Future of smart inventory for turbine components
Manufacturers of wind turbines are operating worldwide offering their services far beyond sales - such as maintenance or repair services. However, the turbines are distributed worldwide and are therefore maintained by different providers. Thus, General Electric is looking for digital solutions to provide a digital-mappable inventory of the manufacturer's wind turbine fleet components that have been installed and modified in recent years, as well as a long-term system to have real-time and up-to-date turbine component information.
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Future of smart inventory
The urgent need to act in order to meet climate targets involves a wide range of industries and companies. Throughout the industries, efforts are being made to optimize all possible processes so that they are both more climate-friendly and more efficient in the use of resources. One example here is the wind turbine industry. On the one hand, its development ensures the establishment of climate-friendly energy. On the other hand, however, the industry itself still has optimization potential to make its own practices and operations even more sustainable.
One such problem, for instance, stems from the following context: Manufacturers of wind turbines operate worldwide and offer their services far beyond selling – e.g. with maintenance and repair services of the turbines. However, the turbines are distributed worldwide and are therefore maintained or repaired by different companies or contractors. As a result, certain data about exchanged components is often generated at different locations and not stored centrally, which makes it hard to have an overview of the “As-Operating Bill of Material”. This again leads to unsustainable logistical practices, such as very long and costly visits to the turbines to find out information about the components installed.
This has a negative impact on the actually very sustainable orientation of the industry. Therefore, we are looking for digital solutions to provide a digitally mappable inventory of the manufacturers' wind turbine fleet components, which have been installed and modified over the last years, as well as a long-term system to have the turbine component information available in real-time and up to date.
Information on the Challenge
The maintenance service of wind turbines implies several steps - one of them is checking the individual components of the turbine to be maintained to find out which model is installed.
Currently, it requires an on-site presence of the responsible technicians. This means that the relevant information is currently stored individually and filled in manually in different databases and is only locally available.
Therefore, innovative solutions are needed to create a suitable digital interface to make the locally stored data centrally and digitally accessible worldwide. Thus, the challenge concerns three main aspects:
Collection of information about the individual component of the existing wind turbine fleet, the listing of the information in a structured digital inventory, and a system in which digital data about the changes in the components can be continuously collected and made available.
Key Questions
- How can we collect information about the modified components in the existing turbines automatically and efficiently?
- What is the architecture of such a database and how can data from different sources and systems be collected and integrated into the tool?
- How to create a seamless digital user journey for all stakeholders to facilitate (future) data entry and provide efficient access to data centralized?
More Information on the challenge's requirements can be found in the tab 'Important Details' as well as 'Submission'.