Welding is a process where the result alone rarely explains the conditions. Who welded which joint, to which drawing and when, has to be retained before quality issues and audit requests can be answered.
A single product may have dozens or hundreds of weld joints, yet the log records only "unit N welding complete".
02
Distributing and recalling drawings is a job in itself
Dust and spatter destroy paper quickly.
03
Progress is not visible in real time
How far the schedule has actually progressed only becomes clear when logs are collected in the evening — too late to see delivery risk and reassign people.
Where welding and fabrication plants get stuck
Problems that come up repeatedly in implementation discussions.
Field issue
Per-joint history is not retained
A single product may have dozens or hundreds of weld joints, yet the log records only "unit N welding complete". When one joint has a problem, who welded it under what conditions is unknown.
Field issue
Distributing and recalling drawings is a job in itself
Dust and spatter destroy paper quickly. Every revision means printing, distributing and collecting the old copies again.
Field issue
Progress is not visible in real time
How far the schedule has actually progressed only becomes clear when logs are collected in the evening — too late to see delivery risk and reassign people.
Field issue
Audit packages are assembled by hand every time
Regulated products such as pharmaceutical vessels require operator qualification, weld conditions and NDT results submitted together. Scattered records mean re-collating for every submission.
What gets connected
Machine signals and floor entry combined into history.
What is connected
How it is collected
What it produces
Drawing revision
Engineering folder or PDM integration
Only current drawings distributed to tablets
Weld joint
Joints defined from the drawing
Per-joint instruction and completion history
Operator and qualification
Employee and qualification records
Only qualified operators perform the work
Weld conditions
Manual entry or welder integration
Deviation checking, quality cause analysis
Inspection results (RT, PT, UT)
Inspection entry
Per-joint pass/fail and rework history
Build sequence
Nothing is converted all at once. High-impact areas are built and verified first.
STEP 01
Define drawings and joints
Digitise drawings and define weld joints. Once the joint is the unit, there is somewhere for history and inspection results to attach.
STEP 02
Distribute tablets to the floor
Make the drawing and instruction visible at the work position. The recall burden and the risk of working to an old revision disappear together.
STEP 03
Collect work history
Record start and completion per joint with the operator. Entry has to be a couple of taps for the data to actually accumulate.
STEP 04
Connect inspection and audit
Attach NDT results and operator qualification to the history so submission packages are produced by query.
Applied solutions
Scope is composed after reviewing equipment and workflow.
Questions that come up on welding and fabrication floors.
Do we have to define every weld joint?
Not necessarily. Define the joints that carry quality risk or are subject to inspection, and group the rest by operation. It is a balance between management effort and the traceability you need.
Can weld conditions be read from the machine?
Where the welder supports communication, yes. Where it does not, conditions are captured as entry. Either way the history exists, which is the objective.
Is operator qualification managed in the system too?
Registering qualifications lets work requiring them be assigned to, or recorded against, qualified people. That information then appears in the audit package.
Will tablets survive dust and spatter?
Protective cases and mounting handle it. Work positions and movement patterns are reviewed first to choose between fixed and handheld.
How are inspection results linked?
The inspector selects the joint and enters the result and remarks, which attach to that history. A failure triggers a rework instruction, and that history is retained as well.
Sources and standards
Terms and procedures on this page follow the public standards and official sources below. Figures are as of each source's publication date.