Master Thesis: Digital Thread for Weld Engineering - From Design to Manufacturing

Transport is at the core of modern society. Imagine using your expertise to shape sustainable transport and infrastructure solutions for the future. If you seek to make a difference on a global scale, working with next-gen technologies and the sharpest collaborative teams, then we could be a perfect match.

Description of the assignment:

What if weld requirements could be defined once and digitally reused from product design all the way to manufacturing?

Volvo Construction Equipment is continuously developing more efficient and digital ways of working across product and production development. An important part of this development is enabling engineering information to flow seamlessly between systems, disciplines, and users.

Today, weld information is created, interpreted, and in some cases recreated across several activities, including product design, structural analysis, manufacturing engineering, inspection, work instructions, and robot programming. This creates manual handovers and a risk of information being interpreted differently along the engineering chain.

The objective of this thesis is to develop and industrially validate a model-based workflow where weld requirements are defined once and reused throughout the engineering and manufacturing process. The information should not only be machine-readable and transferable between systems, but also easy to access, understand, and visualize for the different users who need it throughout the product lifecycle.

The thesis will include:

• Map the current weld-information flow and identify manual handovers, duplicate work, and information gaps.
• Define the required information for a model-based weld definition, considering relevant international standards and open exchange formats.
• Develop a digital demonstrator connecting product design with selected downstream engineering and manufacturing applications.
• Explore how weld information can be presented and visualized so that relevant information is easily accessible to different users.
• Evaluate the reliability of information transfer and identify opportunities for increased automation and reduced manual interpretation.
• Explore opportunities for AI-supported validation, classification, and reuse of engineering knowledge where relevant.
• Provide recommendations for information ownership, interfaces, and future industrial implementation.

The thesis will be based on a real industrial use case within Volvo CE and conducted in close collaboration with engineering and manufacturing functions.

The ambition is not only to propose a future concept, but to build and verify a working demonstrator showing how weld information can be transferred and reused between selected engineering and manufacturing applications.

Learning objectives:

During the thesis, you will have the opportunity to:

• Develop practical knowledge of model-based engineering and digital thread concepts in an industrial environment.
• Gain experience in digital information exchange and visualization across engineering and manufacturing applications.
• Develop and verify a digital demonstrator based on a real industrial use case.
• Gain experience of cross-functional collaboration within product development, manufacturing, welding, automation, and digital engineering.

Suitable Background:

We believe you are studying within areas such as:

• Mechanical or Production Engineering
• Welding Engineering
• CAD/PLM and Digital Engineering
• Automation, Robotics, Software, or Systems Engineering

An interest in digitalization, manufacturing, welding, automation, and model-based engineering is beneficial. Experience with CAD, programming, simulation, PLM, or automation is an advantage, but not a requirement.

Ready for the next move?

As the assignment combines several engineering disciplines, a team of two students with complementary backgrounds is particularly suitable.

Thesis Level: Master of Science

Language: English or Swedish

Starting Date: January 2027

Number of Students: 1-2

Last day for application: 2026-11-22