International certification systems for the manufacturers of welded products

Having a great importance on global economy, welding is the mostreliable, efficient and economical manufacturing process to have a structuralintegrity while joining engineering materials. In many products/structures suchas kitchen utensils, bridges, rail vehicles, automobiles and aero planes, weldjoints are certain. Without welding such products/structures wouldn?t be made.As being a special process, welding has a significant weakness. It maycontain hard to detect discontinuities. While only a part of these discontinuitiescould be detected by using non-destructive tests, it can not be assessed preciselyif the weld joints meet the strength and the quality requirements. It?s crucialthat the quality be created during welding and the whole process be controlledby an effective quality system. As ISO 9001 is unable to manage the weldingprocess properly, international certification systems and standards on this topicare developed for the manufacturers.For efficient control of welding processes EN ISO 3834 has an emergingposition among the other certification systems because of the following reasons:It is applicable to all kinds of welded products; it has three quality requirementlevels; it meets the requirements of EU directives and standards which are alsoaccepted and implemented in our country.In this work it is aimed to introduce the certification systems for themanufacturers of welded products, to state the need for certification systems, tounderline the advantages of the certifications, to explain the important pointswhile applying the system and to define the criteria for the suitable certificationsystems by displaying the picture of the welded product manufacturers in ourcountry. It is also aimed to introduce a guideline for the organizations new tothe certification systems and for the organizations which already have acertification system in welding.Key Words: Welding, Manufacturing, Quality, EN ISO 3834, Certification