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How to get a better handle on welding costs
Welding departments can be more efficient by improving shortcomings
- By Dan Davis
- March 19, 2021
A veteran metal fabricator manager was once asked why he had his welders do postweld grinding to clean up the part instead of just having less experienced workers do that thankless job. “If they have to do the grinding, they tend to pay more attention to the welding,” the manager replied.
With experience comes wisdom, and many metal fabrication operations have benefited from such leaders. But wisdom can take you only so far. Sometimes you need data to capture the reality of what’s actually happening in the welding department.
What is the arc-on time over an average shift? Is actual production time for the job matching up with the estimate for time spent welding? How much shielding gas is being used? Are the mixes correct? How much welding wire is being consumed? How much time is spent changing out welding wire or fixing wire feed issues? Answers to questions like these can reveal just how efficient a company’s welding department is, especially when the owners or managers of the company can compare their own findings to industry standards.
Shops interested in finding out how efficient or inefficient their welding operations are can take advantage of an upcoming webinar from Airgas, an Air Liquide company. “Benchmarking Your Welding Fabricating Costs,” scheduled for May 4, will provide fab shops the opportunity to see how their own operations stack up against industry standards and then learn how to develop and implement an improvement plan. Webinar attendees also will be introduced to a digital dashboard that allows fabricators to track and monitor welding activities and performance on an ongoing basis.
The webinar will be led by two industry veterans. Eric Klein has been with Air Liquide since 1998 and joined Airgas in 2016 after Air Liquide acquired the company. He leads business development efforts in the industrial and advanced fabrication markets. Rob Tessier is national director of advanced fabrication technologies for Airgas and has been with the company for 37 years. He is a longtime proponent of using analytical processes to find operational shortcomings and then planning to improve those areas.
A deep dive into any aspect of a metal fabricating company’s operations can be uncomfortable, but the long-term results often outweigh the short-term pain. The welding department has long been ignored in many shops, and this webinar could be the first step on a continuous-improvement journey that can have an impact on everything from improving profitability to bolstering company culture. That’s wisdom you can’t ignore.
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The Fabricator is North America's leading magazine for the metal forming and fabricating industry. The magazine delivers the news, technical articles, and case histories that enable fabricators to do their jobs more efficiently. The Fabricator has served the industry since 1970.
start your free subscriptionAbout the Author
Dan Davis
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.
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