Struggling to have the right people with the right skills? Difficulty engaging & retaining your welder workforce? Turning away welding business due to workforce or capacity challenges? Idle equipment and missed deadlines are frustrating situations in this environment. Generational, market & cultural changes are disrupting our fabrication floors in completely different ways than ever before. In the US alone, there is projected to be 336,000 open welder positions by 2026. How do you avoid being swept up in the chaos all of this is causing?

With five real world case studies, we will discuss how collaborative welding is improving outcomes for business leaders & welders alike. We will talk about how collaborative welding tools are: augmenting the existing welding workforce, raising productivity, creating product consistency, and helping employers retain happier & healthier workers. We will also share: how others are overcoming technology biases in the welding workforce, how to get your frontline workers to buyin and we will close with a straight-forward action plan to get started.

Key Learnings

1. How the business situation changed & how are fabricators winning
2. What is a collaborative welding tool and how is it creating value for real manufacturers
3. Actions that you can take to be successful with collaborative welding

Will Healy III
Global Industry Segment Leader, Welding
Universal Robots

Will Healy III is enthusiastic about manufacturing, technology and workforce development. A Purdue University mechanical engineer, Will loves to share his passion for automation. Will is a Global Industry Segment Leader for Universal Robots and a leader with the Advanced Manufacturing Industry Partnership (AMIP) in Cincinnati. He speaks from personal experience about people-centric technology investments, managing culture change in organizations, bridging the manufacturing skills gap and creating value through automation. With more than 16 years of experience in a variety of industries including automotive, welding, and food & beverage. Will is published in various trade magazines and has presented internationally at a variety of industry conferences. Follow Will on YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn with the handle WillAutomate.