T. 9000: A Case Study

Introduction
Last quarter, the president of Cross-Tex Pellet Smokers, announced that the company is gearing up to increase production of our flagship pellet smoker, the PS 9000. Due to the projected demand of the PS 9000, the current facility and manufacturing process lacks the efficiency to keep up with current demand and projected demand of the PS 9000. He stated the fact that the company will have to expand our manufacturing facilities along with an increase of efficiency in each process of manufacturing the smokers. Each manager of the manufacturing department was given the task of preparing a recommendation report for their area of the manufacturing process to increase efficiency, production, and quality of the PS 9000. The purpose

According to Chen, (2015), “To realize automatic welding similar to welder, three essential technical approach are inevitable, the first is to sense and acquire information of the welding process in real time, similar to human sensing organs for detecting the interior and exterior welding conditions; the next is to identify characteristics of the welding process, i.e. modeling the welding process; the third is to develop the human-brain-like controller to reason the controlling strategy” (p.4). These intelligent welders can continue the welding process, whereas a human will have to stop the process briefly to analyze the weld. The intelligent welders, ideally, would only need to stop the welding process for routine maintenance and an occasional pause to prevent overheating and to analyze the weld. Another positive aspect of the intelligent welding manufacturing is the fact that the weld is of higher quality. I will recommend that Cross-Tex Pellet Smokers begin to move towards intelligent welding manufacturing.

This report includes four sections: a) research plan, b) results, c) discussion, and d) recommendations.

Research Plan
I will study the use of intelligent welding to replace our professional welders. I followed a three part research plan:
1. Develop evaluation criteria
2. Gather

Gather Information
My knowledge of artificial intelligence technology is slim to none. I gathered information from searching the internet for scholarly journals that included the terms, “intelligent” and “welding” in the same subject. I also gathered information from Tarleton’s library database using the same terms. Lincoln Electric’s webpage contained information that I was able to research (Lincoln is a producer for a wide array of welding machines).

As I researched the information I gathered, I learned that intelligent welding uses different sensing technology to be able to produce a weld similar to that of a professional welder.

Study artificial intelligence technology
The professional welder can observe the weld, hear the sounds of the arc, and feel the forces of the welding torch as he or she is welding. This information, along with experience, tells the welder which welding parameters need to be adjusted. The welder will have to adjust the current or voltage, increase or decrease the welding rate and wire feed rate, and constantly change the torch orientation and distance from the weld pool. The use of intelligent welding will allow the parameters to automatically adjust without having to stop the welding