. They identify people who have potential, teach them the ropes, and give these people a career.

Moehlman recalled one person who walked into SPF’s offices. The company doesn’t usually hire off the street, but this young man was especially persistent. Moehlman saw a spark in him and so gave him a chance. He started out as a material handler and helper, and he quickly moved up the ranks. Today he’s one of the company’s best pipe welders.

You could call Moehlman lucky; he took a gamble and it paid off. But you have to attribute a little of that success to Moehlman’s intuition and teaching expertise—qualities that really can’t be replicated.

About the Author
The Fabricator

Tim Heston

Senior Editor

2135 Point Blvd

Elgin, IL 60123

815-381-1314

Tim Heston, The Fabricator's senior editor, has covered the metal fabrication industry since 1998, starting his career at the American Welding Society's Welding Journal. Since then he has covered the full range of metal fabrication processes, from stamping, bending, and cutting to grinding and polishing. He joined The Fabricator's staff in October 2007.