Steel Work Reinvented: Arkansas Plants Lead a High-Tech Industry Revolution

A Big River Steel employee looks on at the plant's electric arc furnace. (Courtesy U.S. Steel)

The steel workers of 2025 look very different from their counterparts years ago.

Today’s steel workers don’t leave the hot, dangerous mill with a dirty face. They aren’t coughing up silica dust particles or struggling to put food on the family table.

The steel workers of 2025 work with some of the most advanced technology on the market, all from the comfort of a control room. They’re highly-paid professionals in a legacy industry that’s on the cutting-edge of automation.

That’s true in Arkansas, particularly at the Big River Steel and Lexicon Inc., and soon, Hybar, which are among the most advanced steel producing and fabricating plants in the world.

‘Automation,  Automation, Automation’

Dave Stickler is bold about his affinity for automated technology. He calls Big River Steel, the $1.3 billion Osceola plant where he served as CEO from 2015-2021, “a technology company that just happens to make steel.”

“Our goal was to be the world’s most environmentally sustainable steel producer and to have a focus on technology,” Stickler, also the founder and CEO of Hybar LLC, says.

The company achieved its goal, becoming in 2017 the first steel mill in the world to achieve LEED certification, a milestone achievement in an industry that is responsible for 7-10% of global carbon emissions.

More importantly, steel’s green revolution didn’t come at the expense of the yield; Stickler says Big River Steel produces 5,000 tons of steel per worker annually, compared with the industry standard of 1,000 tons per worker.

“How did we do it? We automated the heck out of everything. Automation, automation, automation,” Stickler says. “We kept bureaucracy out of the organization – you don’t need a whole lot of people to produce high-quality steel – and we really focused on machine learning and data mining.”

Production at Big River Steel is fully automated, and the same will be true at Hybar LLC, a $700 million rebar plant that started producing its first structural rods in May. Stickler expects to achieve LEED certification there as well, and Hybar is on track to be the first ever steel mill to depend fully on renewable energy.

“We have a 105 megawatt solar facility and 160 megawatt-hours of battery storage, so we’ll also be LEED certified,” he says. “We’ll have four to five times the labor productivity of our nearest competitor.”

And Stickler isn’t the only steel magnate driving the industry forward. Little Rock-based Lexicon has also embraced automation throughout its structural steel fabrication facilities.

“We currently operate four robotic assembly lines with 11 total robots, and we offer a fully automated fitting and welding solution,” says Steve Grandfield, chief operating officer.

Those robots are responsible for fitting and then welding custom structural components onto steel beams that go on to be used in construction applications. And later this year, Lexicon will begin operating robotic production lines at its facility in Blytheville that are even more advanced.

“The new robotic system is a little bigger in scale. A big floor truss or a roof truss for building a stadium, or a large convention center, or a data center, can be fitted up and then fully welded out by the robot,” Grandfield says.

The robots are so productive that Lexicon had to hire additional workers to operate them.

Lexicon sent its workers to the Zeman plant in Austria, where the robotics were manufactured, to learn how to use them. (Zeman has since been purchased by Lincoln Electronic, an American company.) Grandfield says these days, workers only go on the production floor to assist the robots.

“We believe at Lexicon that the future of manufacturing is humans plus machines, which will empower us to work smarter, safer and ultimately, more sustainably,” he says.

It’s similar at Hybar.

“Thirty years ago, the steel industry was 80% brawn and 20% brains; at Hybar, we’re 90% brains and 10% brawn,” Stickler says.

Data Innovations

Steel plant innovations don’t stop at hardware; Stickler points to the advanced monitoring systems in place throughout the facilities he’s led, which assists in preventing problems and improving processes.

“We collect everything. If something goes wrong at the mill, and I ask, ‘why did it break down?’ they better not tell me it was a random event,” he says. “If you look at enough data, historical data, and you analyze it, you can see predictive patterns.”

The data allows the automated machinery to notify operators of potential problems before they happen. When Stickler builds his next steel plant – “We might build another one in Arkansas,” he says – the machines will be designed to make adjustments automatically.

Lexicon collects and uses data similarly. Efforts to modernize started in 2022, when the company switched to using digital records. Now, staff feeds data into the BRIQ Copilot platform, an artificial intelligence tool that aids in financial forecasting and project management for construction companies.

“Copilot goes and mines all that data and provides the answers in seconds,” said Justin Lareau, vice president of analytics and IT at Lexicon. “Utilizing drone technology has empowered us to start leveraging an AI component as well, that to us, on the safety front, feels like it’ll be game changing,” creating digital twins of construction and production sites to identify potential hazards.

What hasn’t changed in the steel industry is the importance of the steel worker. He may have different credentials than the steel worker of 1925, but his contribution is vital, Stickler said.

“The main driver of success on these projects – I’ve seen it my whole career – is the employees,” he said.

The average salary for a Hybar employee?

“$140,000 a year. That’s a guarantee,” Stickler said. “And when I make a guarantee, I leave myself a little cushion, so don’t be surprised if these workers, on average, are making $150,000 a year.”