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A Technology Roadmap for Welding and Joining in Canada — Applying the Vision to Unravel the Downward Spiral
Table of Contents
- Foreword
- A Technology Roadmap for Welding and Joining in Canada — 2006 to 2016
- Executive Summary
- Introduction
- A Profile of the Materials Joining Industry
- The Challenges to the Canadian Welding and Joining Industry
- Vision and Goals
- Applying the Vision to Unravel the Downward Spiral
- A Solutions Matrix for Welding and Joining in Canada
- Projects — Making the Vision Happen
- Concluding Remarks
- Appendix A — Welding and Joining TRM Steering Committee Members
- Appendix B — Welding and Joining TRM Forum Participants
The key to moving forward with the Vision is to find the way to unwind the downward spiral of the welding and joining industry in Canada, to identify the points at which the positive pressure can be applied and then to build a framework for moving forward. The exhibit below demonstrates the product development process seen from the point of view of welding as a commodity technology and welding as an enabling technology.
Figure 8 — Welding and Joining as an Enabling Technology: Strategic Advantage
It is clear that when welding and joining is seen as an enabling technology, the result is a strategic advantage for individual manufacturing companies and for the welding and joining industry — and hence Canadian manufacturing — as a whole.
In developing a new product, re-engineering a product or repairing a product, a company is looking to achieve the highest ratio of output value to input costs consistent with customer requirements. This usually means achieving a specified level of quality at the least cost. A particular "product technology content" is associated with any product and is the result of design choices that are made by design teams, usually consisting of engineers supported by a variety of other product specialists.
If welding and joining is seen as an enabling technology, then a directed search will take place for the best welding processes, materials and equipment that can be incorporated in the product technology content to meet the company-wide goal of achieving the highest ratio of output value to input costs, thereby building a strategic advantage for the company.
When this process is repeated across a wide range of companies in user industries, the result is the creation of demand for technologists, engineers and researchers on welding and joining. This in turn creates a demand at the level of colleges and universities to provide the necessary learning programs and resources for welding and joining and also attracts funding, usually from governments and industry, to respond to the educational demand. Once colleges and universities are providing the appropriate welding and joining programs, this in turn pushes the support and resources for welding and joining research and development at the same institutions and in specialized research institutions.
So it can be seen that the result of many companies in a range of industries seeking a competitive advantage from welding and joining is the creation of a strategic advantage for the industry as a whole that begins to unwind and reverse the observed downward spiral.
The Vision Statement correctly places the emphasis on "recognition and development" of Canadian welding and joining technology and applications. The statement underlines the notion that excellence exists in Canada but that in needs to be better organized and packaged so that it is first recognized and used and then secondly further developed.
Design Team
The key to "recognition" and unwinding the downward spiral of the welding and joining sector is the inclusion of welding and joining in the product design team as well as the availability of high quality information on technical processes. This is most likely to occur through the inclusion of a welding and joining specialist directly in the design team. For companies that already have such a specialist, inclusion in the design team should not be a big step. But many companies may not immediately be prepared to hire such a person — if in fact they can find one — so that the availability of high quality information on technical welding and joining processes to the rest of the design team is an absolute necessity. At the present time, such information is scattered in different places and not readily available in an understandable format for design team members that are outside of welding and joining. A full science exists in relation to industrial design and also integrated product and process design so that welding and joining does not have to invent some new process — simply to integrate with existing management processes.
The importance for companies to have dedicated welding and joining specialists cannot be over-emphasized. It is not simply a question of bringing key knowledge to the table. It is also a question of having welding and joining people who are prepared to take knowledge-based responsibility for implementing radical, possibly risky advances in product or process technology that go beyond standard marketplace offerings. This is the essence of innovation.
This is probably the most important pressure point that needs to be tackled, in particular with the primary strategic audience — CEOs and other business leaders. But to be effective, it will be necessary to demonstrate how in fact the strategic company advantage can be achieved and how it can be quantified in terms of price and/or quality.
Other positive pressure points may exist at the Education and Research levels. In other words, by creating a world-class welding and joining engineering program in Canada it may be possible to influence the way welding and joining is viewed and integrated in the industrial design process. Similarly, it may be possible to "kick-start" the process by convincing governments to invest heavily in a Canadian research centre for welding and joining. But such efforts have been attempted in the past and while they may cause a blip on the screen in the short term they will be unlikely to make a sustainable impact on recognition of the welding and joining industry. The key to implementing the Vision really is to focus on the user industries and on top management in those industries to fully integrate welding and joining into the product design process.
Leadership
This will take leadership. Much more than is currently evident in the Canadian welding and joining community. And we are not speaking here simply of industry associations and organizations. The leadership required is that of key individuals in the user industries that are already convinced of the strategic advantage that welding and joining can bring to manufacturing and who are ready to work together to "spread the gospel". But that team of key leaders in the user industries is going to require a strong resource group from welding and joining that is capable of systematically developing the tools that will be required to fully integrate welding and joining into product design — design checklists, flow charts, matrices, life-cycle analysis, economic contribution analysis etc. This task involves taking the current body of knowledge on welding and joining in Canada and recasting it in terms of product design and manufacturing excellence and also ensuring that knowledge from other jurisdictions is constantly brought into the Canadian knowledge base.
Beyond simply organizing the knowledge, leaders from the user industries and the welding and joining resource team will need to find innovative ways to demonstrate welding and joining technologies and systematic methods to implement those technologies in Canadian companies and to quantify the benefits of doing so. For this a formal Solutions Matrix is required.
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