Rural manufacturer facing welder shortage turns to robotic arc welding
August 5, 2025
Dan Davis
Situation
The Will-Burt Co. is an international OEM serving many different industries, including defense, telecommunications, and energy. The company’s campus in Orville, Ohio, has more than 250,000 sq. ft. of manufacturing and assembly space, some of which is used to fabricate sheet metal for heavy machinery companies such as Caterpillar and JLG.
Will-Burt’s manufacturing production is very high-mix, low-volume in both the machine shop and on the fabrication side. When performed manually, this kind of operation requires a lot of setup and product-specific knowledge. And while the company has produced more than $30 million in sales through this facility in the last eight years, its location in a rural area has hampered its ability to find skilled welders. That labor shortage began to affect the company’s ability to take on additional work.
“When we looked out over our five-year plan for growing fabrication, we knew that we needed to supplement with automation to grow those sales,” said Mike Gibb, vice president of operations. “For every cell that we introduced, we estimated we could generate about $4 million more in fabrication sales.”
