Being the absolute best at what you do can be overwhelming and challenging at the same time, especially if you own a metal fabrication facility. Besides, it is not easy to get everything as precisely as your client wants, without taking some precautions and safety measures.

These efforts are must if you want your company to be elevated to the next level. But here are some steps that might help.

1. Identify Product Family: If you don’t know what product family is or how to order the equipment according to the product family then most probably you are not saving a lot of time in the production.  But once you know the product families and sort out the new order depending on its production mix, production process, etc. you’ll save a lot of time and probably some production cost. And this will also ensure your client getting his delivery as he wished for.
2. VSM Key Product Families: VSM or Value stream mapping is known as the planning and assessment tool for lean practitioners. This mapping depicts how your enterprise operates and turns quotes into cash. By developing a future-state VSM, you can see how efficiently your materials can flow through the improved ways.
3. Address Information Quality Issue: As a metal fabricator, you don’t get to manufacture simple designs and materials so often. Most of the time, they are complicated and that’s why every single detail about the material count. So, ensure your information and details for laser cutting, metal bending, metal rolling, etc. are correct.
4. Implement 5S and TPM: While working at a custom fabricator, you get to be accompanied by hundreds of moving parts and tools. These parts and machines, as well as your office, shouldn’t stay unorganized because this may cause a rapid decrease in productivity. You can use 5S to keep everything organized in your facility. Besides, a solid Total productive maintenance or TPM can also really provide stability and predictability.
5. Achieve Quick Changeover: Quick changeover promotes flow and extensively reduce production cost, mostly in any equipment-intensive custom fabricator. That’s why it’s crucial to evaluate various changeover and setup processes all throughout the operation. And by doing this, you can shorten changeover times by 40 percent.
6. Revise the office & Shop layouts to Support the Flow: I know it won’t be easy but developing an effective layout can provide some advantages to the custom fabricator. A proper layout can accelerate the entire process of a material being moved from one place to another, especially for stainless steel fabrication, Aluminium fabrication, and steel fabrication.  
7. Establish Pull Systems: If you are still continuing with the traditional “push” approach to the part flow, you might be losing some profit. So, instead of pushing your employees and machines with materials and tools, you can pull the final production from the entire process. With this pull approach, WIP (work-in-process) will also increase, making the workstation organized and the employees more attentive to the work.
8. Continuously Improve: To be honest, there won’t be any success for you or your company unless you work on improving your entire fabrication process. So every time you hear about a new technique or any tools for the fabrication processes, it’s your job to dig more and implement into your facility.