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DEDICATED TO EXCELLENCE: SERVICE • QUALITY • INNOVATION
ESTABLISHED 1953
In 2021, All Metals Fabricating set an ambitious 10-year goal: to become the best and most automated job shop in the world by 2031. Now we’re at the halfway point, and we’ve begun to evaluate our progress.
We’re not only trying to determine how far we have come, but we also want to be sure this goal has translated into meaningful value for our customers. And 5 years in, the numbers and our customers both tell us we're on the right track.
We originally set this goal after starting the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) in 2021. To establish priorities with EOS, you first identify a long-term target and then work backward to define the short- and medium-term goals that target will require.
It took a lot of discussion to choose that wording for our 10-year target. For instance, although we settled on the phrase “job shop” in that wording, our business handles both the high-mix work associated with job shops and the long-term repeat programs of a contract manufacturer.
We also knew that becoming the “most automated” shop would not matter unless automation created the most value for our customers. Technology alone does not guarantee efficiency or even stability, and we wouldn’t be helping our customers if our investments in automation increased our prices.
Ultimately, we chose to include the word “best” to make sure our goal connected automation with operational excellence. It gives us a standard to keep customer value as the focus of our decisions and investments.
Calling any manufacturer the “best” is going to be somewhat subjective, so we’ve used several different ways to measure our progress.
First, we’ve looked at standard manufacturing metrics like quality and on-time delivery. Over the past five years, we’ve consistently stayed at world-class levels in these areas. And our similar performance in metrics like productivity per employee shows that we’re maximizing efficiency with automation.
We also survey our customers who have experience working with multiple manufacturers about how we compare. Their feedback consistently shows we are among the strongest shops they work with.
Finally, we’ve sought out conversations with authorities who have a broad view of the industry, including top-tier equipment vendors and experts from industry publications such as The Fabricator. These conversations, too, have reinforced our judgment.
Whether one company can be definitively named the single best job shop in the world is hard to say. But based on our performance and the feedback we receive, we believe All Metals Fabricating already ranks among the industry’s best.
Automation is popular among leading job shops, but it’s not universal. Plenty of great sheet metal fabricators do not have automation as a focus. That shows automation by itself is no guarantee of success.
The technology must deliver a clear return for both the customer and the manufacturer. If an automated process makes a part only marginally faster while increasing its cost, it is not a worthwhile investment.
Our philosophy is to embrace automation where we know it can clearly improve production. We have already added a great deal of automation to our cutting and bending processes, for instance, because we see clear improvements in efficiency.
And our new facility will take that approach further. Our Salvagnini cut-to-bend system will move parts from cutting through bending without manual handling. That reduces labor and production time, ultimately leading to more competitive pricing and dependable throughput.
Automation is also changing our front office in ways we could not have anticipated in 2021. We’re now using agentic AI to automate many routine tasks so that our customer service team can focus on more complex questions and support.
Still, not every part of our shop is ready for automation. Automated powder coating systems, for example, can require significant space and capital with limited benefits to production time. We will not automate a process simply for the sake of automation. Each investment must make sense for our customers and our business.
At the end of 2026, our leadership team will review our EOS progress and establish the next steps toward our 2031 goal. The opening of our new facility, as well as the additional space we’ve reserved, will create more opportunities to automate processes where the customer benefits are clear.
Five years into this effort, our performance and customer feedback give us confidence that we are moving in the right direction. As we continue investing in metal fabrication and precision machining, our focus will remain the same: becoming the best manufacturer possible for our customers.
Request a quote to discuss your next project with All Metals Fabricating.
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