The Total Solution Difference: The Manufacturing Mindset

Throughout this series, we’ve explored how EAS designs, engineers and manages complex MEP projects. Those capabilities ultimately have to translate into something that can be manufactured consistently at scale.

For this part of the series, we spoke with our President of Manufacturing, Allen Absher, whose 35-year career at EAS began as a helper and progressed through welding, fabrication, supervision, and quality before leading manufacturing operations and now the entire Manufacturing division. He has seen EAS evolve from an exceptional custom fabricator into a volumetric manufacturer capable of producing complex infrastructure at a scale few companies experience.

Through the years, EAS has evolved from a fabrication mindset to a manufacturing mindset. We still approach every project with the custom problem-solving that has always defined our work, but today that experience is supported by repeatable processes built to deliver complex mechanical infrastructure at scale. 

Manufacturing Begins Long Before Fabrication

One of the biggest misconceptions about modular manufacturing is that it starts on the production floor.

EAS brings manufacturing perspectives into the project early, alongside engineering, design, project management and procurement. The purpose is straightforward: understand how the system will actually be built before it reaches production.

"We focus on manufacturability,” Absher explained.

That means looking at the project through more than one lens. What does the client ultimately need? How can the system be produced efficiently? How will procurement decisions affect production? And one question our leadership team routinely brings into those discussions is surprisingly simple: "What do we not fabricate?"

EAS has highly skilled trade professionals, but capability alone is not a reason to add work. The team evaluates what contributes to the client's end goal and looks for opportunities to remove work that adds complexity without adding value.

This is where the Total Solution model directly impacts manufacturing. Design and engineering influence what happens on the production floor, while manufacturing experience feeds back upstream to improve constructability. Procurement and project management are part of that same conversation.

"We are all partners and it takes all of us to make this engine run."

Process Before Automation

Technology has helped EAS increase speed and manage information across a much larger operation, but the philosophy behind those investments is more important than any individual tool.

Through our total solution delivery model, project managers work in direct proximity to the work itself. This cross-functional proximity allows our teams to solve issues quickly instead of waiting for information to move through traditional layers.

"We don't start with automation, we finish with it."

Before automating a process, the team first works to understand and refine it, looking for unnecessary steps, sources of rework, and opportunities to improve productivity without compromising quality. Once the process is working as it should, technology can be applied where it adds meaningful value. After all, automating an inefficient process only allows the inefficiency to move faster. 

Better Information, Better Execution

That same philosophy applies to how information moves through our manufacturing operations. As EAS has grown, so has the amount of information required to manage quality and production across multiple facilities and complex programs. On custom work, drawings evolve, materials move between locations and thousands of individual activities have to remain connected to the latest project requirements.

Our response has gone far beyond replacing paper. EAS has developed a dedicated team that handles the entire connected digital environment, putting current information in the hands of the people doing the work while giving teams greater visibility into what is happening across the manufacturing process.

“You need to make sure that everybody has in their hand the latest information to make sure they're doing their job.”

Now, digital tools and internally developed workflows support everything from receiving and material tracking to quality inspections, fabrication status, certified processes, equipment management and movement between facilities. Inventory systems add another layer of visibility, helping teams understand what we have, where it is and what the operation needs next.

The value is not technology for technology’s sake. It is having reliable information available at the point of decision. A supervisor can see what is happening in production. Quality teams can track inspections and high-risk processes. Materials can be followed as they move through the operation. Changes can reach the floor without relying on outdated information moving through the system.

As the scale of our work has increased, that visibility has become critical to maintaining quality and consistency. The tools will continue to evolve, but the approach remains the same: understand the process, identify where better information can improve it, and apply technology in a way that strengthens the entire operation.

Experience + Innovation Compounds

Processes can be documented and equipment can be purchased, but decades of actually doing the work are much harder to replicate. EAS has been learning from off-site construction for more than 60 years, building an understanding of how systems behave during fabrication, transportation, installation and operation.

More importantly, that experience is still active in our business. Superintendents, plant managers and manufacturing leaders who have worked through generations of complex projects bring those lessons into the decisions being made today. When a process changes or a new challenge emerges, our teams can draw from what we already know rather than starting from zero.

That mindset makes continuous improvement proactive. We look back at what we have already learned, account for it in the next process and then keep pushing for a better way forward.

“We'll tackle a new one and combine innovation with what we've learned along the way. That's what drives us forward.”

That is where experience begins to compound. The knowledge earned through decades of custom work becomes the foundation for the next innovation, and every new solution adds another layer of experience for the projects that follow. It allows EAS to anticipate more, recognize challenges earlier and continue improving.

Listen to the People Doing the Work

Our experience does not live only with leadership. Some of the most valuable manufacturing knowledge at EAS belongs to the people building the systems every day.

“All the talented, smart people are not in an office in a corner. They're not all looking at screens. Some of the people who know the most are the men and women on that floor out there putting this product together.”

That belief has shaped the way manufacturing teams approach improvement.

“You always have to listen to the floor.”

Ideas are tested against the experience of the people performing the work. When something can be made safer, easier or more effective, the expectation is that people speak up and leadership listens.

For example, during one process improvement effort, a member of the EAS leadership team was convinced a new approach would make an assembly easier and safer. The team building it disagreed.

Once an employee walked him through the reasons, the decision changed.

That leader’s response captures the culture behind EAS continuous improvement: “Your why was more important than my why.”

Operational excellence requires the discipline to improve a process, and it requires enough humility to recognize when someone closer to the work has a better answer.

Operational Excellence at Scale

EAS’s manufacturing operation today looks very different from how it operated decades ago. The scale is larger, the systems are more complex, digital workflows move information faster, while lean manufacturing principles bring greater consistency to custom work.

The underlying approach has remained remarkably steady: learn from the work, improve the process and carry that knowledge forward. That is why operational excellence at EAS cannot be reduced to a machine, a manufacturing facility or a single process. It has been built over generations of custom projects and continually strengthened by the people who design, manage and manufacture them.

For owners, EPCs and general contractors, that discipline ultimately shows up in the finished product: complex mechanical infrastructure manufactured with the quality and repeatability required to deliver at scale.

And while the next article in this series will go deeper into the people behind that process, Allen Absher put the connection between the two best:

“You can buy welding machines and brick and mortar, but it's how we've trained and developed our people to carry the torch.”