Statistical Method to Model the Quality Inconsistencies of the Welding Process
This addresses quality control issues in the automotive manufacturing industry, but it is incremental as it applies existing statistical techniques to a specific domain.
The paper tackles the problem of quality inconsistencies in Resistance Spot Welding by developing a statistical method to model welding quality measurements based on process parameters, resulting in reduced physical testing for efficiency and cost savings.
Resistance Spot Welding (RSW) is an important manufacturing process that attracts increasing attention in automotive industry. However, due to the complexity of the manufacturing process, the corresponding product quality shows significant inconsistencies even under the same process setup. This paper develops a statistical method to capture the inconsistence of welding quality measurements (e.g., nugget width) based on process parameters to efficiently monitor product quality. The proposed method provides engineering efficiency and cost saving benefit through reduction of physical testing required for weldability and verification. The developed method is applied to the real-world welding process.