The hidden crisis in marine manufacturing
Anyone in and around boatbuilding is familiar with the physical demands of fiberglass sanding: workers spend hours hunched over complex boat geometries, sliding a long, rectangular sanding block over segments of the piece, fighting fatigue under layers of protective equipment.
The workforce challenge that compounds daily
This isn’t an easy role to fill. To do the job well, manual sanding technicians spend months in training, perfecting the sanding techniques required by their employer and developing an eye for quality that distinguishes amateur work from professional results. The investment in human capital is substantial, making retention an important, business-critical metric.
At the same time, many workers view fiberglass sanding as a temporary position rather than a career path. This perception fuels turnover and makes recruitment even more challenging. According to National Defense Magazine, shipyards see 20-30% annual turnover. When these trained workers leave, they take institutional knowledge with them, forcing companies to restart the expensive training cycle.
These persistent labor shortages limit marine manufacturing leaders’ ability to grow their output and business potential. Companies find themselves constrained not by facility capacity or material availability, but by their inability to find and retain enough skilled sanders to meet demand.
The quality variability problem no training can solve
Even with the right retention and perfect training, a skilled group of technicians will still produce inconsistent results between them. This variability becomes magnified across complex hull geometries. Manual sanding introduces human variability into a process that demands perfection, where boat builders need consistent, defect-free finishes for both aesthetics and structural integrity.
These quality control challenges lead directly to rework costs and delivery delays. In an industry where customers pay premium prices for flawless finishes, inconsistent sanding work can trigger expensive rework cycles that destroy profit margins and damage customer relationships.
Working conditions that drive business risk
Alongside the fatigue, discomfort, and health concerns manual sanding technicians face when interfacing with fiberglass regularly are the business concerns—like workplace insurance. Workers face chronic exposure to fiberglass particles despite protective equipment, and dust collection tools are often not used properly. The long-term health implications extend beyond the individual technician, making companies higher-risk propositions for insurers.
Accumulated fiberglass particulate significantly increases fire risk, limiting the number of insurers willing to provide coverage and driving up premiums. Companies find themselves managing not just production schedules, but complex safety protocols designed to minimize both worker exposure and facility risk. The dust and debris generated during sanding operations require sophisticated ventilation systems that often fall short in real-world conditions.
Operational chaos: when every challenge interconnects
These challenges converge to create operational chaos at the facility level. Scheduling becomes a constant juggling act around technician availability, with peak season presenting an amplified version of the problem: when customer orders surge, the shortage of skilled sanders becomes a critical bottleneck. And companies can’t simply hire temporary workers—the expertise required means that capacity constraints are unavoidable, forcing difficult conversations with customers about delivery schedules.
In this environment, cost management becomes nearly impossible: recruitment costs, training expenses, insurance premiums, and overtime pay create a complex web that is unavoidable when relying solely on manual sanding technicians.
This isn’t theoretical—it’s the daily reality for marine manufacturers worldwide. And the most innovative leaders have looked to automation to break free of the existential threats that compounding costs represent for their facilities. “We’ve always embraced innovation that makes us better,” said Pat Healey, CEO of Viking Yachts, a global leader with over 6,000 custom luxury yachts delivered and a 1-million-square-foot manufacturing facility in New Jersey. “We believe robotics will help our team build smarter, faster and more efficiently – and that’s what it’s all about.”
Why common automation falls short
Some automation solutions have attempted to address these challenges, but fall short of the mark. Most robotic sanding solutions are fixed in place, forcing boatbuilders to move component pieces to designated sanding locations within large, busy warehouses. This is not only hugely disruptive, but for larger components, could prove impossible. More fundamentally, existing robotic sanding solutions simply automate orbital sanders, which work fine for final polishing but cannot smooth the surface imperfections (e.g., warping, dimpling) that appear when fiberglass parts are removed from molds.
Only longboard sanding can handle this stage of first-pass sanding, and Viam has built the first robotic longboarding and block sanding solution that automates this approach. Our robotic sanding system is mobile, allowing smooth integration into existing operational flows, and designed specifically for this early, critical stage of the fiberglass sanding process, creating global smoothness across surfaces of any size, geometry, or range of imperfections. Our approach is engineered for the reality of fiberglass boat building.
The path forward: comprehensive solutions for complex problems
Adopting automation requires more than just buying robotic arms—it demands a comprehensive approach that starts with perception. Boatmakers know that the fiberglass molding process yields parts with significant variance and geometric irregularities to accurately position using CAD diagrams, so successful automation must adapt to what it actually sees on the part in front of it.
The future of marine manufacturing depends on solving these interconnected challenges holistically. The companies that successfully navigate this transformation will gain decisive competitive advantages in an industry where precision and reliability determine market leadership.
