Seeing the whole fab shop

Monday morning you arrive at the shop, check your email, and prepare yourself for a productive week. Like any good project manager in structural fabrication, you review the status of your projects. You’re eager to complete a big project on time for a new customer, but you find some last-minute revisions that need to be worked through.

By Wednesday, the project is finally ready to go, but resources on the floor have moved on to other work. You call your customer to give them an update. You’re going to be at least a day late, and they’re not happy about it, but it’s the best you can do.

It’s a common scenario. Project managers compete for scarce resources, which can lead to tension and even conflict, especially when it’s clear not everyone will get what they want, or even need. Despite this, project managers know they need to collaborate, as their peers face the same challenges.

As their job titles imply, project managers focus on specific projects, which they need to do, but they sometimes see the forest for the trees. It’s not surprising, because industry practices and tools push them in that direction.

But a project never occurs in isolation. A small change to one project can boost profits significantly for another. It can involve cut list management, material purchasing strategies, as well as smart drawing and production management.

It’s about looking at the big picture and ensuring maximum profits not for this or that project, but for the entire fabrication operation. And it’s here that software really can make a difference.

Move Once, Cut Twice

Cut lists for one job were issued last Thursday. Material was moved to the saw first thing Friday morning and cut. Unused 21-foot lengths of four of the W10 × 20s were posted back to stock. Cut lists for another job went to the shop floor on Monday, and all the 21-ft. remnants from the previous job were used on the cut lists. Yet the cut list that marked where these remnants were stored hadn’t made it back to the office. No one knows where the remnants are, and the sawyer is waiting on them to finish cutting.

That’s life on the project-centric shop floor. It takes significantly more time to move a piece of material back and forth between the shop and the yard than it does to perform a second cut. Moreover, the shop needs to track the remnant, which itself can require significant resources and adds all sorts of variabilities.

The logical thing to do would be to group these jobs together in one mult or nest. In other words, move the material once, and cut twice. (A mult in structural fabrication is analogous to a nest in sheet metal, with parts “multed” on beam or bar stock. Like a nest in sheet metal, a mult can have parts dedicated to one project, one sequence in a project, or multiple projects.)

But it’s not so simple, especially in large shops with myriad jobs being managed at once. Here, fabrication management software can play a critical role by looking beyond a single project, helping project managers take advantage of low-hanging-fruit efficiencies and combining orders.

Even if this occurs last-minute, the change shouldn’t be a problem. A sawyer views the change on-screen. He’s not relying on paper, PDFs, or other “paperlike” work flows. He sees the cut list update immediately on the screen after it’s added. He then cuts them from the beam while it’s loaded on the saw, with no need to coordinate two cut lists.

Order Sizes

It’s not revolutionary to combine multiple projects to make an order large enough to purchase directly from the mill, instead of the service center or warehouse. Sometimes smaller projects of roughly equal size can be combined. Other times a fabricator starts with the largest, most complex project and adds other, secondary projects to the purchase order.

Regardless, combining projects can be difficult to achieve, and it’s even more difficult to manage the material later. Different projects may use the same piece mark, so it can be challenging to see which material belongs to which project. Here, too, software has made a big impact. If it encounters the same piece mark on two different projects, it doesn’t lose track of which part is associated with which project.

From a production standpoint, more, smaller mults are often better, particularly if a fabricator has multiple machines with similar capabilities. These smaller mults can be routed simultaneously to different machines.

Software can run what-if scenarios (so-called “multing solutions”) for specific projects. It considers job sequencing, batching, as well as production and delivery schedules, and shows the waste associated with each. If the difference in waste is minimal, the material manager approves the smaller mults that match production requirements. If the larger mult saves a lot on material, the manager uses the software’s ability to handle the mult efficiently, like sorting pieces by batch required for production.

Put simply, software allows managers to look at the big picture. Costs of production, material costs, and anything else are no longer considered in isolation.

Big-picture Purchasing

A purchasing manager reviews two projects. One looks like it will end up 10 percent under the material budget. Another is already a couple percentage points over budget, and there’s more to buy. The purchasing agent is handling multiple projects—which one should she focus on first?

It seems obvious that a $100,000 quote for beams, channels, and angles should be managed more carefully than the $10,000 quote for similar items. The vendor has more interest in the larger order, and the fabricator might get a $2,000 to $3,000 break on it just for asking. But even then, what about customer relationships and urgency of the order? Long-term goals could outweigh any short-term savings gained.

Purchasing agents can be masters at puzzling together material orders. There may be a job for a medical clinic behind schedule, some rework on hollow structural tube columns, and some material for a strip mall. And, finally, there’s a rush order triggered by the erector missing some angle pieces on the job site.

