During the APQP4Wind Session at AWEA WINDPOWER 2019, GE Renewable Energy, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, Vestas Wind Systems, and TPI Composites agreed that APQP4Wind is going to be a requirement to strengthen the cooperation between wind turbine manufacturers, suppliers and sub-suppliers.

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.

Quality, ambition, risk, and interdependence were some of the keywords when the representatives from the many stakeholders in APQP4Wind got together recently. The purpose was to celebrate the first step of APQP4Wind becoming a self-supporting organization.

June 12th, 2018, the wind industry qualitative assurance project, APQP4Wind, took the first step towards becoming a self-supporting organization. The day also marked that GE Renewable Energy’s Onshore Wind business joined APQP4Wind.

Today, GE Renewable Energy’s Onshore Wind business joined APQP4Wind, a qualitative assurance standard group for the wind industry. Together with current members Vestas and Siemens Gamesa, APQP4Wind now includes 3 of the 4 largest wind turbine OEMs. The purpose of APQP4Wind is to lower costs across the wind industry by setting uniform standards used by suppliers, energy companies and wind turbine manufacturers.

KK Wind Solutions and Vestas successfully completed the first project using the new common standards in the wind industry, APQP4Wind.

After a successful event on the 12 June 2018, the event organizers, Wind Denmark (formerly known as the Danish Wind Industry Association) and the APQP4Wind Board of Directors, have now analyzed the comments and feedback from the more than 100 participants. Results show that participants are happy and hungry for more.

A lot has happened since the APQP4Wind manual was officially launched at an event at Vestas Wind Systems on 25 January of last year. In the year that has passed, the APQP4Wind project has progressed immensely, but the journey has only just begun.