Member News: BEHLEN Industries new technology is set to revolutionize the pre-engineered steel building industry

Excerpt from BEHLEN Industries Press Release - April 29, 2015

The Industrial Revolution transformed how we do work and paved the way to large scale production. Through mankind's constant desire to innovate and reach new heights we have seen a new revolution transform before our eyes. The technological revolution has shown us that even the unimaginable is possible!

At BEHLEN Industries, Canada's largest manufacturer of steel building solutions, they are reaffirming this notion of making the impossible possible, with a new one-of-a kind technology.

Until now, robotics in welding has been traditionally used for predefined, repetitive tasks with little to no variability. At BEHLEN, their in house engineers and detailers realized that it was necessary to be able to gain the benefits of robotics and advanced software in welding, without having any limitations.

"We have such talented engineers, detailers and production staff in house at BEHLEN that we are not only capable of taking on many new challenges, but enjoy doing so." says Sean Lepper, Vice President & General Manager.

Every project at BEHLEN is custom, so robotic technology had only a small place in their plant, for the few repetitive processes that they do, almost everything else was done manually. There are many benefits to an automated process in steel manufacturing like increased product quality & capacity; decreased errors at every level of the business & in the product itself; and increased communication with clients.

While robots in manufacturing are not a new technology, it is BEHLEN's strategically chosen and innovative combination of software, robotics and processes that has allowed them to successfully implement the use of robotic technology for custom manufacturing.

"Robotic welding is typically a high volume, low variable type of process, but at BEHLEN, we needed the opposite. Since almost all of our production is custom-designed, we needed to find a way to make our robotic welding cell be used for high variable, low volume work." says Pat Versavel, Vice President - Engineering and Innovation.

Click to download the whole press release or watch the video below to learn more!