ESI Group, Detroit, Mich., and Edison Welding Institute (EWI), Columbus, Ohio, announced a strategic partnership focused on the welding and heat-treating market. The purpose of the alliance is to deliver a comprehensive package to weld distortion and residual stress analysis by combining EWI's experience in analytic techniques with ESI's simulation processes. Welding processes that have to contend with local and global distortion, metallurgical transformation, fatigue and component service life can be modeled using EWI's SYSWELD to optimize the welding process before production begins.