Tim Heston, The FABRICATOR, Sept. 20, 2022
By the early 2010s, the leaders at McAbee, an industrial contractor and pipe spool fabricator in Tuscaloosa, Ala., saw the issue as more than a paperwork problem. It sapped efficiency and forced talented, well-paid people to spend too much of their day walking the length of McAbee’s 144,000-sq.-ft. floor to report problems or ask for clarifications. The problem could be a fitting error, or perhaps just trying to read bad handwriting on a job traveler. Is this a B or an 8? Sometimes they simply wanted to know if they could pull material for a specific job.
Today, the shop superintendent receives a text on his smartphone. Material is ready to be pulled and cut. Job travelers still exist; pipe welders still find it easier to be able to pull out and unfold a large print. But the web of paperwork to ensure traceability—from material test reports (MTRs) and WPSs to procedure qualification records and welder continuity documentation tied to those client-approved WPSs—now resides on a web-based system that the fabricator designed and wrote in-house. It’s called MATS, the McAbee Automated Tracking System, and it’s changed the way the pipe spool fabricator does business.
