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The mission statement of the Japan Welding Engineering Society (JWES)

Welding and joining are basic and essential technologies for manufacturing, and used in all the manufacture industry. The welding and joining technologies in Japan have been developed through the cooperative researches between the industry sector, academic circles and public agencies, and reached a world leading level. We should maintain our country as a manufacturing oriented country from now on. However, our country is run close by many developing countries in manufacturing technologies, owning to her inherent problems including a rapid decrease in a youth population and retirement of many skilful workers. The weakening manufacturing technologies of our country is our deep concern. The relative weakness in welding and joining technologies might result in lowering world competitiveness of our manufacturing industry. Continuing developments of these technologies have to be accomplished. The Japan Welding Engineering Society (JWES) intends to make every effort to assist the preservation and developments of welding and joining technologies of the Japanese manufacturing industry.

Big changes have emerged in the welding research arena. Those are a decrease in researchers and research facilities concerning welding due to the expansion of new technologies such as nanotech and biotech, a decrease in welding engineers and technicians due to the rationalization for maintaining the competitiveness in industry, and an increase in the average age of individuals engaged in welding. At the same time, the new challenges have appeared including how to cope with safety and environment issues, the improvement of materials for the weight reduction, the development of highly efficient and automatic welding technologies, and the development of dissimilar material joining technologies. Researches corresponding to these new challenges are definitely needed. Thus, advances in basic researches in the academic sectors are expected and the activity coordinating between the industry and the academic sectors are increasingly demanded. The JWES has been playing an important role to promote the coordination activity by the applied research divisions classified into each industry and the basic research committees, research members for which come from the industry and academic sectors. The major missions of JWES are: 1) to build new standards based on the accomplishments by the above research activities and to make the technical and certification standards come into wide use; 2) to support the advances in technologies and improvements of skills of welding engineers and technicians.

An approach from a viewpoint of the quality assurance is required to the welding technologies regarded as a special process in the ISO 3874. It becomes of an increasing importance to continue the objective qualification of welding technologies and skillfulness so that the safety and integrity of manufacturing equipment can be assured. In earthquake-prone Japan, a high degree of reliability is demanded to welded structures and products, and thus a production control in welding fabrication and a quality control by non-destructive testing and other measures have to be severely performed. The JWES contributes to the maintenance of the safe and reliable society through the certification and qualification activities for individuals, equipment and materials related to welding and joining.

Another big change concerning the international relationship with overseas countries has emerged. This change is the expansion of the construction of welding products in overseas factories, the increasing import of welding products, and the increasing employment of overseas labors. This trend will expand as the youth population decreases in our country. Therefore, the JWES considers that it must form a strong connection with overseas countries, especially the southeastern Asian countries.

In order to assist the maintenance and developments of welding and joining technologies in the manufacturing industry in Japan, the JWES provides all the knowledge and information about welding and joining technologies with not only JWES members companies but also ordinary individuals over the Internet from the JWES-IT center.

The major activities of the JWES:

1) To conduct researches and investigation of welding and joining, and to publish their accomplishments;;
2) To build the standards and regulations based on the accomplishments of the research and investigation activities;
3) To perform the qualification and certification activities from a viewpoint of the quality assurance;
4) To contribute internationally through the activities of standardization, education and certification;
5) To provide the knowledge, information and education tools from the JWES-IT center