Vattenfall joins forces with APQP4Wind to mature the wind industry

As one of Europe’s largest producers and retailers of electricity and heat, Vattenfall has gone through several transitions. Now they want to accelerate fossil-free living with the power of renewables, which is not possible without maturing the wind industry, and as a step of the way, Vattenfall joins forces with APQP4Wind as a new Company Member.

For more than 100 years, Vattenfall has electrified industries and supplied energy to people’s homes through innovation and cooperation. Together with their partners, Vattenfall is taking on the responsibility to find new and sustainable ways to electrify transportation, industries, and heating.

When collaborating with contractors from their main markets, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the UK, regarding the implementation of APQP4Wind, they have experienced that they struggle a lot to fulfill requirements as the wind industry is still maturing. Manager of Foundation Management at Vattenfall, Sebastian Friedrich, says:

“Over the past years, we have experienced a need for a third-party training language that is utilized across utilities to develop the supply chain and mature the wind industry. But to reach the right level of maturity, everyone must see the purpose and benefit of it, and therefore it is a great opportunity to become a part of the APQP4Wind Community by being a company member and discussing the framework with other utilities.”

The great importance of quality

The work towards harmonizing and standardizing the approach to quality is essential to improve the common understanding of quality and avoid the cost of poor quality. Here APQP4Wind helps to provide a toolset for suppliers, which is greatly appreciated by Director Project Quality at Vattenfall, Robert Kaleta, as he says:

We want to become a member of APQP4Wind and a part of the community now because we would like to spread the methodology to the rest of the wind business. Not only to the OEMs but also to the foundation cables and other suppliers in our supply chain to have a common way of working. We need to live with the components for 25-35 years, and, therefore, it is crucial to manage our risks from end to end by being transparent, having measurements and following a process from the early design phase to zero production, and from zero production to the offshore.

Robert Kaleta, Director Project Quality at Vattenfall

Robert Kaleta adds that another benefit of being an APQP4Wind Company Member is that Vattenfall now has a chance to influence, have an open dialogue about the requirements together with the rest of the community, and maybe move APQP4Wind away from being a general piece of paper onto becoming a living document, a requirement, and a kind of driver license like the ISO standard was in the past.

The industry coming together

The General Manager of APQP4Wind, Kim Nedergaard Jacobsen is excited about the commitment towards APQP4Wind that Vattenfall is manifesting by becoming a company member and explains:

“We have been in dialogue with Vattenfall since the idea of APQP4Wind started in 2014. They have followed our journey and learnings from the beginning until today, where we are a growing nonprofit organization supported by the 4 biggest OEMs in the world, global suppliers, and now also utilities like Ørsted, BP and Vattenfall. We are proud to have established a community where people within the wind industry are coming together towards improving quality, and we look forward to seeing what the new members will bring to the table.”

As a new addition to the APQP4Wind Community, Sebastian Friedrich says that Vattenfall aspires to become an active part of the APQP4Wind Working Group to further mature the APQP4Wind Manual, but also to support the community by giving input on quality development from general discussions with similarly structured companies. Robert Kaleta elaborates:

“We see that the APQP4Wind Community is a kind of environment with and for experts to exchange and develop quality together, because of the broad involvement from utilities, OEMs, and different levels of suppliers. We truly value that people with different perspectives join forces to reach a common goal: Becoming more competitive in the wind market and maturing the wind industry.”

_{About Vattenfall:

Vattenfall is a European energy company with approximately 20,000 employees. Its parent company, Vattenfall AB, is 100% owned by the Swedish state, and its headquarters are in Solna, Sweden. Visit their website for more information: www.vattenfall.com}