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News 25. March 2019

From ideation to organization at rocket speed

APQP4Wind is based on a common wish to simplify and strengthen the entire quality planning and product release process by having an industry-specific APQP manual. This was expressed back in 2014 during a QA network meeting within Wind Denmark (formerly known as the Danish Wind Industry Association). Today, APQP4Wind has developed greatly with financial funding from The Danish Industry Foundation and gained a global reach.

In August 2018, APQP4Wind was established as an independent organization. This is a result of specific milestones, useful training courses and great progress for the initial project called 'New Standards in the Wind Industry' funded by The Danish Industry Foundation, evaluates the consulting company Pluss.

In the evaluation, Pluss states: "The high number of completed courses illustrates the high demand for this particular type of training and proofs that APQP4Wind is ready to incorporate new standards for quality assurance in the global wind industry."

The report also concludes that the implementation of APQP4Wind represents a unique opportunity for the supplier or sub-supplier to differentiate from competitors by reducing risk and lower the costs of poor quality in order to strengthen the wind industry overall.

The numbers speak for themselves

Today, only five years after the first QA network, APQP4Wind has sold 2,400 manuals and trained 1,400 people all over the world. To meet the global demand, 30 Management Awareness Training courses are planned this year together with 31 Specialist Training sessions in both Denmark, Germany, Spain, USA, India and China.

“The numbers speak for themselves. We have experienced a great interest in APQP4Wind and have been well received by the wind industry on a global level. We are of course very happy and proud. APQP4Wind's global potential has been growing since the beginning as many companies have a proactive approach. The LCoE-oriented wind industry is quick to educate their employees and implement the manual,” says Kim Nedergaard Jacobsen, General Manager of APQP4Wind.

APQP4Wind's global reach illustrates how international and developed the wind industry is, but also the need for a manual that strengthens and standardizes the entire quality planning and product release process.

The story behind APQP4Wind

In May 2015, the project 'New Standards in the Wind Industry' was granted DKK 5.4 million by The Danish Industry Foundation. Since then the project has moved from ideation to an independent organization called APQP4Wind at rocket speed. In 2017, the APQP4Wind manual was already formulated and five different courses were implemented.

The timeline below illustrates the important milestones from creating a QA network, implementing training material and finally establishing APQP4Wind as an independent organization.

APQP4Wind ensures that faults and weaknesses are revealed before the wind turbine has been put into production and operation. Every component is highly cost-intensive and a preventive approach to quality is crucial throughout planning and product release processes.

The APQP4Wind manual uniforms standardize and simplify the quality management process to reduce time to market and increase efficiency within the wind industry nationally and internationally.