I too agree that its a non-conformance. Shutting the job down because of it would have to be decided on a case by case basis.
If a company has a quality system and that quality system addresses the fact that a WPS must be followed, the QA/QC department is tasked with making sure that happens. If that quality system indicates the action to be taken in case of a non-conformance is to stop work until the NCR is resolved, that is really all a quality department can do.
In quality, the job is to inspect and report normally. Decisions about right and wrong and what is acceptable or not must be addressed carefully by inspectors(if at all) .
I would think that if this was a confined space job a pre-job meeting would be a good place to bring up the work procedure to assure the most efficient use of time possible.
I once skipped the step to have a root pass VT'd on a open vent line on a HPD trap manifold on a submarine (14.7 PSI open on one end) . The step had been mistakenly put in the procedure by the planning department. It was 4:30 in the morning and the boat was due to get underway at noon. INstead of routing the paperwork after wakeing the repair duty officer, I one-lined it and dated and initialed it. Welded it up and turned it over to qa to close out.
I went to Captains Mast after the QA department got a little twisted up by my "command" decision. No NJP was given, but I was pretty upset about the whole thing.
If you're in an ISO or AS type quality system, then the job would have to be shut down for failure to follow procedures. One way of looking at it is, if the welders are not adhering to one non-essential variable requirement, what else are they not adhering to? The inspector will want to know who authorized the change, where it's documented, and that the EOR signed off on it. That's not just us protecting our butts, it's us protecting the company, because you can't choose what fails and when. If we're going to just do what we do and pretend we're doing something else, we're going to fail and kill people, damage equipment, etc.
Just my 10 cents (adjusted for inflation)
EDIT: Kix, when I write a WPS I include the plus and minus sizes in fillers. I thought everyone did! :)
A violation of a WPS should be considered a serious thing from a documentation standpoint. This I understand and support. But for the majority of alloys and applications (we don't know yet what alloy or service-which is important and may alter my response) a change in filler diameter is almost meaningless (the assumption being the welders didn't go from pencil leads to telephone poles). Thats why a ASME welding engineer, if he has any sense about him, will write a WPS with multiple filler sizes(my SMAW WPS's will generally go from 3/32" to 3/16"). Those who freak out over filler metal sizes are inevitably AWS born and bred.
The difference being predominantly performance related and not procedure.
I get a sense of overreaction here since even under AWS all you have to do is write another WPS, unless they went to jumbos.
Certainly the QC had every right to stop work, but an approval from an engineering rep (most of the time with ASME work project engineers have the authority to approve WPS's-especially on non essential variables) shouldn't have taken a day and a half. A phone call and a fax could have done it seems to me.
I can't help but think there was some turf war stuff going on here and would venture to guess that some of the exchange going on was rather humorous. Just my opinion.
I agree with you on this one Jeff. ;)
Respectfully,
Henry
By dlmann 
Date 07-01-2008 00:59
Edited 07-01-2008 01:04
Thanks to all for your responses and opinions. This was difference of a QA interpretation of the path forward to solve a problem with weld procedures within the QA dept. After work had begun, the Maintenance Dept and System Engineer wanted to go from a 1/8" inch diameter to a 5/32" inch diameter SMAW electrode. The WPS maxed out at 1/8" diameter electrodes. The interpretations from the first QA inspector was since an ASME WPS considers an electrode diameter a non-essential variable, document the change of diameter in the work package and in parallel send the product data sheet and a request to update the WPS up the chain. The welders then proceeded to weld with the larger diamter electrode. The request to update the WPS did not require requalification and the revised WPS would reflect the new electrode diameter. Work could continue following an approved WPS and approved work package. The second QA inspector came in a couple of shifts later and saw this differently and issued the NCR.
Two different interpretations of what is non-conforming about electrode diameters were extremely troublesome and the conversations between all involved lively.
Regards, Donnie Mann
How big of a jump was the rod dia you went to. I'm not sure what ASME allows, but D1.1 allows a jump of 1/32" for SMAW. So legally if you only had 3/32" on your WPS you could make a jump to 1/8", but you would have to write another WPS for it. I don't really see needing to shut down the whole job for that. Maybe they were wanting the new WPS written and available before any arcs were struck.
