Welding Control System

A welding unit of a production facility adapted to weld at least two mechanical entities at a welding seam together for generating a complex mechanical entity of an assembly to be manufactured by said production facility, wherein said welding unit is monitored and/or controlled by a welding control system comprising at least one welding control server having

• a determination unit configured to determine for each type of mechanical entity a corresponding welding error rate on the basis of weld data received from welding units of said production facility,
• a calculation unit configured to calculate for each type of mechanical entity the number of faulty mechanical entities of the respective entity type within said assembly depending on the number of mechanical entities used within said assembly and the determined welding error rate of the respective entity type and further configured to weigh the calculated number of faulty mechanical entities of the respective entity type with a predetermined manufacturing effort value of said entity type to calculate required fault costs for the different entity types and an evaluation unit configured to evaluate the calculated manufacturing fault costs for identifying significant welding operations performed by welding units of said production facility.

An evaluation apparatus for a production facility having at least one welding unit providing weld data during welding operations of mechanical entities forming part of an assembly to be manufactured by said production facility, wherein the provided weld data associated with welded mechanical entities is processed to calculate for different entity types required manufacturing fault costs evaluated by said evaluation apparatus to identify significant welding operations of said production facility.

A method for monitoring welding operations of a plurality of welding units within a production facility which provide during welding operations of mechanical entities forming part of an assembly to be manufactured by said production facility weld data associated with the respective mechanical entities,

• said method comprising:
• determining for each type of mechanical entity a corresponding welding error rate on the basis of weld data received from welding units of said production facility, calculating for each type of mechanical entity the number of faulty mechanical entities of the respective entity type within said assembly, and
• weighting the number of faulty mechanical entities of the respective entity type with a predetermined manufacturing effort value.