turing processes in a virtual 3D environment, enabling them to identify and resolve issues up front and to manufacture products “right the first time.” Doing so lowers manufacturing costs, while increasing wind turbine quality. Companies need to continue to innovate in the face of in-
creased competition from low-cost manufacturers. Many are adopting automated production methods, such as using robots for composite manufac- turing processes. Such automated methods provide them with greater flexibility to com- plete most of the work in a single station, allowing them to produce multiple products in a single manufacturing facility. Automated manufacturing of composite blades reduces waste compared to manual processes, saving the company money. Exposure of shop-floor workers to toxic composite materials is also minimized, improving health and safety. Automation in manufacturing enables
companies to standardize their best practices across all their global manufacturing facilities. Companies can then utilize local manufac- turing, using factories that are close to the wind farm site where the wind turbine will be installed, to produce the wind turbine com- ponents, thereby reducing their logistics and transportation costs. Investments in automated production
A unique solution from Dassault Systèmes provides a
data-driven, rule-based continuous process improvement methodology for blade manufacturing and is ideal for monitoring and controlling production quality. It is based on inductive logic programming that aims to identify the right combination of parameters to achieve the right product
systems incur high capital costs. By vali- dating the production systems in a virtual environment, manufacturers can verify if these systems can enable the company to achieve its goals, which can help it justify the capital investment.
Laying out stations, machines and other resources in a manufacturing facility helps to optimize the space and product flow in the factory.
Composite Blade Production and Quality Control Production of composite blades is a challenging process
that involves controlling several variables and understanding the correlation between them. Companies experience very high rejection rates during blade production (even greater than 25%). Even a small improvement in the rejection rate can save a company millions of dollars per year. A number of production defects, such as voids, wrinkles
and delamination, can cause blades to be scrapped. It is hard to isolate the cause of the defects, since they can occur even if all the variables are within the permissible range, due to the complex correlation between them. Traditional methods like SPC (statistical process control)
are just not sufficient to solve these challenges. Tese methods require a very large number of data points to be statistically relevant, which may be too expensive to measure or just im- possible to get in context of composites manufacturing.
quality. Te solution can work with a small set of data points, and continuously improves the production process based on the results, in real time. Monitoring shop-floor data helps quantify the risk of defects aiding customers to get the pro- cess back under control. With this solution, customers can develop “agile process control,” enabling experts to extract, optimize, and validate a robust set of easy-to-read opera- tional best practices. A leading blade manufacturer in Europe was having severe
problems with a defect rate as high as 50%. With the use of the solution, the defects have been reduced to 25% and the company’s next goal is to reduce the defect rate to 5%. To be successful in the challenging environment in which
they operate, wind turbine and blade manufacturers need a best-in-class engineering, simulation and manufacturing solution that addresses all their challenges. Solutions such as the Sustainable Wind Turbines 3DEXPERIENCE provides a single platform backbone, integrating information from all disciplines and applications. It provides a collaborative envi- ronment allowing all users and stakeholders to work concur- rently and collaboratively. As a result, companies will develop and deliver better performing wind turbines faster in a more global and competitive environment.
Energy Manufacturing 2013 51
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