Like every contractor, Western Allied Mechanical is always looking for innovative ways to get ahead in their market and deliver projects better, faster, and cheaper for their clients. Also like every contractor, Western Allied is facing the nationwide shortage of qualified welders. By adopting Novarc’s spool welding robot (SWR), they have not only increased productivity dramatically, they also increased capacity and are taking on bigger jobs.
Opening Up to Automation
Western Allied operates in the highly competitive market of California’s San Francisco Bay area. Cyrus Patel, piping superintendent at Western Allied, explained that the company has been trying to automate more of its production processes to improve efficiency and productivity. “Robotics is the way of the future,” he said. “We have been looking at it for a long time from the sideline.” About two years ago, Western Allied decided to move forward, to “see where robotics would help us as a team to achieve some better results,” said Patel.
The company focused on areas in the fabrication process where fatigue had the most impact. Jim Jeffrey, operations manager, explained, “We learned that we were having fatigued welders, and that was the bottleneck in our fabrication process. When we compared the productivity at the start of the day to the end, we noticed that we were kind of dragging. So that’s why we looked at automating our pipe welding and choosing the SWR, because it doesn’t call in sick, it doesn’t get fatigued, and it takes a lot for it to beg for mercy.”
Finding the Perfect Fit
When they came across Novarc at FABTECH Expo, Western Allied knew that they had found the right automated solution to speed up welding and increase productivity. They also needed a solution that would meet the requirements of ASME B31.1 and B31.3 codes.
“We were looking for a custom, tailored product at the FABTECH Expo when we came across the Novarc machine. The SWR had the lead on the other solutions, so we took that and ran with it,”, said Patel. “I really liked the SWR; it was a well-manufactured product.”
Novarc’s SWR is a collaborative welding robot designed specifically for pipes, small-pressure vessels, and other types of roll welding. As a collaborative robot, the SWR enables less-experienced operators to significantly improve shop productivity and produce high-quality welds every single time.
“Novarc did some testing for us, and we fell in love. The first project we did we cut off four-and-a-half man-weeks of shop welding, so we saved around $114,000 on that project, and it made us competitive and added value to the end user,” said Jeffrey. “Also, with the SWR we could take the video of each weld and give it to the inspector if he’s not there, and that basically was the driver.”
See the Novarc SWR in action on the shop floor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAbEbFWUrQw
Scaling Up
With the SWR, Patel said, “We’re now going after projects that we were shying away from because of the size. Since we have implemented the SWR, we have been spooling a lot more, and we are also taking on bigger projects, knowing that we have the capabilities of the welding in place. So it’s actually helped us go after some projects that we were not going after before.”
Jeffrey added, “We’ve reduced our dependence on hybrid systems and embraced flanges and bolting it up because the net effect is that it is cheaper and faster, and the quality is there.” Moreover, the SWR is helping Western Allied manage the shortage of highly-qualified welders. “We are getting repeatability and productivity so we can compete head-to-head with non-union shops. And I’m not worried about having a qualified welder that I have to have all the time,” said Jeffrey.
Check out Novarc’s podcast series, which covers topics like robotics, artificial intelligence in welding, and estimating the return on investment with collaborative robots:
https://www.novarctech.com/podcast/
Filling a Gap
The American Welding Society anticipates that the current labor crisis will very quickly escalate to a shortage of about 400,000 welders by 2024. “The labor shortage has been coming for years,” said Jeffrey. “We had been experiencing it before the pandemic as well, so we had to innovate to keep up with the demand.”
Western Allied also appreciated the simplicity of the training for Novarc’s SWR. “Once you get it up and running, to feel happy with it and to feel comfortable with it, you are not talking months and you are not talking about getting another university degree,” Jeffrey observed. “It’s very intuitive, and in three days, you are good at it. In five days, you are really good at it. So that’s what really more than anything else made me pleased. I can train people, and I’m not dependent on people who have changing commitments.”
For more information, visit www.novarctech.com.
PULL QUOTE
“Novarc did some testing for us, and we fell in love. The first project we did we cut off four-and-a-half man-weeks of shop welding, so we saved around $114,000 on that project.”
—Jim Jeffrey, Operations Manager, Western Allied Mechanical
