A welded blank assembly is formed by welding edge regions of separate sheet metal pieces together at a weld joint. One or more of the sheet metal pieces includes a coating material layer and a weld notch, where at least some of the coating material layer is removed from the edge region(s) prior to welding so that the weld joint is substantially free from constituents of the coating material layer. An additional material may be added to a weld pool during weld joint formation to influence the size, shape and/or composition of the resulting weld joint to help compensate for the presence of the weld notch.
