Automation’s role in solving the world’s infrastructure demand

Dec 05, 2023

North America is facing an ominous demand for infrastructure.

The National Association of Manufacturers stated that nearly 81% of manufacturers are unable to hire the number of welders they need. Also, the American Welding Society predicts there will be a shortage of 314,000 welders in the U.S. by 2024. The fabrication industry is facing huge obstacles supplying industries that are building this infrastructure and is looking at robotic welding and a path to automation to solve this challenge.

Before a fabrication shop can make a decision on the optimal automation solution, key issues need to be considered such as production mix, infrastructure needs, human resource requirements and ultimately, the ROI. It needs to choose pipe welding automation systems that will help achieve consistent, high-quality welds, while increasing a shop's productivity so it can get ahead in an increasingly competitive market.

Novarc Technologies, a pioneer in the field of collaborative robotics, has developed a breakthrough solution to this difficult challenge — the world's first welding cobot, or collaborative robot: the Spool Welding Robot (SWR™). It is the first of its kind in pipe welding applications.

The SWR™ allows customers to deliver projects faster, at a lower cost and with better quality welds. With Novarc's pipe welding automation system, customers are able to target those bigger projects and improve delivery timelines, capacity and margins.

Fabrication shops see significant productivity improvements with Novarc's collaborative welding robot, making them much more competitive when bidding on jobs, and increasing the margin on jobs they've already won.

Novarc provides the SWR™ to customers across a range of industries: oil and energy, ship building and ship repair. Additionally, mechanical contracting and EPC customers are utilizing SWR™. Fabrication shops, including Fortune 500 companies, have implemented the SWR™ as a smart solution to reduce costs, increase productivity, promote safety and improve weld quality.

Novarc's SWR™ doesn't abandon the human operator. Instead, it works alongside the welder as a collaborative robot, allowing a less experienced operator to successfully take on a job that only senior welders could perform previously. And the results? The welds are done with greater precision, accuracy and speed, and with a never-before achieved balance of quality and productivity. SWR™ provides a solution to the significant shortage of labor in the welding industry.

This is welcome news for the prefabrication industry, which has seen pipe welding demand grow substantially in recent years. The move to automation not only makes sense from an ROI perspective, but also from the quality benefits that a collaborative process provides. In North America, repair rates at pipe fabrication shops are typically around 3% to 5%. The SWR™ brings this down to less than 1% by producing consistent, high-quality welds every time.

Looking to the future, Novarc is bringing together AI, computer vision and robotics to deliver high-productivity, low-impact welding technology. Novarc‘s SWR™ is essentially the next stage in the "smartization" of the collaborative welding robot, opening up new markets to enhance the performance of welding cobots — serving a variety of industries and providing an essential automation solution to meet the demands that come with the expansion and maintenance of the world's infrastructure.

For more information, visit novarctech.com or call (236) 477-5347.