Does your company want the profitability and competitive advantage of welding excellence? What’s standing in the way? Two years ago I started a survey poll asking manufacturing welding engineers “what do you think are the Top 2 biggest obstacles to welding excellence in American manufacturing, in the facilities you are personally familiar with?”
Many welding engineers responded, and here were the top answers as of April 4, 2012:
20% Staff don’t support weld requirements, and force upstream problems on welding.
20% Poor welding process knowledge in the design team.
15% Unqualified people dictate process without honoring Welding Engineering expertise.
14% Manufacturing welded assemblies with NO degreed welding engineer.
7% Welding Engineers lack time/support to find and justify the best solutions.
5% The Manufacturer is too intently managing the economic death of the plant to invest and save it.
(In general, most WE’s picked at least one of the top two answers, then their second pick ranged among the other choices. The other answers received only one or two votes. You can see them in the poll.)
It follows logically from this survey that if you want to remove obstacles and create welding excellence in your company, that those issues must be addressed.
Additional “gold” came in the comments responding to the poll, which I’ve added below. A key point for me is that because welding is the most complex process, it requires core expertise that can reach to the upper echelons of the company: the need is just as valid as for Tool and Die, or Quality, or OP Ex, or for Information Technology. Even Six Sigma Blackbelts fall flat on their DMAIC’s when it’s a welding process project, yet when a Smart Welding Engineer is unleashed… the problem is quickly resolved.
The Title and corresponding role of “Welding Engineer” is far too limited in most company structures to enable excellence in welding processes. How many companies have a Director of Welding Technologies, or a Manufacturing Welding Engineering Manager? Very few. They are just as rare as the highly profitable welding operations they could produce.
Poll Comments: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Brian Dobben 
Visionary Welding 