HOW TO MANUALLY INTEGRATE PQR, WPS AND WPQ AT THE BEGINNING OF A WELDING PROJECT IN SIRFULL WELDING ?

23 April 2020

IMPORT YOUR DATA INTO SIRFULL™ WELDING

Procedure Qualification Record (PQR), Welder Performance Qualification (WPQ) and Welding Procedure Specification (WPQ) are the starting data of the very first user of SIRFULL™ Welding.

 

These documents contain the essential data: range qualified, materials used, welding processes, qualification of welders, thicknesses, diameters, assembly diagram, intensity, etc.

 

Therefore, these 3 documents will have to be imported into the solution. For simplification, we deliberately ignore the non-destructive testing reports, material certificates in this article, because the logic that will follow also applies to them.

 

THE PROBLEM is that all these documents are either: on paper, PDF, EXCEL, WORD or all 4 at the same time.

 

Regarding this issue, and before starting a SIRFULL™ Welding project, ALL our customers have asked us this question:

 

PART 1 – HOW DO I INTEGRATE MY PQR, WPQ AND WPQ (MANUALLY OR AUTOMATICALLY)?

 

Preliminary note: You can use the SIRFULL data recovery service (option). Nevertheless, you have the possibility to do it yourself, via the different techniques that will be discussed below.

 

Option 1 – Excel import, known as “bulk importation” (semi-automatic method)

 

SIRFULL™ Welding supports the import of Excel files. This argument alone may lead you to believe that a simple “copy/paste” of your Excel files into the software interface is enough to import your data. However, the copy/paste of non-homogeneous Excel files, in this case, does not exist.

 

Indeed, whether with SIRFULL™ Welding or any other software, you must edit your Excel files in a format that the destination solution knows. This is also called “mapping”. That’s why we talk about the semi-automatic method. To map, it is necessary to put the data from your Excel files into “new clean Excel files”.

 

Thus, SIRFULL™ Welding gives you access to compatible import templates for your PQR, WPS, WPQ, etc…

– Advantage: faster than manual retyping

– Constraint: the number of fields in a DMOS or QMOS is high, and by association, so is the wrongdoing rate. Indeed, the slightest character error can lead to an import failure. The sum of time lost on import errors can – in the worst case – be higher than the time that could have been spent on manual import.

 

Option 2 – “Accelerated” manual importation

 

The manual import consists of copying field by field your welding documents into the application forms. Please note that in the majority of cases, data entry is assisted and accelerated by integrated technical libraries.

 

Manual importation is worth considering, when :

 

few documents need to be imported (we consider a “few” between 15-20 documents).

 

– too many “technical names” such as grades, materials, filler metals, etc., are not present in the technical libraries of the solution.

 

Note on technical and normative libraries: Indeed, you should know that the application SIRFULL™ Welding natively has a very extensive normative and technical libraryies (500 welding gas references, 600 grades, 500 commercial and standardised names of filler metals etc.). Sometimes these libraries are not sufficient to cover all possibilities. In such cases, it is necessary to reference these labels in the libraries. In this case, manual import is then preferred.

 

– you do not have your welding documents in EXCEL format

 

The more complex your documents are, the more the manual importation will be considered.

 

Part 2 – How long does it take to manually import my data?

 

Before asking this question, you must first know “what” exactly to import. In reality, no matter what happens, you don’t need to manually re-import “everything” into SIRFULL™ Welding.

Indeed, the application has an engine for creating WPS from a reference PQR.

 

Here’s how it works:

 

1. Re-fill a PQR ;

2. Assign this PQR as a baseline for given WPS;

3. SIRFULL™ Welding automatically copies all PQR data into your new WPS form;

4. Adjust the parameters (angles, thicknesses…) necessary to your needs in the newly created WPS.

 

Therefore, retyping your PQR is the only time – with a few small exceptions – when you do a manual importation.

 

Besides, SIRFULL™ Welding offers many other tools to get rid of “useless” retyping:

 

– passes duplicator,

– PQR/WPQ/WPQ duplicator,

– Assembly and pass drawings available in the application (more than 500),

– Numerous automation algorithms.

 

In the end, a PQR takes on 10 min average to fill, sometimes less. For example, 30 documents to be imported would take less than a day.

 

Notes on range qualified: since this interpretation depends on your expertise, we do not consider the import of these as pure manual retyping.

 

3 – Conclusion

 

  1. The import of your welding data can be done via EXCEL but under a certain format and “mapping” requirements.
  2. Manual re-entry is greatly facilitated by numerous automatisms, including an automatic WPS generator from a baseline PQR and other means (like fields linked to technical and regulatory libraries). It is recommended when the effort/time ratio is lower than that of the EXCEL mass import.
  3. If these 2 options do not suit you, SIRFULL offers a data recovery service (extra cost)

 

Remember that the transfer of your welding documents/data will only occur once at the beginning of your SIRFULL™ Welding project.

 


To go further:

 

SIRFULL™ Welding offers many functionalities and applications dedicated to the management of the welding activity; we invite you to discover them on our site.

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About SIRFULL

Sirfull is a software vendor with a strong industrial culture and French know-how, which develops solutions that enable its customers to anticipate changes in their market.

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