While working for another company primarily doing tilework, Kurt Bartzsch was given the challenge to start the company’s fabrication shop. Bartzsch primarily learned on a trial-and-error basis before going out on his own.

Whether it is a new hire or a current employee, proper training, including cross-training, is important. Employees that are properly trained and cross-trained result in maintaining a high-quality efficient fabrication shop. Below are a few tips to help develop a valuable training program.

Visits to a stone shop or slab yard should not be a life threatening experience. But the truth is, stone can be dangerous and accidents happen all the time. They happen to stone workers, contractors, truckers and to the public.

As an online forum, the SFA provides day-to-day information crucial to the nuts and bolts of the fabrication business, on demand and nearly in real time. When this power’s leveraged, you find a variety of answers to almost any concern you may have, often by others who have already encountered the same issue and can offer a solution, or at least some candid insight. 

What started 11 years ago as The Granite Buyer’s Club with a few top-tier fabricators that shared a collective enthusiasm of the outdoors has since evolved into the Artisan Group.

The Stone Fabricators Alliance (SFA) is over 10 years old. It started with a few fabricators meeting at a trade show in Atlanta and they started sharing information and knowledge. Over the years, the SFA has grown into the largest fabricator organization in the world, with members from across the globe.

Tony Malisani from Malisani Inc. in Great Falls, MT, opened the morning session of the New Jersey Stone Summit to a full crowd of fabricators and other stone industry members.