MHI Vestas Offshore Wind

MHI Vestas Offshore Wind is one of the largest manufacturers of wind turbines in the world. Formed in 2014 following a joint venture between the Vestas Wind Systems and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries the company designs, manufactures, installs, and services wind turbines. It has numerous offshore wind farms dotted around the world and is acknowledged as an industry pioneer & market leader.

As part of its manufacturing footprint, the company manufactures 80-metre length wind turbine blades on the Isle of Wight. When the blades were manufactured, they were shipped in batches to a paint factory in Denmark for specific industry paint and protection materials to be applied.

Shipping the blades to Denmark was a costly exercise and manufacturing deadlines were constantly under pressure. For instance, the shipping of the blades required a special vessel and had limited capacity & availability. This significantly slowed down the blade manufacturing process and added extra complexity to production schedules.

After successfully locating a suitable site to construct a manufacturing paint facility, there were clear benefits to the decision, with location and capacity being paramount. The new site, located in Southampton, had a shorter distance for the blades to be shipped, compared to a near 700 nautical miles to Denmark, as it was previously.

To enable the efficient management of the new paint facility in Southampton, MHI Vestas needed to extend its current Microsoft Dynamics platform to accommodate the new needs of the factory and to seamlessly link it up with the operations in the Isle of Wight. The implementation also had to be completed in just over four months to ensure the paint factory was up and running on time, ready to meet the increase in production demand.

Anders Lonnebjerg (Head of Department – Business Engagement and Applications), engaged with Pragmatiq to design a solution on top of the existing Microsoft Dynamics platform, that mirrored but also extended its existing manufacturing operations.

PraqmatiQ’s in-depth understanding of Microsoft Dynamics was fused with its detailed insight into how MHI Vestas was currently working operationally and utilising Microsoft Dynamics to support their business processes. This enabled PraqmatiQ to design a solution that was in line with the current setup, whilst extending the current solution to accommodate the needs of the new paint facility.

In detail, the scope of the work was to implement functionality such as:

• Production Planning & Logistics to control the manufacturing processes
• Inventory management to control the supply and consumption of components
• Enterprise Asset Management to ensure the uptime of their equipment
• Time & Attendance to the capture production workers time

Training of the users across all functional areas of the manufacturing operation was delivered by Pragmatiq. This included classroom & one-to-one training and two-weeks of onsite hyper-care support after go-live, to ensure that any issues that arose could be addressed and dealt with immediately.

The flexibility of the Microsoft Dynamics platform enabled Pragmatiq to design a fit-for-purpose solution, using the standard processes and procedures. This ensured the cost of the project was kept to a minimum and was essential to delivering against tight deadline requirements set by MHI Vestas, to essentially set up a new manufacturing facility in four and a half months.

Thanks to faster and more efficient manufacturing operations, with the Microsoft Dynamics platform playing an important role in this, it has expanded its operations at the Isle of Wight factory to double the output. At a more general level, MHI Vestas is now able to meet growing demand from customers with confidence, gain greater accuracy into its pipeline to enhance customer relationships and drive the business forward.