The year is 2005
The quality journey to professionalize the then fledgling wind industry began, driven by a team of international specialists who gathered at the then industry leader Vestas Wind Systems in Denmark. They had the stated intention of changing the energy industry and helping to put renewable energy, with a focus on wind, at the center of the energy industry's activities. The quality specialists came from different countries and from comparatively advanced industries at the time, such as traditional energy supply and the international automotive industry.
The team adapted existing and developed new quality methods and suitable tools, above all in order to further develop the all-important supply chain with the spirit of "will to win" in terms of both quality and quantity. It was an exciting and especially for Vestas' TIER 1 suppliers exhausting but also rewarding quality journey, in which also development engineers and buyers were involved by means of interdisciplinary teams, the so-called "Supplier Performance Teams".
Led by the Supplier Development Engineers (SDE) of the respective product/part categories, the teams laid the solid foundation for everything that was to come afterwards with their quality methods and improvement tools. Parts of the extended team remained in the wind energy industry. The core team, however, slowly disbanded in the following years and dedicated itself to other tasks, such as the disruption and transformation of existing quality & business excellence methods for efficient and effective application within today's Industry 4.0.
In the course of the 15 following years, the methods and tools implemented at Vestas Wind Systems A/S were shared with other companies, organisations and industries, merged with tools from other players, adapted to individual needs and necessities and applied.
With the objective of continuing the quality improvement, an independent initiative called "APQP4WIND" was established in 2014, based in Denmark. This still exists today and is dedicated to adapting the method model for advanced quality planning from the automotive industry (APQP AIAG/VDA) to the concrete requirements of the supply chain between wind turbine manufacturers (OEM) and their suppliers.
The year is 2021 now
In close coordination and in association with high-ranking industry experts and representatives of the entire wind industry including wind farm operators and energy suppliers, i.e. along the entire horizontal as well as vertical value chain, members of the former core team are taking up the "journey of 2005" again - independet of todays APQP4WIND organisation. This time with the continuing objective to develop a holistic WIND MATRIX and to provide all necessary interaction elements via CAMPUS4WIND®. Following the innovation spirit of Open Source as well as the Sharing Economy, all industry players are invited to participate in a common quality journey. Furthermore, in close cooperation with academic research, all available innovation and digitalization tools are put into action.
The goal is to accompany the wind energy industry on its next evolutionary step and to replace outdated approaches and tools with new future-oriented ways of thinking and tool sets - the accompaniment into the era of Innovation & Quality 5.0.
For this purpose, a new community was founded in the context of the open source idea and in the spirit of the sharing economy - THE WIND CIRCLE (TWC). The TWC is a constantly growing association of digital- and quality-conscious people who are committed to quality and really want to make a difference. The goal is the joint continuous development of the wind industry in the context of Quality & Business Excellence across all process, demographic and cultural boundaries.
The digital-functional, interactive implementation platform of the TWC is the CAMPUS4WIND®, which is based on the intelligent, AI-aided SaaS (=Software-as-a-Service) emilQ DAILY® (www.emilq-daily.com). The CAMPUS4WIND® is thus the comprehensive information, communication and interaction platform for all digital- and quality-conscious players in the international wind industry, initiated and operated by the Institute for Innovation & Improvement GmbH & Co. KG, headquartered in Munich, in association with leading industry representatives.
The TWC/C4W is represented by the TWC Board of Directors, which is made up of representatives of the energy supply industry, wind turbine manufacturers, suppliers, experts and political representatives.
For further questions about the TWC/C4W, please contact our public relations teams at
