The True Cost of Welding Quality

How much is rework costing your company?

Introduction:

Poor welding quality may not always be obvious, but it has a significant impact on your bottom line. While major failures and project overages are easy to spot, it's the small, seemingly insignificant issues that often go unnoticed. These issues, like missed callouts, poor fit-up, skill gaps, and material defects, can bleed profits from your welding projects. When these problems become the norm, they create a culture of waste and low quality. The purpose of today's blog post is to delve into the true cost of welding quality issues and how those issues can affect your business.

The Hidden Costs:

Many seemingly small quality issues occur daily in welding shops, and they add up over time. They may seem inconsequential individually, but when stacked together, they can have a substantial impact on your company’s financial health. Left unaddressed, these problems become ingrained in your operations and harm your reputation, even if your motto is "Quality First."

Identifying and addressing welding quality issues at their source is crucial to avoiding cost overruns. A weld defect caught early during an in-process inspection may add a small amount of time, but it's far less costly than allowing the defect to progress to later stages. If a defect reaches machining, paint, or assembly, it risks wasting labor and materials. Worse yet, if it gets to the customer, your reputation is on the line, and it might cost you a valuable client.

The Public Impact:

Consider the potential consequences of a public welding failure. Many times, the result of a failed weld can lead to serious injury, or possibly death. Such incidents can make national news and be catastrophic for your company. In today's competitive market, maintaining a spotless reputation is essential, as one high-profile failure could lead to losing customers and revenue.

A Case Study:

To illustrate the true cost of welding quality, let's examine a scenario. Your welder, "Joe" performs a 12" long ¼" fillet weld, but an in-process inspection reveals porosity due to surface preparation issues. Joe must spend extra time grinding out the defective weld, rewelding it, and calling for a second inspection. None of this extra time was budgeted for, and none of it can be billed to the customer.

Here's a breakdown of the cost variance for this single weld:

Breakdown of Welding Costs

This example may show low cost; however, this single weld ended up costing 164% more than planned, and it disrupted the workflow. Imagine how often this scenario occurs in your shop and its cumulative impact on your operations. Over time this could end up costing your company a significant amount of money.

Conclusion:

The best way to defend against these costly issues is by having a well-trained welding team that understands quality requirements and how to meet them. JC Solutions is on a mission to help you build that team. Through targeted training and tailored process development, we can help you reduce or eliminate time spent fixing and reworking defective welds, ultimately improving your bottom line and reputation. Don't let poor welding quality continue to eat into your profits; invest in quality training and processes today.