The Welding Shop KPI Dashboard in Power BI is a ready-to-use .pbix report that scores 12 welding and fabrication KPIs against target every month, in MTD and YTD, with three-state traffic lights on both. Pick a month at the top and the whole report follows: the scorecard re-ranks, the sparklines stay on the full year, and every card recalculates.
This is a KPI scorecard, not an analytical dashboard. It answers one question – are we hitting the numbers we said we would, and which ones are slipping? – and it answers it the same way every month, so the shop meeting stops being an argument about whose spreadsheet is right.
Key Features of the Welding Shop KPI Dashboard in Power BI
- 12 welding shop KPIs, each with a target, an actual, an achievement percentage and a status light – for both MTD and YTD.
- Nine KPI groups – Welding Productivity, Output, Quality & NDT, Fabrication, Cost Control, Delivery, Sales, Financial, and Compliance & Safety.
- Direction-aware scoring. Seven KPIs are higher-is-better and five are lower-is-better. Rework Labour Hours, Weld Repair Rate %, Fit-Up Nonconformances, Consumable & Gas Cost per Tonne and Receivables Days (DSO) all score above 100% when they come in under target – the maths is Target / Actual for those, Actual / Target for the rest.
- Three-state traffic lights – On Target at 100% or more, At Risk between 95% and 100%, Missed below 95%. Applied to MTD and YTD independently, so a KPI can be having a bad month inside a good year.
- Five synced slicers – Month, KPI Group, Owner, Priority and Direction.
- A 12-month sparkline in every scorecard row, which stays on the full year even when you narrow the month picker.
- An owner and a priority on every KPI – Welding Engineering, Shop Floor Supervision, Production Planning, QA / NDT Coordinator, Fabrication Supervision, Purchasing & Stores, Estimating & Sales and Finance, at Critical / High / Medium – so the review has a name against each number.
- A written formula and a plain-English definition for every KPI, shown on the KPI Definition page rather than buried in a separate document.
- Two hidden tooltip pages (KPI Detail and Trend Detail) that surface on hover, with 38 named DAX measures driving the visuals.
- Fully editable .pbix – native Power BI visuals only, nothing to install, one theme file driving every colour.
- One-time payment. No subscription, no per-seat fee, lifetime access to the file you buy.
What’s Inside the Welding Shop KPI Dashboard in Power BI
The report has four visible pages and two hidden tooltip pages.
KPI Scorecard
The landing page. Five slicers across the top (Month, KPI Group, Owner, Priority, Direction), then five summary cards – Total KPIs, MTD Target Met, MTD At Risk, MTD Target Missed and Achievement MTD – each with its own 12-month bar trend and a month-on-month delta.
Below that sits the scorecard table itself: every KPI with its group, unit, 12-month sparkline, MTD actual, MTD target, MTD achievement %, MTD status light, YoY arrow, YTD actual, YTD achievement % and YTD status light. It sorts worst-first by MTD achievement, so the KPIs that need the meeting are at the top of the page rather than buried alphabetically.
KPI Trend
Pick one KPI from the radio list on the left and the whole page becomes that KPI. Six context cards name the selected KPI, its group, unit, direction, owner and priority; five value cards show MTD actual, MTD target, MTD achievement %, MTD status and MTD YoY %. Two line charts then run the full twelve months:
- CY MTD vs PY MTD vs Target MTD by Month – this year’s month-by-month value against the same month last year and against target.
- CY YTD vs PY YTD vs Target YTD by Month – the cumulative view, which for a rate or index is the average of the months so far rather than a running sum.
KPI Definition
The same KPI selection, on a dropdown this time and synced with the Trend page. It shows the KPI’s formula and a written definition – so Arc-On Time % is spelled out as Arc-On Hours / Total Welder Shop Hours, and described as the share of paid welder hours with the arc actually burning, after fit-up, tacking, grinding, crane waits, gas changes and drawing queries.
Beneath it sits a month-by-month detail table (MTD actual, MTD target, MTD achievement %, MTD status, YTD actual, YTD achievement %) with a total row, next to an MTD Actual vs Target by Month chart and an Achievement % by Month chart.
Get More Templates
A catalogue page listing other NextGenTemplates Power BI reports, plus a short Using and Customising This Template panel. It is part of the file you receive; delete the page before you publish internally if you would rather not ship it.
Data.xlsx
The workbook the report reads from, shipped inside the same ZIP. Four sheets:
- Read Me – how to add, rename or delete a KPI, how MTD and YTD are meant to behave, and how the achievement maths works.
- KPI Definition – one row per KPI: group, name, unit, formula, definition, type (higher-is-better or lower-is-better), owner and priority.
- Input_ Target – one row per KPI per month, MTD and YTD: 144 rows for twelve KPIs across twelve months.
- Input_ Actual – the same for the reporting year and the year before it, 288 rows, which is where every prior-year and YoY figure comes from.
Nothing in the report hard-codes a KPI. The KPI name is the join key across the three data sheets, so renaming a KPI in all three and pressing Home > Refresh renames it everywhere – cards, slicers, scorecard, charts and tooltips.
Power BI vs. a Hand-Built Spreadsheet vs. Paid Fabrication SaaS – Where This Fits
| This Power BI template | A hand-built spreadsheet | Paid fabrication / MES SaaS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | One payment, lifetime file | Free, but weeks of your time | Recurring, usually per seat |
| Time to first review | Minutes – swap the data and refresh | Days to weeks | Weeks, plus implementation |
| Direction-aware scoring | Built in, per KPI | Hand-written per KPI, easy to invert | Usually built in |
| Editable | Fully – native visuals, open model | Fully | Only what the vendor exposes |
| Reads your shop-floor system live | No – you feed it a workbook | No | Yes, that is what you pay for |
| Your data leaves the building | No | No | Usually yes |
If you already run an MES that scores KPIs for you, buy this only for the board pack. If your KPIs currently live in a spreadsheet that one person maintains and nobody else fully trusts, this is the gap it fills.
