South Carolina Metal Fabricator Tackles Welder Shortage with Cobots

November 29, 2022

source: Metal Forming Magazine

For several years, metal fabricators have been dealing with an ever-increasing labor shortage for welders—new and experienced. Young people don’t seem to be attracted to the work, and veteran welders continue to nudge closer to retirement age. And, there remains competition to attract and retain the skilled welders still on the market, driving up salaries and associated costs.

The result? Despite unprecedented demand from domestic manufacturers, many metal fabricators across North America have had to reduce production capacity.

Stiff Competition to Hire Welders in a Post-Pandemic World

Case in point: Advanta Southeast LLC, Manning, SC, a division of Advanta Industries, specialist in manufacturing returnable racks and dunnage, and provider of turnkey industrial metal fabrication for several sectors, including defense, automotive, energy and marine. The firm recently faced the same staffing issues many in the industry face: a lack of welders exacerbated by the global pandemic, which hit the company hard, according to plant manager Mark Moye.

“In addition to COVID, we started seeing an increase in fabrication companies moving here to the Southeast United States,” he says. “So, the market share of labor is pretty tight.”

The South Carolina facility encompasses 79,000 sq. ft. and offers sheet and tube laser cutting, forming and machining, in addition to welding. And, as many metal fabricators can attest, legacy equipment still is rampant in shops. While others have switched to traditional welding robots in the hopes of mitigating the limited number of welders, the Advanta Southeast management team remained unsure about implementing conventional robots for welding. Of concern: long lead times to get the equipment shipped out, the extensive training required for welding personnel and, to top it off, the sheer complexity of programming and troubleshooting the machines for each job.

In other words, company management wondered just how much a traditional robot would actually accelerate throughput and ensure weld consistency and quality, with so much programming required by often less-tech-savvy workers.

“Some employees were worried about losing their jobs, too,” adds Moye.

[continue reading]