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Amidst the high and low cycles of the steel construction market, one thing that has remained constant and growing within the United States is the industry-wide shortage of skilled workers. In 2010, the American Welding Society (AWS) reported a shortage of 200,000 welders in the U.S. and projects by 2026 that number will double at 372,000. AWS further noted approximately 500,000 skilled welders are, on average, in their mid-50s and will soon retire at a more rapid rate than replacements can fill the vacancies. Patrick Schueck, President of Lexicon, Inc., and the team at Prospect Steel solved their labor shortage issue with an investment in automated robotic welding technology distributed by Peddinghaus. They are the first fabrication firm within the United States to introduce a groundbreaking robotic steel beam assembler into their Little Rock, Arkansas facility.

Prospect Steel specializes in heavy industrial fabrication, steel erection, mechanical equipment setting, and fabrication of platework.

The company was founded 50 years ago. We're working on our 50th year.

My father, Tom Schuek, started the company with $800 in the bank and a pregnant wife.

One of my favorite projects has been the Ivanpah solar plant. It's the world's largest solar plant.

And what it is is a 470 foot tower with a boiler at the top. We had 36 inch pipe columns with inch and a half-thick wall. The project was pretty remarkable to watch it get built. We had three towers.

We have done a tremendous amount of work in the steel mill industry. Any time that I know that our company is working to push the steel mill industry further in the United States, it really makes me feel good.

At Prospect Steel, our fabrication division, prior to purchasing the Zeman, was in a severe shortage of labor.

We had plenty of shop capacity from a standpoint of space and equipment, but we were lacking our ability in man hours to produce the welding and the fitting and the painting required to have a successful project. So it was really limiting our ability to be a force in the marketplace.

By purchasing the Zeman, we were capable of replacing man hours that we had lost by not being able to find qualified fitters and welders in our industry.

Zeman gives us another approach to be able to solve the huge problem in the steel fabrication business of finding labor.

Prospect Steel settled on a Zeman SBA Compact Plus system, as it was the best fit in our shop, as far as size and scope went. But we also felt like for the price, the payback was the fastest.

The Zeman acquisition has allowed us to further advance what we think is cutting-edge, and that is taking welding information and fit-up information from the model directly to our shop floor.

It has allowed us to increase our productivity, decrease fit-up errors, and in the end, has allowed us to create a better product for our customer and so save money.

Prospect Steel is very proud to be involved with this first system in the United States with the Zeman Robotic Assembly.

We continue to enjoy our partnership that we have with Peddinghaus, and being involved with Peddinghaus and Zeman, we're very proud.

When we run the machine consistently, we're seeing huge reductions in man hours worked per piece.

What we're also finding is not only is the Zeman Compact Plus great for full service fabrication, welding and everything, but it really works in our system just as a fitting robot. So rather than just fitting and welding, we're able to utilize the fitting services of the robot, get the pieces out of the machine, get them back on the bucks and let our welders do the welding, which allows us to work more, generate more man hours, and allows us to cover more overhead.

I think any time you put a group of professionals together--and we're all kind of held in the ring together by Peddinghaus.

And we work together in a collaborative way. We're able to come up with real solutions to real problems. That's the definition of success.

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