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What’s Your Steady State?
Welding Well
By Mike Pantaleano
build baselines and establish its true steady state instead of using anecdotal or antiquated data about what it actu- ally takes to build their products. A good place to start is evaluating the health of the welding fleet through error reporting. As a real example, one end-user recently forgot to put coolant into a water-cooled system. A techni- cian working with the company used a cloud-based solution to identify the poorly performing system and deduce the problem. Automatic alerts via text and e-mail, such as for a system that suddenly shuts down or welds outside of specification, are standard features.
Another good place to start is iden- tification and replication of optimal welding parameters. We’ve all heard a welder boast that, “I like to weld hot and fast,” but who determines whether hot and fast yields the most produc- tivity? If it leads to intermittent fusion
If you ask an average welding- or fab- ricating-facility owner or manager to estimate the percentage of time their operators spend welding, they typ- ically guess 30 percent or more. However, boots-on-the-ground observations by Esab’s value-added engineering team members reveal an average of middle to high teens for the best semiautomatic gas-metal-arc welding (GMAW ) and cored-wire welding operations. Without knowing the actual cost of welding (or cutting), these owners and managers could shortchange themselves when estimating jobs. Their productivity increases result from instinct rather than data. Other than “a lot,” they’re likely unaware of actual costs related to doc- umentation and traceability as well.
The bottom line is that you can’t improve what you can’t measure, and the welding and fabrication industry is in the earliest stages of online data management. However, the rate of adoption should begin to accelerate as deploying an IIoT solution becomes simpler and easier, allowing fabricators to drive continuous improvement in three major areas: asset and produc- tivity management; traceability and documentation; and quality.
Easier Deployment
Most companies that should use an IIoT solution don’t, largely because they fear costs and complexity. While a mod- est-sized job shop may not have the IT resources of a large manufacturer, no longer is that a barrier for several reasons:
Mike Pantaleano
Vice President,
Data Driven Advantage/ Digital Solutions
Esab Welding &
Cutting Products mpantaleano@esab.com
• Greater availability of digital weld- ing and cutting systems are available with optional communications mod- ules (IIoT boxes).
• Universal connection modules can capture and communicate arc-on/off time and voltage and amperage data for companies with older analog equipment, and from virtually any power source with a positive and negative terminal.
• Cloud-based solutions such as Microsoft Azure simplify deployment. The IIoT box connects to a router (either wirelessly or by Ethernet cable), and the router sends information to the cloud, eliminating the need for a costly on-premise server.
• Federated or hybrid solutions, where on-premise servers aggregate data locally and then send data to the cloud in a single stream, can be used by companies with larger fleets. All transmissions use secured protocols, and data is pass-
word protected.
• Data dashboards, accessed from an internet-enabled device, are user- friendly. Clicking on a button generates high-level informa- tion such as arc-on time, number of weld sessions, errors and wire consump- tion. Clicking on a part number enables drilling down to find out who touched the part and when,
Esab WeldCloud dashboards provide high-level overviews, allowing managers to assess the health of their welding systems at a glance.
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and does so without the need to man- ually manipulate or extract data.
Asset and Productivity Management
After deploying a digital data-man- agement system, a company then can
and rework, slow and steady might be a better option.
Ideally, everyone welds using ideal, consistent and recommended param- eters. A data-management system enables a company to monitor its best welders or welding cells, link those weld-