Skilled Trades in Our Industrial Fabrication Shop

Apr 30, 2019

An industrial fabrication shop like Imperial Systems needs its skilled tradespeople. When you see pictures of our facility, you see lots of welders and other metalworkers. These people are certainly the backbone of any fabrication company. But pictures don’t always do justice to the many other skilled trades needed to keep our business moving.

Grinding is a skilled trade necessary in many industrial fabrication shops.

Skilled Trades: Metalworking in Our Fabrication Shop

Our company would not exist without our metalworkers and other skilled tradespeople on the shop floor. In other words, our dust and fume collection equipment would just linger as a pile of sheet metal. Some of the skilled trades at work in our fab shop are:

  • Welders
  • Grinders
  • Machine operators
  • Plasma cutting operators
  • Powder coating
  • Maintenance and repair
  • Assembly

Repair and maintenance also include our constantly traveling ServiceMAXX teams. These teams perform everything from filter changes to electrical work.

Things also wouldn’t get far on the shop floor without the managers. These include the plant manager, production manager, supply chain manager, and shipping manager. They are very experienced and skilled people. Above all, they keep fabrication going smoothly and orders going out on time.

Before a job makes it out for fabrication, it goes through the engineering team. These professionals transform the system that the customer wants into instructions for the fabrication shop to build it. Then our skilled tradespeople turn a drawing into a CMAXX or a BRF.

Powder coating is a niche skill used in some industrial fabrication shops.

Other Skills: Keeping Things Running Behind the Scenes

A fab shop needs more than skilled metalworkers and shop managers to function as a business. For example, our accounting team handles money going in, money coming out, and any issues in between. They make sure we all get paid, obviously an essential task. They also do double duty handling many human resources functions like benefits and new employee paperwork.

You might not think that a fabrication shop would need a software engineer. But a person with this skill is essential to keeping things running. Everything from sales to shipping relies on a working computer system. In addition to his programming work, our software engineer is always willing to help keep computers and servers running.

You’re probably not surprised that a metal fab shop needs a team of salespeople. Without their work, the shop might not have dust collectors to build. While salespeople don’t go to school to learn sales, there’s a lot of training that goes into being good at this trade.

Our equipment salespeople and aftermarket salespeople must be experts in our products. Equipment salespeople travel frequently to meet potential customers. Aftermarket salespeople maintain our good relationships with customers and help them solve problems.

All those product brochures and blog posts and logos don’t appear from nowhere, either. Graphics design experts are skilled tradespeople who create our brand’s image. Even an industrial fabrication company needs to look professional.

Our graphic design team works with the company content writer. She writes features like our company newsletter and articles published in magazines. Content writing is a mix of skills, including writing, researching, and optimizing website traffic.

Welding is a skilled trade used all around the country in industrial fabrication shops.

Our Fabrication Shop: Many Skills, One Working Company

Our company needs a mix of skilled tradespeople and many other jobs. Industrial metal fabrication relies on its skilled trades metalworkers. Behind the scenes, though, there’s a team of other people working to keep the company running.

Get a professional degree, learn a skilled trade, or make your own career path. A company like ours has a place for you. Without our skilled tradespeople, products wouldn’t get built and our fabrication company wouldn’t exist.

Many industries, not just metal fabrication, owe much of their success to people in the skilled trades. From medical to construction to electronics, skilled trades drive industry. Remember: many supervisors, managers, and even company owners got their start in skilled trades!