Growth is usually a sign that something is working. More customers are buying, production is increasing, and the company may be adding people, equipment, or even new facilities to keep up.
But growth can also create a strange kind of frustration when processes that worked well for years start becoming harder to sustain. Engineering may struggle to keep up with the volume of work, manufacturing questions that were once easy to resolve can become recurring issues, and the company may find itself relying heavily on a handful of experienced people who know how things are supposed to be built.
The problem isn't necessarily that those processes were bad. Often, the company has simply grown beyond the systems that used to support it.
For sheet metal designers, that can be especially noticeable when important manufacturing knowledge lives with individual people rather than in drawings, documentation, and processes that everyone can use.
What worked at one size may not work at the next
A high-growth sheet metal firm, and a client of SPARK, has experienced significant growth while the equipment it builds has also become larger and more complex. Their CEO described how the company has responded by becoming more intentional about how information moves between engineering and manufacturing.
Historically, the CEO said, “Most of the engineering work was actually done on the floor, not in the engineering department.” Today, the company is making “a concentrated effort to get the engineering done by the engineering team,” while also making sure the people on the floor are feeding information back when drawings need to be corrected.
That flow of knowledge becomes particularly important when the same product has to be built by more people or in more places.
“If you don't have your drawings right, you're just repeating the same mistakes,” the CEO said.
There’s an important distinction there:
Scaling doesn't just mean making more of something. It means finding ways to capture the knowledge of your most experienced people and build it into processes that are repeatable by others.
If a particular operator knows how to compensate for a drawing, or an engineer knows from experience which requirements need additional explanation, the company may be able to function perfectly well for a long time. But that knowledge becomes harder to rely on as more people, projects, and facilities enter the picture.
Experience doesn't scale automatically
Some of the most valuable knowledge in sheet metal is learned through experience.
Brent Frey, Director of Sales at EVS Metal and a vendor for SPARK, described that learning process plainly: “Experience and mentoring are the only ways to do it.”
His point isn't that engineers aren't capable. In fact, Brent was explicit about that distinction when discussing the sheet metal issues his team encounters: “It's not that the engineers are not smart. They are fantastic. It’s just that they have not obtained the practical experience to understand the complexities of sheet metal fabrication. In multi-component assemblies, there are many variables that create tolerance stack-ups. Welding, riveting, spot welding, forming, powdercoating, all contribute to tolerance challenges across complex assemblies. Ultimately every assembly is unique and often difficult for customers to define an achievable tolerance.”
That becomes an organizational challenge as a manufacturer grows, because you can't reasonably expect every engineer to accumulate the same fabrication experience as someone who has spent decades around the shop floor. Similarly, you can't assume that hiring more people automatically distributes the knowledge held by the people who have been there the longest.
The challenge is finding ways to share knowledge more broadly and build it into the way the company works.
That happens through mentoring and conversation, involving manufacturing earlier in the engineering process, and making sure that what the company learns eventually makes its way into the drawings and documentation everyone else depends on.
When the drawing and the process stop telling the same story
One place gaps can become visible is in the Quality department.
Bill Barron, Senior Mechanical Engineer at Silicom, a client of SPARK, described what happens when the documented design says one thing but the manufacturing process has evolved to do something else. “Once it hits the quality department that's where things come to a head,” he said.
The drawing is supposed to define the standard. But if the people actually building the product have developed a different process that works, without that change making its way back into the documentation, Quality is left trying to reconcile two different versions of what “right” looks like.
The consequence, Bill said, can be “time on the floor and product not going out the door.”
This is why seemingly small workarounds matter as a company grows. A fix that lives with one operator may solve today's problem. But if the drawing remains unchanged, the next operator, engineer, inspector, facility, or fabrication partner may have to discover the same thing again.
Worse yet, growing manufacturers without accurate documentation may run into the same problems each time they bring on a new partner or vendor.
Growth exposes bottlenecks
Better systems don't mean there will never be pressure. In fact, improving one part of the process can make the next constraint much easier to see.
The CEO described their engineering team as “absolutely overwhelming the CAD department” as the company works to improve and formalize its drawings. At the same time, production can't simply stop while those systems catch up.
“We've got commitments we've made to customers,” they said. “We've got to keep building.”
That tension is worth recognizing because it can otherwise feel like the improvement isn't working. A company may be doing exactly the right thing by capturing more information, improving drawings, and moving knowledge into a repeatable engineering process, only to discover that the team responsible for documenting all of it now needs more capacity.
The bottleneck moved. That doesn't mean the work was wasted. It gives the company a much clearer picture of what the growing operation needs next.
How to make manufacturing knowledge more repeatable as you grow
If your sheet metal operation is growing, look for the places where the process still depends on someone simply knowing what to do.
These are specific places we recommend paying attention if your processes are starting to show strain:
Pay attention to repeated questions. If engineering, fabrication, assembly, or quality keep having to clarify the same thing, look at whether the answer should be captured in the drawings or documentation instead.
Find the people everyone depends on. Who gets called when something doesn't fit, a drawing is unclear, or a fabrication question comes up? Their experience is valuable, and the company becomes more resilient when more of that knowledge can be shared.
Create a path from the floor back to engineering. When manufacturing discovers that something needs to be adjusted, make sure there is a way to review that feedback and, where appropriate, update the design rather than relying on the same workaround next time.
Make sure the drawing still reflects the way the product is actually built. If manufacturing has evolved but the documentation hasn't, Quality, new employees, another facility, or a new fabrication partner may be working from an outdated version of the process.
Ask whether the process would work somewhere else. If another team or facility had to build the same equipment using only the information you've documented, what knowledge would they be missing? The CEO's experience preparing to build the same units in multiple locations is a useful test: if the process only works because certain people know what the drawings don't say, it isn't fully repeatable yet.
Growth will almost always put pressure on a manufacturing operation. You’ll start to operate more efficiently if you ask what that pressure is telling you.
If the same problems keep resurfacing as volume, complexity, or the number of people involved increases, the answer may not be to work around them more quickly. It is probably just time to take what your best people already know and build it into the system everyone else uses.
SPARK has spent decades working across sheet metal design, fabrication, and manufacturing. If growth is putting strain on your processes, we can help you assess bottlenecks and turn experience and knowledge into more repeatable systems. Reach out and we can talk through what you’re experiencing.