When the Solution Becomes Obvious, Automation Sells Itself.

You’d think selling a welding cobot or pre-engineered welding cell would be as easy as selling fried food at the State Fair.

These automation solutions check all the boxes to solve common pain points for small and medium-sized fabricators:

?-????????? Address their chronic shortage of skilled welders? Check.

-????????? Open new career paths? Check

-????????? Faster cycle times for better customer responsiveness? Check.

-????????? Continuous improvement in weld quality and consistency? Check.

-????????? Great for high-mix, low- to medium-volume runs? Check.

-????????? Reduces total cost? Check.

However, change doesn’t happen that easily, especially when it is coupled with a capital investment that starts at about $100,000 for a cobot.

“While improvements may be easy for an outsider to see, we as consultants need to remember that the people inside a facility do have a measure of success,” says Joe Wallace, a welding engineer with Matheson, a leading gas and equipment company.

Uncoupling bad habits from the good takes both technical and soft skills. As the contractor, you need to tread carefully when working with staff, especially if they’re concerned that the equipment will ultimately displace them. You can’t be presumptuous that they’ll embrace the new technology. Nor can you sound like a know-it-all or otherwise impact a technician’s ego.

It’s like an old joke: how many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? One, but only if the light bulb really wants to change. Leveraging his lean six sigma training, Wallace has developed a process to help staff want to make the transition to working with cobots.

To initiate change, Wallace uses DMAIC (pronounced “duh-may-ik”), a five-phase method—Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control—for improving existing process problems with unknown causes. DMAIC is an integral part of the lean six sigma process.

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“Before even talking about DMAIC, you need to create commonality between your team and the customer’s team,” says Wallace. “Start by asking a lot of fact-finding questions. Build rapport by biting off small pieces of the problem. Present solutions in a way that are easy to see and don’t impact egos.”

Wallace recently worked with a fabricator that supplied parts to a major manufacturer of yellow goods. The prospect had issues with quality and productivity; a training program did not work because employee turnover was also an issue. Upon hearing the word “robot,” prospects can immediately take that to mean high cost and complexity and shut down, so building the case for automation takes serious groundwork.

“As part of the DMAIC process, we created quantified models for the company’s present state and possible future states,” says Wallace. For example, if the fabricator currently made 15 parts a shift, what would it mean to make 30 parts a shift? What would it mean if they could eliminate problems with porosity and undercut? What would it mean if they could move from three shifts a day to two?

“As an educator, we went through a lot of minutiae to maintain the fabricator’s comfort level,” says Wallace. “It took a long time, but the customer ultimately said, ‘Why didn’t you sell us this cobot sooner?’”

If you are interested in how to use the DMAIC process to sell welding automation — or be the automation champion within your company — you can learn more at the Welding Automation Expo and Conference, October 10-12 in Columbus, Ohio. Wallace presents on October 11 at 11:15 a.m.