On this episode of TAIT Talks, LinkedIn meets with TAIT Fabricators to fill you in on the operational processes that generate TAIT products.
Fabrication from TAIT: Creating World Class Experiences by Tait Towers LLC
We’re a very innovative business. We build incredibly complex machinery and components. Essentially, we have three different break-outs of three different teams that have specialization in their different roles. One of those teams is mainly structures. The other team is similar to tracking rigging; so, anything that flies in the air. And the other team specializes in motion, which are parts and setups that move. We try to drive the team to be like a one function, so, that anything that comes in, all three teams are equipped to handle it and they play off of each other.
We’re building what looks like a garage door, but this piece that we’re fabricating in order for it to move like a garage door goes through this maze. These are going to be the links for the prototype when it is tested. Eventually, at the end of the day, this is going to be massive.
I rely very heavily on my past experience in welding and fabricating. I went to school for commercial diving and underwater welding, which of all the different jobs I’ve had, was the one that was able to cross over the most. I use that to drive the guys and push them in the right direction, if you will.
As design starts to reach the complete part of their phase, we bring in fabrication to review the design and see if there’s any value engineering that can be done in the construction method. That team will then create the necessary elements and begin breaking down all of the elements into kits.
The kit is the project broken down into blueprints but we have our own little twist on it. They come out of design. You have all of the parts and detailed hardware called out, but it’s not like any other blueprint I’ve ever seen.
When we get ready to build a big show, it gets really complex, we have less than two weeks to build it and all the parts are coming in. We defer to these guys right here – they are called water spiders. They will go and collect the parts from all over the shop and they’ll stage it here by each show.
It is the water spider’s duty to take a kit and get all the parts that are in the kit to the guys for them to fabricate. So, they’ll get it all the way down to the actual nut or bolt needed so that the teams can be the most efficient about running the assembly.
All the secondary operations, like painting the boxes and stuff like that, we make sure that stuff happens in a timely manner for the guys to meet the deadline.
We push product through, create it, build it, fabricate it, and then push it off to the integration team to roll out the door to the client.
When I showed up for my first interview, I was blown away. I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at. And, then, by the second interview, it started to click. Like, wow, these guys, they give the orders to create that platform, that spectacle.
My second time coming here, I was meeting the COO and my interview with him was 30 minutes late because he was in a meeting with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. To me, that was the coolest thing ever. I was like, if our conversation went well and he liked me, I was definitely coming back because I’ve never experienced anything like that in life.
You’re doing something that makes people happy. They’re experiencing the extraordinary. You know, I’ve not yet gone to a show where somebody’s been upset or they’ve not experienced some type of ‘wow’ factor by the type of equipment that we deliver.
When the ideas and concepts come to us at first, a lot of times, they do seem impossible, but we make it happen nonetheless.
