Welding in the Industry 4.0 world

What does Industry 4.0 mean to the average fabricator? Not much.

When The FABRICATOR asked “Do you know what Industry 4.0 is and what it can mean for your business?” in its 2017 readership study, 78 percent of the fabricators surveyed reported “no.” Not too many seem to realize that they are in the midst of a new industrial revolution—at least according to the industry pundits that tend to coin these phrases.

What the average fabricator does know is that its welding services have to be consistently topnotch. That keeps the shop in the good graces of its customers and helps to boost its reputation within the metal fabricating community.

What the average fabricator may not realize is that Industry 4.0—the emergence of more automation and data exchange between machines in the manufacturing arena—can help welding operations of all sizes meet expectations from even the most demanding of customers. In this interconnected world, a small shop can be as reliable and as responsive as its largest welding competitors.

How It Happens

Interconnectivity among welding power sources, software, and manufacturing decision-makers makes this possible. Data pulled from the welding process ensures that the decisions being made are based on the latest information available.

But this just doesn’t happen with the introduction of a wireless router and the downloading of some freeware. It involves intelligent power sources, robots, specially configured data collection and storage systems, and weld monitoring software that is able to feed the information to various platforms, whether it’s a 4-inch smartphone screen or an 80-in. flat screen in the engineering office. The software has to be flexible enough to let the fabricator select what data is tracked to avoid information overload. All of this is integrated to provide a complete picture of the entire welding process.

What does the software track? Everything that is part of the welding procedure specification (WPS)—the essential joint characteristics that make or break a weld. It tracks items such as the wire feed speed, amps, volts, weld duration, and heat input. The monitoring software continuously keeps tabs on the welding process and records the prescribed welding parameters as the joint is created for each job on every shift—at least for a designated time period.

The final arbiter of weld quality is no longer just the eye of the welder or weld engineer overseeing the process. Now a fabricator has the data that gives it the feedback to confirm or reject a joint, not just the thumbs-up from an experienced welding expert that likes the look and feel of the joint. This feedback is assurance that the weld conforms to the established WPS.

This interconnected setup is not limited to just large welding operations with hundreds of power sources. A shop with only 10 power sources can use such a system and expect to see production efficiencies—and perhaps cost savings—in the near term.

As author and newspaper columnist Bill Vaughan warned, however, fabricators must be vigilant in staying on top of welding quality efforts. “To err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer,” Vaughan wrote.

As the industry moves toward more automation, fabricators can fall prey to this maxim. A person can make a mistake, but it requires automation to make the same mistake thousands of times in a row without noticing.

Why Does It Happen?

Some manufacturers are already there, and others are being pushed that way. In both instances, weld monitoring is becoming a necessary part of doing business. Here are some examples:

• A manufacturer is in a supply chain where any significant recall of a part can be a substantial financial hit for all companies involved. As a result, precision welding is required consistently. For example, if the material thickness of a part changes slightly, the part can make it through stamping and bending without much of an issue, but that small change in thickness is going to change the bend radius and create part fit-up problems that result in bad welds. These issues often can be detected with weld monitoring.

The system also needs to keep tabs on the travel speeds of the welding robot to ensure production rates are maintained and the job remains profitable. If down the road a recall occurs, the manufacturer will be able to share production data for the weld in question, which will be useful in trying to determine the scope of the problem.

• Other manufacturers may not have the luxury of producing welding verification reports only when they’re needed. They might have to produce these types of reports for regularly scheduled audits with large customers.

With welding monitoring software in place, the manufacturer can produce the reports quickly to meet the administrative requirement for these developing supply chain relationships. It also proves to the customer that the fab shop can step up to meet demands that might otherwise swamp peers that don’t have the IT infrastructure or in-house expertise to develop such welding verification reports.

• Real-time production process monitoring is another capability of a modern weld monitoring system. A weld engineer or a welder can scrutinize real-time production information to ensure that it matches what is laid out in the WPS. Even if the shop doesn’t have enough perceived welding expertise internally, it can contract with a welding engineer to offer insight for the launch of a new job. This type of scrutiny may seem like overkill, but it can lead to reduced rework and scrap down the line if the quality issues are caught during the same shift and not weeks later at the customer’s facility.

• A shop can use a monitoring system to standardize power source setups, saving them time and effort. A welder or weld engineer can sit at a desk in front of a computer, make a revision to a welding job, save it, and then copy those details from the one job to the other machines—pretty much in one morning. The alternative is to adjust each welding power source manually using the unit’s control panels.

Keep Security in Mind

A fabricator must keep in mind security when introducing this level of networking to the manufacturing environment. It can be great to have unfettered access remotely—as might be the case if such a weld monitoring system is based on cloud technology—but when the systems are integrated, the fabricator has to determine just who is going to have access.

It’s great to have a welder or a weld engineer be able to modify jobs while on assignment elsewhere or on vacation, but that also opens the system up to parties that may be able to piggyback off the remote connection and then access the manufacturer’s IT systems. So it is important to keep security in the forefront when designing the internal or cloud-based weld monitoring system. A manufacturer wants to ensure that the only people with access to the monitoring files and jobs are those who are deemed necessary to have access to the information.

Security is much more than unique user logins with strong passwords, a firewall, antivirus software, and regular software updates. It is a process of analyzing the infrastructure and developing layers to protect it. Good security practice begins during product acquisition and concludes long after decommission. It is a topic worthy of its own field of study and should not be casually dismissed as the ramifications of lax practices are a huge liability to fabricators of any size.

Initial considerations about a weld monitoring system might include who has access to view and modify the data, but bad actors may use an unknown vulnerability in one system to gain access to a completely different system within your organization. As threatening as that may sound, fabricators shouldn’t avoid new technology solely because of security fears. Security is another name for an ancient field that dates back to before humans implemented the pointy stick. It needs to be approached as a fire would—an amazing technology that requires understanding of the apparent risks and mitigating them. Those who don’t know the risks should ask a wizard.

Just the Beginning

While fabricators may not know just what Industry 4.0 holds for them, they can recognize opportunities for production efficiency. Modern weld monitoring systems hold the promise to do just that for shops of any size.

In fact, with the data gathering that is possible with such a system, a small fabrication shop can document and analyze its own welding processes like the larger competitors. It also can scale those information tools as it grows with its current customers or takes on new ones.

For many metal fabricators, the new industrial revolution may start in the welding shop.