Internship
PDM Precast: Fabrication Shop Redesign
Reworking how material moves through a precast facility, from raw steel and foam at the dock all the way to finished kits on the production floor.
Overview
PDM was moving into a new fab and foam shop. The building was there, but nothing about how work would actually move through it had been decided. Our team of five interns was handed that problem: figure out how materials and parts travel between the shops, the crews, and the stages of production, then design a layout that makes that travel as short and as clean as possible.
We worked directly with Dustin, Luke, James, and the rest of the operations group. Over the summer we walked the floor, mapped the real routes, found where product sat waiting or doubled back on itself, and put together a layout the company could actually build. The final package came in at roughly ten thousand dollars in capital cost.
The short version. We cut material travel distance by about 35 percent, pulled roughly 80 percent of raw material out of outdoor storage, and cut the time crews spend walking outside for parts by about 90 percent. Total spend to get there was $10,400.
What we set out to do
Four objectives drove every decision we made.
- Efficiency. Shorten travel, smooth the flow, and move toward just in time delivery of carts to the production line.
- Get storage indoors. Bins, raw steel, and foam were living outside in the weather. That needed to change.
- Keep people inside. Fabricators, QC, and third shift were all walking outdoors to find raw material. Every one of those trips is lost time.
- Quality. Better kitting and cleaner handoffs into production, which shows up directly in first pass yield.
How we worked the problem
We ran it in four steps. First we observed, walking the floor and tracing material paths between shops and crews so we were designing against the real flow and not a drawing. Then we mapped that current state, capturing every route, handoff, and spot where product waited or backtracked. From there we analyzed, pinpointing the bottlenecks and the movement that added no value and putting numbers to what it was costing. Finally we recommended layout and process changes that fit inside the real constraints of the building.
The current state
The existing flow was the problem in one picture. Material came in on one side, wandered across the building, crossed back over itself several times between the tables, the kit area, and rebar storage, then went outside again to reach carts and kitting.
The floor itself told the same story. Raw material and steel bins parked outside on gravel and concrete, open bays with no defined storage, and long empty runs between the work that actually depends on each other.
The planned layout
The redesign reorganizes the whole building around a single northbound path. Rebar unloads at the south end, gets cut and bent, and moves up. Foam comes in through a new ramp at the east side into dedicated raw foam storage, gets cut on the CNC machines, and loads onto foam carts. Both streams converge on finished kits at the north end, ready for production.
What changed, area by area
Foam shop
The foam shop got a second CNC machine, which doubles as backup if one goes down, plus storage racking, the power to run it, and defined safety space around the equipment. The big win was space: about 1.5 times the storage we had, and a new foam ramp so less than truckload deliveries can come straight in instead of being handled twice.
Robotic welder
The robotic welder cell was placed to cut fab time on repeat parts. We added cutouts in the wall so studding can pass through, racking for finished product, and clearance for the combi to pull product out without disrupting the cell.
Fab shop
In the fab shop we cut the circular welding table in half to open the floor, added a ramp and an opening in the wall so product can flow through instead of around, put storage along the west side, cut holes in the wall for the stud guns, and consolidated finished product into one place instead of five.
Storage
Storage was the biggest single change. More open floor for raw material, dedicated space for foam carts, dividers inside the metal bins so one bin can hold several products without mixing, and additional racking where it earned its footprint.
Two tools we designed
Beyond the layout, we designed and specified two pieces of equipment.
Rebar lifting beam. A beam that lets a forklift move bundled rebar safely and in one trip. We sized it for the actual weight capacity PDM needed and worked through the design with Josh Harrell, Matt Heller, Kevin Miller, and Hunter Bertoncini before quoting it at $2,900.
Bin divider. An adjustable divider that lets a single metal bin carry several different products at once without them mixing. It sounds small. In practice it is a large chunk of the organization and time savings on the raw material side.
Cost
The whole recommendation came to $10,400: $5,000 for the foam ramp, $2,500 for the concrete slab it sits on, and $2,900 for the rebar beam. We also priced two optional items PDM could add later, a $5,000 lean to for covered storage and a new combi at $60,000.
Results
We set four metrics at the start and held ourselves to them.
35 percent efficiency gain from the reduction in material travel distance and total material flow. 80 percent reduction in outside storage by moving raw material indoors and consolidating it. 90 percent reduction in time spent outside for fabricators, QC, third shift, and production. Over 95 percent quality measured on first pass yield, kitting accuracy, and variances on the bed.
Before and after
Most of the change is not exotic. It is defined space, cleared floor, and material that lives where it gets used.
The team
Layout and Material Flow Group, PDM Summer Internship 2026: Cartyr Smith, Nick Byrum, Jose Diaz, Imran Sulai, and Max Shelton. Thanks to Dustin, Luke, and James for the time on the floor, and to Josh Harrell, Matt Heller, Kevin Miller, and Hunter Bertoncini for working through the rebar beam design with us.