The purchasing agent is all over this. Document control imports revised information into the management software. These revisions are then issued so the mults can be run again to see what’s already purchased and what might be available in free stock. Four request for quotes (RFQs) go out to several vendors. The purchaser compares the pricing on the returned RFQs, chooses the best one, and issues a purchase order.

What’s wrong with this picture? Perhaps nothing, if this day is an exception rather than the rule. But if it happens every week or every month, this could be a problem. It goes back to problems associated with managing by project instead of the big picture. It increases the purchasing agent’s stress and could be costing the fabricator money in the long run.

Why work in this fragmented way? Half, if not more, of these orders could be quickly and efficiently handled with a single RFQ and one PO—perhaps with a single phone call while the purchasing agent is viewing the combined information on the screen.

Today’s software can show all purchasable material for any project in one place. The purchaser selects material he or she would like to see in one view, grouping the material by type, size, and grade. The single-screen view helps a purchaser connect the dots, showing all the material that needs to be ordered for all projects in one place. With more information at their fingertips, purchasers can make better decisions.

Say one project requires a certain amount of W8 × W48 in 40-ft. lengths. With a few clicks, purchasers can see another project does as well. They can ask how pricing would change for 80,000 lbs. of that 40-ft. material, which could be used for that other project.

Beyond this, software can automatically analyze and present purchasing information companywide, displaying a running total of purchases by job and by vendor, dollar amounts per order, when and where each item was purchased, and how much was paid. And, as discussed earlier, software can pull material from separate mults or projects into a single PO without losing project-specific information. If required, it can also pull material from cross-project mults onto separate project-specific POs.

Drawing Management

A busy fabricator may have a flurry of activity in the office. They’re dealing with design changes, erection sequence planning, revision management, and so on. And they’re often doing it on a project-by-project basis.

They could take a broader view: Plan releases of work to the shop based on a companywide view of project needs; see if revisions made affect work that’s already on the floor; and quickly resolve requests for information (RFIs) that can prevent timely delivery.

Every bit of information they need to do their job exists; but because it’s spread around in different spreadsheets, folders on the network, and perhaps emails, it’s time-consuming and inconvenient to find and review the bits.

Here again, software puts everything in the same place, helps people connect the dots and see the situation holistically. The drawing management system shows charts that display the assembly weights of drawings that have gone out for approval, been approved, and released for fabrication. It also automates RFIs sent via email and logs the response, including associated documents.

New drawings or revisions are automatically listed and are marked when they have been reviewed and incorporated into an existing bid. And when drawing revisions are imported into the software, the drawing log is updated with the most current revision information and provides a list of changes that affect the bill of materials (BOM). As discussed earlier, when changes happen midstream, they can be received automatically on the shop floor, where supervisors and operators see the new information immediately on-screen.

Production Management

Will this project make the next shipping load? What went through fit-up last night? What’s at the top of the list for tomorrow’s fit-up shift? What are the priorities for each bay, given that three project managers on seven projects are vying for resources?

Sometimes the foreman can see problems from miles away. Often, though, he has no way of predicting the specific truckload, work area, job site, or assembly that will change or be delayed.

If the production system is trapped in project silos, it can’t provide the right context fast enough to allow the foreman to make smart decisions. Instead, he can end up dealing with ever-shifting priorities based on whoever is yelling the loudest. Better information could ensure that tough calls are made strategically, with business needs and all customers taken into account. Again, software helps make this happen, but it needs to present and prioritize information in the right way.

Structural fabrication can be a feast or famine business. It’s also common practice to release drawings as soon as they are ready to be released for fabrication. This is understandable in famine times, when people release every ounce of new work as soon as it is ready.

But in a busy shop, this can wreak havoc on schedules as people compete for scarce resources. As one project gets in the way of other projects, work-in-process builds and work flow is stifled. The shop has drawings everywhere and yet nothing to ship.

In truth, work should be carefully broken down to match the needs of production, shipping, and erection. Production should be set up and tracked to maintain flexibility. The fab shop should break projects into reasonably sized production batches that require the same or similar production tasks. If practical, the batches should be prioritized across projects for the most effective material flow.

Everyone on the Same Page

Much has been written about the paperless shop, and it’s important, particularly when it comes to conveying information immediately. Still, going paperless is not a first step but instead the result of efficient, holistic information management.

Ultimately, software’s greatest impact on structural fabrication has been to help all employees see the entire operation, connect the dots between different projects, and make it less stressful to manage the work flow through the office and the shop. When everyone is on the same page, a structural fabricator can tame the information chaos, manage the unexpected, and make deliveries on time.