Importance of welding
Welding technology is the most critical metal working technology for the industrial sectors that are required to assure long-term reliability, such as the construction of buildings, bridges and chemical plants, and the production of ships, vehicles and other transportation equipment.

Demand of welders is arising from the following industries – automotive, heavy metal fabrication, offshore platforms, chemical processing, wind power, structural fabrication, general fabrication, maintenance & repair, cross country pipeline, shipbuilding, LNG, thermal energy, railways.

The welding industry faces a pressing challenge in the growing lack of skilled welding operators. Many manufacturing operations struggle with every day as they work to keep their operations competitive.

There are two ways to address the welding operator shortage – increase the work force by training more operators; increase productivity with existing welding operators.

Effort to upgrade the skill level
Panasonic Welding Systems India organises several training programs to upgrade welding work force in India with the following purpose –

Train the welding work force about best practices in welding to reduce re-work and increase speed of production. Train the welding work force on latest technology in welding machines which support them to achieve best weld output. Train the welding work force to operate welding robots with multiple software options in case of welding automation.

PWSI organises above training programs in line with idea of “Make in India”. India is going to be a manufacturing hub and should be able to export the products to other countries. And to achieve this, the Indian industry should produce products of global standard and for which skill level of the work force has to be upgraded to international standard with latest technological tools to produce products with best quality and with minimum cost per component.

There are many training programs which are organised by PWSI on continual basis, However, the company would like to mention some of the national and international levels programs as following-

National-level training programs in 2015-16
JICA training programs conducted in Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Chennai were financially supported by Japan International Cooperation Agency(JICA), Japan. These were organised by Panasonic Welding Systems India (PWSI) with support of Confederation of Indian Industry(CII), Kansai Economic Federation (Kankeiren), Japan, Japan Welding Research Institute (JWRI)-Osaka University, Japan, Japan Welding Engineering Society (JWES), Japan, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay and Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE), India.

National-level training programs in 2017
AOTS training programs were conducted in Gurgaon, Bengaluru and Pune. These programs were financially supported by Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry (METI), Japan and executed in India by The Association for Overseas Technical Cooperation and Sustainable Partnerships (AOTS), Japan with support of Confederation of Indian Industry(CII), Kansai Economic Federation (Kankeiren), Japan, Japan Welding Research Institute(JWRI)-Osaka University, Japan, Japan Welding Engineering Society(JWES), Japan. Panasonic Welding Systems India (PWSI) was an industry partner.