Chipping away at fabricating success

One of the best parts of conferences organized by the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association (FMA) is the ability to view some of the leading fabricating operations in North America. Visitors have the opportunity to observe shop floor organization and workflow and ask pointed questions of their counterparts, who may share similar work-related headaches.

During the FMA Safety Conference in April, attendees had the chance to tour Anderson Dahlen, a contract manufacturer of specialty fabrications in Ramsey, Minn. Stainless steel food manufacturing and processing equipment is the company’s forte, which sometimes results in very large and complex fabrications. (Anderson Dahlen also happens to be the longest-running consecutive winner in the FMA Safety Awards program at nine years.)

The tour took a turn into the company’s machining area, where the visitors witnessed almost 20 separate machining centers either at work or being prepared for another job. In fact, the fabricator has two horizontal boring mills with table capacities of 44,000 lbs. Machining is no small sideline activity for Anderson Dahlen.

Yet the company is still a metal fabricator. As the definition suggests, the fabricator is manufacturing something out of different components. In this case, the company happens to be machining as well.

Anderson Dahlen is not alone in that sense. Other fabricators appear to be following a similar path.

In a readership survey sent to almost 10,000 subscribers of The FABRICATOR in March 2015, the editors asked how many survey recipients had some machining activities on their shop floor. Of the 134 respondents, 78 percent indicated their production operations include machining; two years ago, a similar question in the same survey revealed identical results.

In the same survey, fabricators having machining capabilities were asked about the volume of that work at their shops. Forty-nine percent said that machining has increased over the past 12 months, and 34 percent said that it has stayed the same.

The simple reason for this trend is that fabricators recognize if they can offer more capabilities, they have a better chance of enticing a customer to buy from them—and stay with them. That’s what OEMs and other large manufacturing companies want to see. As they look to reduce the number of vendors in their supply chains, they want to sign off on one purchase order for an entire assembly, rather than issue several POs for multiple parts. Fabricators that can do it all in a quality manner and within a tight timeframe have an advantage over other fabricators that can’t deliver in the same manner.

In the May 2015 supplement to The FABRICATOR, “Industry Research Project: Building a competitive advantage,” 42 percent of survey respondents indicated that they have brought in previously outsourced processes within the past year. Of those that followed that path, 25 percent said they brought machining in-house, which topped the list, slightly ahead of cutting.

A fabricating operation with machining capabilities is no longer atypical. It’s much more of a common occurrence. Fabricators have found that adding a machining center is less of a chore than trying to carve out space for a laser cutting machine with an automated material loader/unloader; two or three machining centers might fit in the laser cell’s footprint. Also, certain types of chipping equipment cost far less than some of the staple capital machine tools found on the fabricating floor.

This is not to say that fabricators are competing against established machine shops. In a majority of cases, this is simply not the case. These fabricators are looking at their machine capabilities as an enticement to earn more work from their current fabricating-based customers.

The metal fabricating industry is evolving to the point where the fab shop of today isn’t going to look like one from 25 years ago. The lighting is likely to be better. Certainly, the haze from welding fumes is lessened or eliminated altogether. And in the corner, near the welding cells and assembly area, operators are working at CNC milling centers and maybe even a turning center. Fabricating is the business, and it’s not relegated just to sheet metal anymore.