Supporting Wind Energy Deployment Through Improved Design–Manufacturing Coordination in the Wind Turbine Industry
V. Lyras (TU Delft - Civil Engineering & Geosciences)
J.P.G. Ramler – Mentor (TU Delft - Civil Engineering & Geosciences)
E.J. Houwing – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Civil Engineering & Geosciences)
M. Yang – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
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Abstract
Wind energy deployment is expanding rapidly, but the industrialization of larger wind turbines has become increasingly difficult. Wind turbine blades are especially critical because they are large composite structures, require manufacturing work that depends heavily on manual execution, have strict quality requirements and are often produced through production networks spread across different countries. As OEMs rely on external manufacturing partners, reliable scale-up depends not only on technical design, materials or logistics, but also on how effectively design and manufacturing knowledge is coordinated across firm boundaries. Yet the design–manufacturing interface (DMI) in wind turbine blade manufacturing remains underexplored as a non-technical contributor to industrialization performance.
This thesis examines how inter-firm coordination at the DMI in wind turbine blade manufacturing can be strengthened to support reliable turbine scale-up under deployment pressure. Coordination mechanisms from mature industries are used as the analytical starting point to investigate how these mechanisms appear, differ or remain underdeveloped in the wind blade context. The study follows qualitative research design. Literature on design–manufacturing integration, coordination theory and inter-firm coordination mechanisms was reviewed to construct a reference framework. This framework guided semi-structured expert interviews with participants from OEM, manufacturing and hybrid roles. The interview material was analysed through directed qualitative content analysis and synthesized into Framework C, a refined framework for strengthening inter-firm DMI coordination in the wind blade context.
The findings show that several mechanisms used in mature industries are already visible in wind blade industrialization, especially in design finalization, launch and problem-solving stages. However, the coordination base is uneven. Upstream coordination remains weaker, with limited early manufacturing involvement, fragmented cross-enterprise coordination baselines and underdeveloped supplier development. Prototype and validation learning are also pressured by the need to commercialize larger turbines quickly. Shop-floor capability emerged as a strengthening direction specific to wind blade manufacturing because blade manufacturing depends strongly on manual skill, process discipline and factory stability.
The thesis contributes by showing that coordination practices from mature industries are useful for understanding wind blade industrialization, but cannot be transferred directly. Framework C identifies which mechanisms should be retained, strengthened or added to better fit the wind turbine blade context. Practically, the study suggests that more reliable turbine scale-up requires earlier OEM–supplier coordination, stronger shared coordination structures, active supplier capability development and stronger protection of prototype learning before commercialization.