Digitalization
Stop the hassle and just get to work
20 June 2017
Imagine 40 welders in a workshop. Each of them has 4–5 different welding qualifications which put the total at around a hefty 200 qualification certificates. As usual, these documents have to be prolonged every six months.
Vesa Tiilikka
From there on, it’s just elementary math: that’s 400 signatures per year to keep welding projects rolling without a hitch. And even when you’re not putting in the hours for those signatures, you need to keep a close eye on them to make sure no one’s qualifications expire.
That’s just your mid-sized workshop. In bigger companies, it only gets more complicated and time-consuming.
Want a real-life example of manual qualification certificate management? Just a brief while ago, one company used several separate Word files to keep track of certificates: one file per one welder per one qualification. So the qualification certificates of just one welder could be spread out over 4–5 separate files. The welding coordinators would then open and update these files one by one. That’s a tedious task, and we all know that repetitive, manual work is prone to errors. Welding professionals want to spend their time at work doing something more worthwhile and constructive.
And there's even more
Welding procedure specifications (WPS) are a whole other matter for a welding coordinator. If your hundreds of different WPSs only exist in a pile of papers and a new welding project is kicking off, how are you going to check whether you already have the necessary WPS? You lose time looking for the right WPS, and if suitable ones don’t exist, they have to be put together ASAP. When you flip through hundreds of documents, you can miss something – and that can get very costly very quickly.
For demanding WPSs, a Welding Procedure Qualification Test must be performed as part of common procedure to ensure compliance with standards. These tests rack up a bill of a couple of thousand every time. If they are done by mistake for WPSs that already exist, you’ve got a money pit right there. Say goodbye to your margin.
Make it digital and kick back (a little)
Does the above sound like your daily chaos of never-ending, time-consuming and – between you and me – frustrating micro-management tasks? Meanwhile, at the back of your mind, a nagging voice is telling you there are so many bigger and better things you could be doing with your time.
Imagine a software module that solves these problems and does the work for you in seconds.
Too good to be true? Read more about WeldEye for Welding Procedure and Qualification Management.
Vesa Tiilikka
Product Manager, Software at Kemppi Oy.
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