Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Delve into 3 Leadership Techniques for Welding Quality Improvement

Be more insightful into 3 leadership techniques for improvements of welding quality and productivity.

You may find below information helpful:

The welding manager is in charge of allocating the required resources for attaining cost-effectiveness in the welding processes. He/ She is also responsible for maintaining equipment and consistently addressing throughput requirements with the quality level in line with the required standards.



For productivity improvement, managers must:
1. Lead by example
2. Standardize welding procedures
3. Diminish scrap, rework and warranty costs. 

Lead by example

The welding leader is required to be actively engaged in all the welding operations. Managers must hear shop-floor workers’ voices, consider new ideas before making any improvements. Productivity of the common operation can be enhanced 25-45% with just humble or without capital investment.

Project managers can improve the effectiveness of welding processes through writing daily schedules. Those schedules specify welders, shipping personnel, materials, quality. To manage welding operations, leaders should set daily goals that are specific, action oriented, measurable, realistic and timely.

Simply, managers should effectively listen to new ideas for any improvement. Written daily schedules and daily goals help smooth the welding process and ensure everything necessary done.

Standardize procedures

Successful managers should go for standardized procedures that make clear all the applicable basic variables specified in the contract documents. Both leaders and welders are required to share the common production goals with managers of other departments.  

Managers must be concious of the non-welding duties carried out by their welding workers and mitigate those activities. Being instinctively creative, welders will do everything needed to have the job done. They often perform tasks unrelated to their job description, and don’t always maximize the arc-on time.

Particular values of welding procedure variables are obtained from the procedure qualification record that verifies the correctness of welding procedure specification. Tables show basic variables for every welding code. Alternations beyond the limitations of essential variables from the procedure qualification record needs re-qualification of the procedure.

Welding codes, specifications, or standards make clear the procedure types and required qualifications for welding. Standard welding industry terms includes welding procedure specification (WPS), procedure qualification record (PQR), and welding qualification test report (WQTR). WPS demonstrates the process along with base materials, parameters, consumables and techniques. PQR records the real welding process along with based material, variables, consumables, optimal conditions. WQTR records the real proficiency a welder possesses to attain the required results in PQR.

Maintenance

As far as welding comes, any failure to equipment during the process will induce unsuccessful welds. That’s why equipment must be routinely maintained, and its performance checked.

Reduce rework and warranty costs

Welding workers need supervision to help them mitigate scrap, rejects and reworks – the main culprits of excessive welding costs. Equipment warranty costs must be written down and monitored. 

Sometimes, supervisors are in charge of too many welding workers. In other words, welders may lose their welding time while waiting for the supervisor to check the weld or decide their work. Helpers can be allocated to wait for the repairs at tool cribs or maintenance shops. They can be lift truck divers and get necessary materials or consumables. Those time killers are a waste of time to welders. In the market these days, enterprises can’t recruit an adequate number of welders to keep up with the production schedules.

Managers are required to record previous equipment accomplishments as well as failures, and review warranty claim data. Welding workers, designers, salespersons and the estimating department need know about the warranty experiences or changes of the shop operations for future result prediction. There require continuous improvements to guarantee success with the existing and brand new welded items.

Check, record welding operations

Managers should daily record the welding operations to enhance welding reliability and raise productivity.

Also, closely examine the established procedures, which often unveils inconsistencies between the welder and equipment. As such, changes can be made for easier-to-follow procedures.

Higher productivity can be associated with optimizing the existing gains without extra capital investment, just by knowing adjustments to make in the workforce use, equipment and methods. Gains can be cited as higher quality attained from attention to details, lowered costs due to more effective methods or different welding processes used, higher throughput, safety awareness that is another name of reduced lost time accidents, gaining more time on the work for the experienced and less time lavished handling accidents.


0 comments:

Post a Comment