Case Study: Atlas Mechanical – Woodland, WA
ATLAS MECHANICAL INCREASES PRODUCTION WITH ALLIED SOFTWARE
Karl Homola started Atlas Mechanical in 2005. He has worked in construction since 1995 and found his passion in plumbing. Karl has been a journeyman since 2001 and has seen all types of construction. His drive and hard work continue to serve him well as his company is being molded into the dream he set out to realize.
Commercial Plumbing
Atlas Mechanical Commercial Plumbing Division offers commercial plumbing systems for the Portland and Seattle markets. We specialize in servicing commercial projects including but not limited to multi-family, mixed-use, apartments, hotels, and assisted living. Atlas Mechanical offers a complete professional process including design and engineering. We are versed in using 3D modeling in Revit, prefabrication, and layout with Trimble. We employ experienced top-notch field installers and foremen to work on your projects. We are heavily focused on Quality Control at Atlas Mechanical. We employ two full-time quality control personnel to deliver the most professional experience for our clients.
Commercial HVAC
A plus for our clients is that Atlas Mechanical’s Commercial Plumbing Division also offers commercial HVAC systems. The ability to do both Commercial Plumbing and Commercial HVAC systems is a tremendous advantage in the construction market. Owners are able to have the same company perform both scopes allowing their construction sites to flow smoother with one point of contact for both Commercial Plumbing and Commercial HVAC. Atlas Mechanical only employs experienced top-notch field installers and foremen to work on projects. We are heavily focused on Quality Control at Atlas Mechanical. We employ two full-time quality control personnel to deliver the most professional experience for our clients.
Integrating Automation to Grow
As Atlas Plumbing Contractors continued to grow, the demand for Automated software and hardware pairings was a MUST. Karl began the venture to explore what options were available in the market. Machinery in the Commercial Plumbing world can range from $10K-$250K! Karl heard about a local manufacturer about 15 miles from his shop that could help fill the void. Thomas Aronson a well-known capital equipment specialist in the PNW paired up with the Atlas team on a solution; The TigerStop automated positioner. TigerStop has extensive experience handling work orders and cut list data. Using TigerStop’s Cut List Downloading Software, TigerLink 6, you can download cut lists or part lists from your network and send them to your TigerStop using Ethernet cables. You no longer have to use messy paper cut lists. Atlas Mechanical needed MORE.
Karl and the team continued to thrive and needed more software capabilities than the machine software could provide. They had to AGAIN be forced to look for a key software addition and solution to skyrocket them towards Industry 4.0. They needed to connect models to machines, and ultimately to the field for applications ranging from PVC, Copper, Unistrut, All-Thread, and anything else that you cut. They had outgrown the abilities of their TigerStop automation and needed to find integration to help them continue to grow, or find a new machine altogether! Design software is disconnected from machine control for intelligent insight. The hunt was on!
- Material prices are at an all-time high and waste is also at an all-time high which ultimately negatively impacts our environment.
- Lack of emerging skilled labor which is evolving into machinery/software automation.
- The current optimizing software was causing a real safety hazard by putting the shortest cuts last, causing the operator’s fingers to be in jeopardy on a daily basis.
Fabrication Software
Atlas Mechanical met Allied BIM’s Co-founders Bob Harvey and Brian Nickel at FabTech 2020. Their visions were aligned from the very start. To get Atlas Mechanical to the level of fabrication required three main industry-related problems need to be addressed.
- MODEL TO MACHINE: The ability to send your models from any design software to have a connected model-to-machine workflow.
- ELIMINATE WASTE: Allied BIM provides Best-in-class optimization (nesting) eliminates waste increasing your shop’s productivity and throughput by 800%
- LABELS MADE EASY- QR CODES: Partnered with Direct-Thermal and Ink-Jet system printing companies Allied BIM has integrated our products to format custom printed labels with ease on various types of materials. Hassle-Free labeling is made possible with Allied.
- TRACKING: Track your fabrication shop’s efficiency with a series of timers, task delegation, and assignment tracking. Reports give you clear insight into your company’s fabrication process.
Allied BIM is connected to machine manufacturers around the globe and partnered with Autodesk Construction Solutions to enable the world’s best-in-class cloud model-to-machine workflows on the market. The Alliance enables a process for publishing, tracking, and communicating fabrication shop workflows from anywhere in the world.
Once enabled with Allied BIM’s Fabrication Suite of Software Atlas Mechanical’s team was more streamlined than ever before. Some instant feedback came from the Atlas fabrication team within a week of using the Allied Fabrication Suite of Software. Benji Broderson BIM and Fabrication Manager shared some feedback from the team on the shop floor;
“I am super happy with the way the process works. We were consistently running out of room to store the assemblies that had been cut. The label printing worked flawlessly, we have the labels set up super nicely. The guys out there are super happy about the ability to print a label for a specific piece without having to pretend to cut a piece of pipe. We are also super happy with the fact that when the program nests cut lengths into the most efficient use of the pipe, it cuts them from shortest to longest. This is an insanely valuable thing, in my opinion, since it gives us the ability to cut an entire stock length and label it easily afterward, even if those cuts have been mixed up.”
