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Got to pay your dues in modern-day fabricating

Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues,

And you know it don’t come easy.

What does it say about an individual that one of his favorite songs was a Ringo Starr-written ditty? When compared to truly powerful Paul McCartney- and John Lennon-written songs, “It Don’t Come Easy” doesn’t necessarily measure up. But maybe that individual appreciates the simple message summarized in that one lyric. Everyday life proves that to make things happen, you have to go to work, and most times the work isn’t going to be easy.

Gregg Page, president, Accu-Fab Inc., sees his business in this way.

Page first joined Accu-Fab as a sales engineer in 1991. He acquired majority ownership of the fabricating company in 1994. Over the years the company has grown to become a one-stop shop for OEMs looking for manufacturing support. Accu-Fab handles not only the basics of fabricating—cutting, bending, forming, and welding—but also value-added activities, such as electromechanical assembly, machining, painting, powder coating, and screen printing. The company also actively markets its engineering skills and customized supply chain management services. It offers a full menu of capabilities that not too many other shops can match.

But it don’t come easy.

In 2010 Accu-Fab produced 1,000 different part numbers. In 2016 the company will process at least 3,700 part numbers. Meanwhile, revenue hasn’t increased by much.

“The complexity of the business is unreal,” Page said.

The same observation was made by a former business executive who sits on the Accu-Fab advisory board, Page added. This person, a former division manager for a large company with multicontinent operations, was impressed by Accu-Fab’s ability to stay on top of so many jobs that entail so much differentiation.

Not deterred by the complexity, Accu-Fab pushes on, investigating ways to run its operations more efficiently. The company is a big supporter of continuous improvement activities. (So far in 2016 company management has reviewed more than 500 kaizen suggestions from its 140 employees.) It also has implemented a paperless document system in which manufacturing files, such as routing instructions, bills of materials, quality control documents, work instructions, and CNC machine program files, can be accessed at kiosks located throughout the facility.

But those types of efforts don’t just happen naturally in a busy production environment. Management has to set aside time for employees to meet, discuss, and implement continuous improvement ideas, some of which may not lead to large-scale gains in production time or cost savings.

Investments in fabricating technology, information systems, and employees will be necessary to stay on top of the growing complexity in the metal fabricating business. There’s no other way around it in this world of massive customization in manufacturing.

You can read about Accu-Fab’s employee development efforts in “Closing the skills gap through apprenticeships” in the October 2016 issue of The FABRICATOR. The company is striving to develop engineering talent that is familiar with fabricating and the way that the shop conducts its business. Fabricators need to be proactive like Accu-Fab so that they are ready for future business challenges, but some days such tasks may seem daunting.

“Sometimes you can put all the systems you want in place, but given that you are doing 3,700 new parts, you just have to bang it out, get it done, and move on to the next thing,” Page said.

Just call them the fabricator’s blues. They come with the pain of trying to stay afloat in today’s manufacturing economy.

About the Author
The Fabricator

Dan Davis

Editor-in-Chief

2135 Point Blvd.

Elgin, IL 60123

815-227-8281

Dan Davis is editor-in-chief of The Fabricator, the industry's most widely circulated metal fabricating magazine, and its sister publications, The Tube & Pipe Journal and The Welder. He has been with the publications since April 2002.