Variation in the hierarchy of welding production

Other conference contribution, 2010

Development of strategies for cost effective welding quality assurance is depending on knowledge from and communication between many functions in and supporters to the value chain of production of welded structures. Product development dimensions and estimates likelihood of failure, production monitors and develops process capability and quality/inspection assures measurement system accuracy and precision and estimates probability of detection. Their purpose is of course to avoid catastrophic failures on the field. This investigation reveals that the view and language on risk-based inspection on welds is not the same between industries and not the same across different functions within the same industry. The consequence is that the underlying problem to welding inspection of inner faults seems not to be a technical issue in first-hand, instead development rather is caught on difficulties on how to create overall consensus on how both root causes and risks with quality variation in the tolerance chain should be identified, assessed and mitigated. This displaces the issue from technical to managerial. This investigation supports an elevation of the issue in order to facilitate future interdisciplinary development to bridge horizontal and vertical fragmentation. Three explaining concepts and one hypothesis on root cause are introduced: • Concepts for elevated problem characterization are: between industries differences, within industries range of perspectives, and a hierarchy of system levels related to WHY, WHAT and HOW. • A hypothesis used for problem characterization is the difference between industries where NDT development is driven by the existence of public authority requirements and technical directions or not, which results in different prerequisites (will and need) to technically develop new NDT technology and procedures.