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Dealing with rejection in a metal fabricating job shop

What happens when fabricators don't check their work and customers get bad parts?

Thumbs down to reject a fabricated metal part

Nick Martin of North Carolina-based Barnes MetalCrafters opens up about how his job shop handled customers rejecting an order after some major oversight led to some bad parts. Getty Images

Rejection is something we all face in life. Relationships, sports, and work are the top three that come to mind. In a sheet metal shop or manufacturing environment, it is one of the worst things you can deal with, especially when you think a project has been completed properly. It may seem sometimes like a particular mistake or error isn’t your fault personally, but in truth, it’s a team effort, and you and your entire shop are to blame.

The one rejection we can all agree on, I think, is rejecting the year 2020. It was righteously unacceptable. I mean, there were some good things that happened throughout the year, but for the most part it flat out sucked. Fortunately, we had enough work to keep the Barnes MetalCrafters shop doors open and keep everyone working. We were extremely busy for a good chunk of the year, and most of the shop took adjustments in stride.

But some notable hiccups have developed on our watch. We have a few parts that we produce on a regular basis in different configurations. Almost everyone in the shop has worked on these jobs over time.

One job in particular is kind of a rite of passage that new fabricators start out on while being mentored by the experienced fabricators. We had a new worker start out on some MIG welding, but the fabricator helping train him had to move over to do some fine-tuned TIG welding. No matter how much experience a fabricator has, these particular orders can be assembled fairly easily with printed-out instructions and a little guidance.

As I mentioned, we were extremely busy for a while, so this new fabricator was set to the task mostly on his own. But while everyone in the shop was preoccupied with their own tasks, nobody noticed that our new guy was completing some soon-to-be rejected work right next to their stations.

We started getting phone calls about errors that we rarely have seen in the past, which led to a couple heart-to-heart conversations with some employees. The mistakes were getting caught on the customer’s end, forcing us to rework the order on our dime. Not only were we wasting time and money; we were embarrassed.

We were kicking ourselves for letting anything leave the shop that wasn’t closely inspected with a fine-toothed comb by our more experienced fabricators. Any experience our newest fabricator said he had wasn’t exactly showing in the department we hired him to work in. We started back-tracking orders and even stopped some dead in their tracks as they were in the shipping process.

My dad, Tim, who owns the shop, wanted to get to the bottom of this. He tasked me with finding out what the hell was happening. We wanted to give the new fabricator the benefit of the doubt, hoping the error occurred earlier in the work flow and he was just putting together bad parts that were coming off the press brake or laser. Either way, if this was the case, they should have never made it to or past the fabricator or assembly tables, considering how sizable the dimensional errors were.

I got my calipers, tape measure, and a packet of drawings and went to the floor. I started pulling dimensions and quickly found an error. I went a step further and started measuring all the disassembled parts. I found that nothing was wrong with the parts that made up the assembly. The fabricator was not putting them together properly, and there was a stack-up error. The parts were gaining the thickness of the material a couple times, and the error was pushed out to nearly ¼ in.

My dad came looked confused when I told him. I showed him the drawing of how the parts were supposed assemble together, and he started fuming—big time. The fabricator was forcing components to be a corner-to-corner weld when the flanges should have been overlapping to make a straight edge. It doesn’t seem like it would be that big of a deal, but anyone with a working tape measure would be able to see the mistake.

Metal fabricated part for power tool

Not a rejected part: A custom tool guard fabricated to protect from any damage from a fall. Overall the design turned out really cool and it is quite impressive to see. Images: Nick Martin

Bottom line: Fabricators should be checking their work. If you are reading this, I’m sure you are laughing or coming up with 100 reasons why this should have never happened. Yes, we should have never let these parts botched by the new fabricator reach a customer. No matter what, we were all accountable for putting crap parts out the door. Our names are on those parts whether we personally worked on them or not.

The worst part was, when we found the source of the error, we knew several more parts would be coming back to the shop. When the truck came, everyone in the shop just stood there in disbelief. It was an eerie feeling. There was no saving these parts. And I’m not even going to mention the dollar amount involved. We’ve never seen anything like this in all the years we have been in business.

I am not writing about this to bash any former employees, but hopefully I can save you some trouble in the future. Also, if you’ve made it this far, he no longer works for us. It was kind of one of those slow walks of shame. Everyone knew it was going to happen.

Our shop was hit pretty damn hard with this one. I will say that we are now a better shop and have learned some major lessons. Retaining each of our customers is a priority.

Rejection is not easy and not fun. We’ve learned a lot of hard lessons over the years. Every now and then, some of those lessons have to be retaught. A reworked part will never be as profitable as a part that is done correctly the first time, even if the correct part takes twice as long. It usually takes more people and resources to fix a rejected part, and that, my friends, is just a waste of time and money.

So next time you see one of your co-workers using a dead blow hammer as a fabrication weapon of choice, you may want to have a look at the drawing. It’ll save some time, money, and headaches.

Metal fabricated part for power tool

The design has 3 tabs used to secure the part in place once the bolt is tightened.

About the Author
Barnes MetalCrafters

Nick Martin

2121 Industrial Park Drive SE

Wilson, NC, 27893

252-291-0925