Good morning Gents!
I am fairly new to this community and have only posted equipment related questions to this point. The quick summary is that I run an industrial maintenance team for a quickly growing manufacturing company that has a very proprietary process and prides itself on self-sufficiency. For the first couple years our maintenance techs also performed the secondary role of leading the new machine installs and taking on small machine builds. All of our fabrication work came from outside shops. After years of struggling with timeline and quality issues, we decided to bring 95% of our fab work in house and split the best techs off our maintenance team and make a full time "Machine Building" department. The growth has been fast enough to warrant a 250,000 sq ft building expansion in 2022 and again in 2023. Along with $15M in equipment that was a combination of OEM designs, collaborations, and 100% in house builds. Quickly our team grew into 6 full time Technicians that handle installation and commissioning, 5 full time welder/fabricators, and 1 painter.
Here is where I need help: I am a 20 year multi-craft maintenance electrician and while I have been blessed with a very successful career of building/overhauling maintenance departments, I have ZERO first hand experience working in Fab Shops. This makes it extremely challenging for me to be able to build systems/processes/procedures for a range of items. I have alot of good guys and we have been getting by for the last year or two but I don't want to just get by off hard work. I want to build a team that eventually is a fully functioning, world class machine builder. We are blessed to be able to hire top skill employees since we are not worried about a traditional overhead like a business would be. We are able to pay well and still save 40-50% on each machine by building it in house, while also working thru some really aggressive timelines. So with the guys that are making $30+ an hour, I should be able to build a shop structure that allows us to be efficient and repeatable regardless of the job.
I can also break these questions down into individual forum posts if everyone thinks that would be worth the time in doing. I apologize for how green I am in this world. One thing the Army did was teach me how to percervere regardless of the situation. That single belief has opened the doors of opportunity for me more times than I can count. Each time I do my best to educate myself and hit the breach running!
Thanks for the help!
I am fairly new to this community and have only posted equipment related questions to this point. The quick summary is that I run an industrial maintenance team for a quickly growing manufacturing company that has a very proprietary process and prides itself on self-sufficiency. For the first couple years our maintenance techs also performed the secondary role of leading the new machine installs and taking on small machine builds. All of our fabrication work came from outside shops. After years of struggling with timeline and quality issues, we decided to bring 95% of our fab work in house and split the best techs off our maintenance team and make a full time "Machine Building" department. The growth has been fast enough to warrant a 250,000 sq ft building expansion in 2022 and again in 2023. Along with $15M in equipment that was a combination of OEM designs, collaborations, and 100% in house builds. Quickly our team grew into 6 full time Technicians that handle installation and commissioning, 5 full time welder/fabricators, and 1 painter.
Here is where I need help: I am a 20 year multi-craft maintenance electrician and while I have been blessed with a very successful career of building/overhauling maintenance departments, I have ZERO first hand experience working in Fab Shops. This makes it extremely challenging for me to be able to build systems/processes/procedures for a range of items. I have alot of good guys and we have been getting by for the last year or two but I don't want to just get by off hard work. I want to build a team that eventually is a fully functioning, world class machine builder. We are blessed to be able to hire top skill employees since we are not worried about a traditional overhead like a business would be. We are able to pay well and still save 40-50% on each machine by building it in house, while also working thru some really aggressive timelines. So with the guys that are making $30+ an hour, I should be able to build a shop structure that allows us to be efficient and repeatable regardless of the job.
- Work Planning (What is the best practice once the set of prints for the assembly has been rec'd from engineering? Time estimates need established that aren't guesses, material lists developed, etc)
- Work Scheduling (Currently all work is just given to the lead welder and he assigns it out as he sees fit. There is no formal tracking, monitoring, etc. I know we are losing time here!)
- Welder Job Classes & Pay (Welder pay ranges from $18-$36 but we don't have clear defined job classes that specify the requirements for each job class)
- Scheduling the assembly work (Do I need to hire 2 different job classes or can I create a hybrid that can do both and pay them well for it?)
- Prima-Dona Welders (We struggle with some of the welders that just want to sit at the table with a stinger in hand and have someone else do all of the prep and post-weld clean up)
- Quality Checks (How do you build the process? Is it the same for every component built?)
I can also break these questions down into individual forum posts if everyone thinks that would be worth the time in doing. I apologize for how green I am in this world. One thing the Army did was teach me how to percervere regardless of the situation. That single belief has opened the doors of opportunity for me more times than I can count. Each time I do my best to educate myself and hit the breach running!
Thanks for the help!