Who This Template Is For – and Who It’s Not For
It is for structural and plate fabrication shops, pressure and pipe-spool shops, mobile and site welding contractors, job shops running a mix of MIG, flux-cored, TIG and stick, and the works manager, QA / NDT coordinator or owner who has to present monthly numbers to a board, a customer or a parent group.
It is not a WPS / PQR management system, a welder certification register, an NDT report repository, a job-costing engine or an MES. It does not connect to your shop-floor system, your ERP or your weld data recorders – you supply the monthly numbers in the workbook. And tracking a Welder Qualification Currency Index is a management indicator, not evidence of compliance: your ASME IX / AWS D1.1 continuity records, procedure qualifications and renewals still have to be maintained and audited in the systems your code and your customers require.
How to Use the Welding Shop KPI Dashboard in Power BI
- Unzip all three files into one folder and keep them together – the report reads Data.xlsx from beside it.
- Open the .pbix in Power BI Desktop, which is free from Microsoft.
- Look at the sample month first. The file ships with a full worked year, so you can see what a finished review looks like before you touch anything.
- Edit the KPI Definition sheet in Data.xlsx – your KPI names, groups, units, formulas, definitions, owners, priorities, and the higher-is-better or lower-is-better type per KPI. Getting the direction right here is the single most important edit in the file.
- Fill Input_ Target and Input_ Actual – one row per KPI per month. Load the prior year into Input_ Actual too, or the YoY arrows and prior-year lines will be empty.
- Press Home > Refresh in Power BI Desktop. Counts, slicers, the scorecard and every chart follow the data.
- Pick your month on the KPI Scorecard, then walk the worst-first rows. Use KPI Trend for the KPI that needs a conversation, and KPI Definition when somebody asks how it is calculated.
- Recolour in one place if you want it in your own brand – the custom theme drives every visual.
If you move the workbook away from the report, repoint it with Home > Transform data > Data source settings > Change Source.
Real-World Use Cases
- The Monday production meeting. Open the scorecard on last month, read the worst three rows, and the meeting has an agenda before anyone sits down.
- Quality review. Weld Repair Rate % and Fit-Up Nonconformances sit next to Rework Labour Hours, so the cost of a quality problem is on the same screen as the quality problem.
- Bidding and estimating. Quote-to-Order Conversion % against Fabrication Gross Margin shows whether a rising hit rate is being bought with price.
- Capacity conversations. Arc-On Time % and Weld Deposition Rate together separate “we need more welders” from “our welders are waiting on fit-up and cranes”.
- Cash. Receivables Days (DSO) is scored lower-is-better beside margin, so a good month on paper that has not been collected shows up as one.
- Customer and group reporting. Export the scorecard page to PDF and it is the monthly pack, in the same shape every month.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a Power BI licence?
No. Power BI Desktop is free from Microsoft and opens, edits and refreshes this file. A Pro or Premium licence is only needed if you want to publish it to the Power BI Service and share it there.
Can I change the 12 KPIs to my own?
Yes, and that is the intended use. Nothing is hard-coded: add, rename or delete rows across the three data sheets in Data.xlsx and refresh. The counts, the slicer lists, the scorecard rows and every chart follow whatever is in the workbook.
Why do some KPIs score above 100%?
Because achievement is direction-aware. A lower-is-better KPI – Rework Labour Hours, Weld Repair Rate %, Fit-Up Nonconformances, Consumable & Gas Cost per Tonne, Receivables Days (DSO) – scores Target / Actual, so coming in under target reads above 100%. Higher-is-better KPIs score Actual / Target, as you would expect.
Is there a drillthrough page?
No. This report uses two hidden tooltip pages, KPI Detail and Trend Detail, that appear on hover, and the KPI Definition page carries the month-by-month detail. There is no right-click drillthrough – that is a design choice, not a missing piece.
Are the numbers in the file real?
No. The file ships with a realistic worked example – twelve months of targets and two years of actuals through December 2025 – so every visual is populated when you open it. It is illustrative sample data, not benchmark data for the welding industry. Replace it with yours.
How is this different from the Welding Shop KPI Scorecard?
They are different products from different lines. The Welding Shop KPI Scorecard in Excel and the Welding Shop KPI Scorecard in Google Sheets are spreadsheet scorecards, built for people who want to work in Excel or Sheets. This one is a Power BI report – a .pbix with a semantic model, DAX measures, synced slicers and tooltip pages. Same discipline, different tool. Buy the one that matches where your team already works, or both if you want the workbook for entry and the report for the pack.
Is there an Excel version of this exact dashboard?
Not of this exact Power BI report. The closest Excel product on the same topic is the Welding Shop KPI Scorecard in Excel linked above, which is a different build.
Does this make my shop compliant?
No. It is a management reporting template. It does not qualify welders, hold WPS or PQR records, manage NDT reports, or evidence anything to an auditor or a customer. Keep your compliance records where your code and your contracts require them.
About the Author
Built by the NextGenTemplates team – the people behind PK: An Excel Expert and the PK: An Excel Expert YouTube channel. We build Power BI, Excel and Google Sheets templates full time, and we use the same KPI structure across all three platforms so a team can move between them without relearning the report.
Explore Related Templates
- Welding Shop KPI Scorecard in Excel – the same twelve-KPI discipline as an Excel workbook.
- Welding Shop KPI Scorecard in Google Sheets – the Google Sheets build of that scorecard.
- Browse every Power BI template at NextGenTemplates.
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