The fast track to fab shop productivity with advanced technologies

A welder for DeGeest, Tea, S.D., logs into a program on a tablet before starting a new job.

In today’s manufacturing world, you can’t expect the new hire to have followed the same career path as the lead press brake operator or welder with 25 years’ experience. The path isn’t as straight as it used to be.

Consider Jim Baer and Steve Thompson, press brake operators for ATECH-SEH Metal Fabricators in Buffalo, N.Y. They both participated in vocational training in high school, attending school during the day and taking night classes where they learned about sheet metal work. From there, they went to work at SEH Metal Fabricators in the late 1980s and learned on the job just how different metals reacted to being formed in a press brake. Today they try to share their combined knowledge with their co-workers, who don’t have the luxury of learning slowly at the feet of experienced mentors. They need to be productive as soon as possible because no one has an abundance of knowledgeable press brake operators, and parts still need to be processed.

Apprenticeships, once widely available and the starting point to a well-paying career, aren’t as numerous now, and when they are available, they are rarely publicized in a meaningful way. Vocational programs do exist, but they are more likely to introduce a student to metal fabricating rather than hone their skills to the point that the student is ready to walk onto a shop floor and be productive from the first day.

The good news is that manufacturing increasingly is being recognized as a possible career path for younger people. Both parents and students are questioning the value of a four-year college degree that doesn’t necessarily guarantee meaningful employment for the graduate, and young people are looking for careers that provide challenges and stimulation. Many are finding what they are looking for in the modern manufacturing company, and advanced technology is helping them find a comfortable landing spot on the shop floor.

Jim Baer Jr. also is a press brake operator for ATECH-SEH like his dad, but he’s only been at it since 2008. He didn’t have the same schooling as his two experienced co-workers, and he didn’t have to learn on old mechanical brakes. Baer Jr. did, however, have the luxury of working on the latest CNC hydraulic press brakes, with backgauges that move automatically and programs that visually display on the touchscreen control. Baer Jr. knows the basics of working on the older brakes, but he’s now the go-to guy for work done on the new CNC brakes. He’s as valuable as his dad and Thompson, but just in a different way.

Derek DeGeest, president of the metal fabricating company that bears his family name, is hoping to lean on advanced welding technology and interconnectivity of that equipment to make less experienced welders more proficient when they are paid to start laying beads. His company is standardizing on one type of welding power source and is looking to minimize the choices that a welder normally might have to make when trying to dial in the welding parameters for a job. The welding recipe is saved in the cloud and can be accessed by the welder per the job’s instructions.

“A new person can come in, see the settings, and know that they have been validated. They don’t have to go Rambo and worry about not knowing what they are doing. We can help them,” DeGeest said.

In this case, the employer gets closer to having a less experienced welder making acceptable parts from the start. But new employees get something as well. They don’t have to experience all of the errors that might have plagued their counterparts from 25 years ago. It’s not a tale of trial and error any longer. It’s first piece, right piece if things go according to plan. Those that crave instant gratification like that scenario.

In discussing what it was like to work on those old mechanical press brakes, Baer said that a typical job might require several test pieces be done before the final bend sequence could be validated. That’s both time-consuming and frustrating. But that was reality. That’s not the case today, and that’s a good thing.

Are entry-level hires being cheated out of an in-depth education in areas such as bending and welding if they can’t make mistakes on their way to learning the craft? Maybe. But these same individuals that are leaning on advanced technology to get up to speed on the shop floor also can supplement their training with additional theoretical and hands-on training. The manufacturing career path is still there; it’s just got different starting points than the traditional path that most already in the industry are familiar with.