These fabricators represent the vast majority of steel fabrication companies. The companies are medium-sized and organized by department: administration, sales, purchasing, design, production, etc. Design and production can sometimes be grouped into a single department, so the people who model are also those who produce in the shop.
The know-how of these companies is varied. Even if some master projects from A to Z, some subcontract certain skills such as modeling (external design offices), or certain parts of manufacturing such as galvanizing, painting or certain parts to service centers, hence the need for production management software with the ability to manage subcontracting. On the other hand, others complement their steel construction offer with cladding, delivery with in-house truck fleets, or on-site assembly, in order to better control the value chain and diversify their business.
These companies manufacture medium-sized buildings for their end customers, and generally don't work for general contractors, which slightly reduces the pressure of delivery times.
Once engineering offices have taken into account the building's span and environmental constraints, they are generally fairly simple to model. In some cases, standardized elements such as trusses are used, although the vast majority of parts are not standardized. The emphasis is on practicality and efficiency, although commercial buildings also take aesthetic considerations into account.
The nature of the buildings depends on the requirements of the associated standards: a building housing livestock will not have the same standards as one housing the public. For the latter, therefore, traceability management processes need to be put in place in order to gain access to certain projects.
This type of structure is made up of beams, angles, round and square tubes, flats and plates.
These fabricators produce buildings that are fairly simple to build, and with low margins, which means they need to generate high volumes in order to make a profit. In this sense, optimizing the manufacturing workshop is a crucial element for them.
First and foremost, the link with the detailing office needs to be optimized. Steel construction is unique in that it is made up of very few standardized parts. It is therefore crucial to retrieve as much information as possible on the elements to be produced from the modeling software, in order to avoid unnecessary double entries, which sometimes lead to human error.
Elements imported into the production management software can be checked automatically to ensure that there are no unfeasible (in relation to workshop capacity) or non-compliant parts to produce.
Secondly, fabricators need to optimize their use of steel by methodically organizing their stock and purchasing management: buying enough to achieve economies of scale when purchasing, and ensuring that they have the stocks they need for the day's production, while making sure that these fixed assets don't cost them too much money or take up too much space on their production sites.
In addition, the use of raw materials needs to be optimized with section nesting and plate nesting algorithms to ensure that as little material as possible is wasted, especially given the unpredictable rise in steel prices in recent years.
In addition, processing (sawing, drilling, punching, milling, shearing, marking, scribing, etc.) must be automated on reliable CNC machines, and driven by production management software to ensure smooth, advanced, error-free programming and automatic progress monitoring.
Although still very important in the manufacturing process, manual punching, welding and painting stations are less crucial to optimize. Assemblies are not very complex compared to other types of structures, and therefore do not require a high level of skill on the part of the welders. On the other hand, tablets can be used at these workstations to avoid the need to travel to distribute work orders, to facilitate production by visualizing assemblies in 3D, or to facilitate the collection of information for production monitoring.
Welding robots can also be installed in the workshop to support the welders' work.
Shipment management is important, as a loading error or oversight can cost a lot of money, especially if the assembly site is far from the production site.
Finally, the production management software must be able to provide visualization of a variety of performance indicators so that fabricators can check the profitability over defined periods of their workshop, their employees, their projects, etc.