Orest Protch

Fabricators may feel quite confident that they have the effects of heat energy creation controlled and tamed, but it is this complacency that still rears up its ugly head like a venomous snake and strikes them in ways that can not only create huge repair costs and lawsuits, but also take lives. It...

Welding shops and fabricators are always on the prowl to increase profits and cut waste to maximize profits. Or at least they should be. Many shops are good at tracking various weld fabrication costs such as gas, rod and wire, electricity, metal, and maybe even toilet paper. And fabrication shops...

For the last several issues I have been presenting some ideas on how to use basic math to help maximize your profits. But, using an economic term/word that those in government are loath to use, we are in a recession. So what to do? Now that is truly a hot question and topic. In Alberta the crash in...

When it comes to starting a business and choosing a great spot for it, everyone is familiar with this mantra: “Location, location, location.” We will call this the 3 L’s. Unless you have something that is in demand and not available anywhere else in the vicinity, you have to be...

In my last column, we looked at how to rank your welders in terms of both inches of weld produced and the true cost of their welds per inch after factoring all the costs of welds that failed inspection and had to be redone. This month we look at how to identify the finer details of welder...

We live in a fast-food world: we expect everything to be fast; not just our food service, but also our Internet connections, cell phone service, mail delivery, and the list goes on. And let's not forget about the different types of production and fabrication lines we work at. Time is money to those...

All welding companies, regardless of size, are chasing a piece of the economic pie that their welding services cover (see Figure 1).  Very few can be all things to all customers, so each tends to specialize in a few services. One problem many welding companies struggle with is how to calculate...