I know this is not necessarily welding related, but many who participate here are in the QA/QC Departments for steel fabricators. So it is to them that I address this question.
As I have stated before in other threads, I have never worked for a fabricator before my current employment. All experience was as a third party inspector. Never had to worry about tracking shipments before. One of my biggest failures since I started here is failure to be able to accurately trace what we ship. I am currently a one man QC department so I can not stand beside a truck and play secretary so we get an accurate inventory of pieces placed on each truck. Apparently neither can anyone else we place out beside or on our trucks.
We do not have any barcoding capabilities currently. We use one of 3 method to mark pieces. If the piece goes through the Peddinghaus drill/saw line, then it is scribed. If not, then we either hand stamp directly on the piece or we stamp a 2" x 3" tag and weld the tag on each piece. Further, we write in larger letters/numbers with paintstick or marker on both flanges or the baseplate the ID of the piece. Finding an ID should not be a problem. But accurately getting it on paper obviously is. We have tried check off lists, writing pieces as they are loaded, both by crane/forklift operator and laborer on or beside the truck, and lists created by the office clerk to say what must go on a truck (not always possible due to geometry of pieces).
Is this a universal problem? How do other fabricators address inventory on trucks? Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Hi Doug,
You are not alone. We have a better handle on it than in years passed though. We ship by erection sequence, so therefore the shipping lists(to load by) are generated by sequence. The guys in the shipping department work in pairs, one on the truck and one running the crane. The guy on the truck verifies the piece mark and he puts his initials/date and trailer# out beside that line item and adds the weight up until 40K#/truck. If he's missing pieces to finish out his load he goes back to the shop foreman and they look over the fabricated lists to make sure it has in fact been fabricated. We try to keep the pairs of guys working on a particular job each so only a limited number of people are handling this steel and writing in the books. We still get a missing material report from a project manager every now and again, but it is a far cry better from what it used to be.
John Wright
In our shop shipping is not handled by QC. We have a shipping person who checks each piece being put on the truck. He receives a shipping list of all pieces for the entire phase of the job and our production engineers also give him a list of what the priorities are. He bird dogs the steel after fab and paint and has it put in segragated locations. Before loading, he goes out to verify piecemarks and quantities, and puts a piece of surveyor's tape on whatever is supposed to be loaded, so that he can pre-calculate the load weight and isn't so rushed at loading. He writes out the actual shipping ticket and normally will personally verify the piecemarks again at loading. When pieces require bolting to ship, after paint, he is usually the one overseeing the assembly.
We still have a few mistakes every so often, but not many as far as shipping in the last 2 years.
Chet Guilford
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