As a family-owned and operated company, Rhodes Manufacturing has spent the last four decades competing against tank manufacturers that are two, three, or even 10 times as large. What they’ve learned in this
time is the importance of constant innovation.

“In our sector, things change very rapidly,” says Jordan Rhodes, Vice President of Operations and son and nephew of the company’s founding brothers. “The oil and gas industry changes. Welding technology changes. We are always trying to keep innovating to stay ahead.”

One step in this process was achieving a certification from the American Petroleum Institute, specifically API 12F, which allows the company to produce larger tanks for larger customers. This coveted certification governs all aspects of manufacturing above-ground storage tanks, from the welders and individual process steps to the materials and finished products.

“Every single piece of the tank must be tracked from its origin to its final destination with the customer,” Rhodes says. “Previously, we were doing this by hand, on paper. Our welders had to write down every step they took. We knew we had to get better.”

In a company this size, every employee plays multiple roles. That means time is always of the essence, and the amount of time spent on manual process documentation was difficult to ignore.

“It was pretty time-consuming, but the information was critical,” Rhodes says. “I was spending a large portion of my day tracking jobs and trying to keep everything up to date. At the same time, we were lacking data on key performance indicators like productivity, efficiency, and maintenance.” 

At this point, Rhodes and his team became aware of Autodesk Fusion Operations production management and production floor tracking software. It did not take long for them to become convinced that it was the solution they had been searching for. 

“With Fusion Operations, all you have to do is type it in,” Rhodes says. “It has all the information we need and we’re good to go. Right now, we’re focused on productivity tracking, so we have hard data about what is actually going on in the shop rather than estimates or educated guesses.” 

Improving every part of the process 

Rhodes Manufacturing has not been using Fusion Operations for very long, but the difference in productivity is already measurable. Specifically, the company has improved productivity by 7.3% year over year. 

“It’s pretty impressive,” Rhodes says. “What Fusion Operations has allowed us to do is keep our output in line with last year without increasing the size of our team. Due to turnover, our team is actually a little smaller than it was in 2023.” 

According to Rhodes, the productivity gains from Fusion Operations come from multiple sources. Not surprisingly, tracking productivity naturally keeps productivity top of mind with workers. But the way Rhodes positioned the solution with his team turned out to be very important. 

“We explained that knowing exactly what’s happening on the shop floor helps us better understand our lead time, material waste, downtime for maintenance, and all those issues,” Rhodes says. “We made it clear that Fusion Operations was vital to our API certification. We also made it clear it would help us improve our efficiency, which increases the funds in our profit-sharing plan. It’s all part of our team effort to reach our goals, and everyone can benefit from it.” 

Another key impact of Fusion Operations is on material usage. Previously, Rhodes and his team would estimate material needs for the next few months based on a quick manual overview of jobs in the queue. Inevitably, this meant that the shop would often run out of materials that were not used as frequently and have large overages of the most common materials. 

“Ordering larger quantities than we thought we needed wasn’t helping our cash flow,” Rhodes says. “We also ran into a lot of problems with not having certain materials on the shop floor when guys needed them, which means we had to quickly move them to a different project. With Fusion Operations, we can predict exactly what we will need, so our welders are never waiting around.” 

Planning for custom product add-ons is also more straightforward with Fusion Operations. These add-ons may include special couplings, extra fittings, special lids, and other fixtures that certain tanks require, many of which are manufactured in-house. In the past, scheduling these add-ons so they were ready at the right time was a challenge. 

“We run on an assembly line with five or six steps, depending on the product, with each product spending anywhere from a half day to two days at each station,” Rhodes says. “And we have one person who is responsible for all of our add-ons. Typically, it was hard to schedule his work. We would often pull him off one project and put him on another that was more urgent. Now, Fusion Operations allows him to see everything that’s coming up and plan his work accordingly, so the add-ons are ready when a new tank gets to that stage.” 

Automated scheduling also helps the company deal with unexpected changes, such as a rush order for a longtime customer. 

“When we get busy, things move pretty quickly,” Rhodes says. “In order to keep customers happy, we may need a quicker turnover. Fusion Operations helps us see what our options are so we can pick the best one. And then our guys in the shop just look at their tablet and it’s updated automatically.” 

Tracking products with precision 

In order to maintain the API 12F certification, Rhodes Manufacturing undergoes an annual audit. One area of emphasis is tracking the lot numbers of all the materials used in the company’s tanks. Fusion Operations has accelerated this process significantly. 

“Traceability is a critical aspect of our certification,” says Jimmy Allen, Rhodes Manufacturing. “With Fusion Operations, we can put the lot numbers of our materials directly in the purchase orders, so they are very easy to trace back. All we have to do for the auditor is print out the report. Fusion Operations has helped us a lot during our audits.” 

The ability to automate linkages among materials, products, orders, and customers is also helping the company improve accuracy. In the past, Rhodes would manually manage a spreadsheet that detailed all of these relationships. When the vast majority of the company’s work was variations of the same few standard tanks, this was a relatively simple task. But in 2016, everything changed. 

“The industry flip-flopped and all of a sudden 80 to 90 percent of our orders were custom,” Rhodes says. “In terms of tracking inventory, including tanks we shipped and tanks we stored on site, our accuracy wasn’t high enough. Fusion Operations lets us keep track of our finished goods from start to finish. It has been very helpful, especially when it comes to answering questions from customers.” 

This is very important when the questions customers are asking are about the availability of certain tanks stored on four acres of the Rhodes Manufacturing property. The industry convention is to order a specific number of tanks for the year and then have them stored with the manufacturer until they can be delivered to a specific job site. 

“You can get lost walking around out there, there are so many tanks,” Rhodes says. “Fusion Operations definitely helps us with that. At any given time, we can see exactly what we have in stock without having to do a manual count.” 

Pushing for more improvement 

While Fusion Operations has already made a significant impact on Rhodes Manufacturing’s productivity levels, Rhodes expects it to keep delivering additional benefits as his team continues to explore all of its functionality. 

“Many of our guys are actively involved in improving Fusion Operations,” Allen says. “Now that we’ve gotten past the initial learning curve, our guys are constantly coming up with suggestions for how to improve the experience, which we of course share with Autodesk. We really appreciate the support we get. Everyone on the support side at Autodesk is easy to work with when we need help.” 

In one instance, this support involved working directly with a Rhodes Manufacturing team member who was a native Spanish speaker and was struggling with the interface. After a couple of meetings with him to better understand his needs, the Autodesk team replaced his English interface with a Spanish one to help him use Fusion Operations more efficiently. 

“We like Fusion Operations,” Allen says. “We’re using it all the time, and it really helps us out. Fusion Operations is here to stay.”