How Vestas and Würth Are Industrialising Additive Manufacturing: AMUG Convention 2025

A dialog between Würth Additive Group and Vestas on the 2025 AMUG Convention discusses additive manufacturing as a scalable instrument for managing provide chain threat, lowering downtime, and aligning with digital and sustainability methods. 

AJ Strandquist, CEO of Würth Additive Group, and Jeremy Haight, Principal Engineer & Lead Specialist – Additive Manufacturing & Superior Ideas, at wind turbine chief Vestas, unpacked how tightly managed digital workflows, certified platforms, and strategic deployment are unlocking real-world worth from 3D printing. 

TLDR? Key Insights

Pressed for time? Listed here are the core insights from the expertise of Würth Additive Group and Vestas with additive manufacturing.

Assume when it comes to programs

Requirements and qualification are lagging however essential

Additive manufacturing’s energy is within the provide chain

Digital management and lockdown of processes are important

The trade suffers from a scarcity of interoperability

Backward compatibility is difficult, ahead integration is healthier

High quality failures require root trigger evaluation, not blame

Additive Manufacturing’s Provide Chain Second: Würth and Vestas Eye Scale with Digital Stock, High quality Controls

Würth Additive Group and Vestas are constructing the infrastructure for additive manufacturing to maneuver past area of interest functions and into global-scale, provide chain-critical roles.

Strandquist framed the chance—and the problem—with a contact of dry humor. “All of the social gathering animals are on this room speaking about liabilities and high quality issues,” opening the session in Chicago. The 2 leaders are overseeing the deployment of additive manufacturing as a foundational functionality inside extremely structured industrial ecosystems.

Strandquist’s mandate is to combine additive manufacturing into Würth’s world logistics and distribution networks, embedding digital half achievement into conventional provide chains. The objective, he defined, is to make sure that prospects can order 3D printed components with the identical ease and procedural traceability as legacy parts. “For us, wherever that demand comes from… they’re going to put an order right into a system,” he stated. “From that system, we’re going to combine so a purchaser sees the half on the display similar to anyone else does… [with] full traceability.”

The underlying imaginative and prescient is a seamless provide expertise—whether or not components are made historically, pulled from inventory, or 3D printed regionally on demand. This contains modalities as numerous as merchandising machines and e-commerce.

The Würth AM chief attracts a distinction between cost-driven parts and important engineered components, noting that “high quality shouldn’t be constant”—and shouldn’t be. “I specialise in components which might be very low price… like automotive clips,” he stated, contrasting this with Vestas’s use instances, which embrace R&D prototypes and operational parts in high-risk environments. These variations demand scalable high quality regimes, reminiscent of Manufacturing Half Approval Course of (PPAP), with ranges starting from “use any machine and any vendor” flexibility to traceability right down to uncooked materials origins. Haight highlighted the necessity to steadiness inside and exterior manufacturing whereas guaranteeing the sanctity of high quality documentation and design management.

Each executives pressured that additive manufacturing typically steps in as a second-source or emergency resolution. As Strandquist put it: “3D printing all the time does greatest in [special] conditions. The value level doesn’t matter when one thing’s lacking.”

This flexibility introduces new issues round mental property and digital safety. Making certain that solely authorised recordsdata are used, and that they aren’t modified or leaked, is important.

Vestas and Würth Advance AM Provide Chains with Rigorous Controls and Distributed Infrastructure

The transition of additive manufacturing to an industrial-scale know-how calls for enterprise-grade programs, traceability, and exact vendor management—alongside the bodily decentralization that defines the know-how’s core benefit.

“Throughout trade, particularly in heavy trade, additive is seen both as novelty—or one thing unique to aerospace and medical. Digital manufacturing removes that psychological barrier,” stated Haight. For a while, the time period “digital manufacturing,” or DVM was used at Vestas to take away this synthetic barrier to adoption.

Haight oversees a program that spans composite tooling, metallic parts, and concrete printing, all built-in into a worldwide enterprise stack. The structure ties in AM half manufacturing with Vestas’s current ERP, PLM, and asset administration programs. “Proper off the printer, they get the half and the ISO 17025-qualified inspection report with it. That’s all tied into our enterprise asset administration system—fluid and automatic,” he defined.

The Vestas roadmap, already partially carried out, contains cellular models embedded in EVs that 3D print components en path to distant wind farms. 

Würth Additive Group is aligning its infrastructure accordingly. The CEO famous the significance of preserving manufacturing constancy with out introducing complexity on the buyer interface. Repeatability typically hinges on course of self-discipline, particularly in mid-volume functions. One contributor described a manufacturing run of “underneath 100,000 per yr,” developed over seven years with a QA/QC pipeline embedded immediately into the accomplice firm’s programs. The bottlenecks, unsurprisingly, have been in materials consistency and information loss as groups modified. Strandquist underscored this as a recognized threat. “That was a dwelling course of, not a frozen one. I all the time say: freeze it, then you may thaw it and freeze it once more. However you by no means need to be out of that frozen state very lengthy if in case you have a manufacturing half.”

To fight fragmentation and keep information self-discipline, Vestas operates on a strict ‘recipe’ mannequin when outsourcing AM work. “We’ve a professional machine, certified supplies with batch and lot traceability, and we merely present [vendors] a recipe,” Haight stated. “They will run it, do visible inspection, however that’s the restrict of what they’ll do.” Delicate IP is protected utilizing traditional methods reminiscent of segmented manufacturing and sturdy NDAs—“typically you’re not going to get round it.”

Internally, Vestas has mapped out the additive panorama by know-how and enterprise operate—composites, metals, base polymers, concrete—and tied them to course of households, use instances, and ROI thresholds. The logic is surgical: match materials and course of capabilities on to part sorts, from turbine blade precast molds to rotor-stator assemblies and directional fiber reinforcement.

“We wish one thing that’s going to merge along with your ecosystem, not combat it,” Haight emphasised. 

Locking Down the Digital Manufacturing facility: Vestas and Würth Sort out IP Management, Operator Simplicity, and Legacy Elements in AM Provide Chains

Additive manufacturing’s promise of distributed, on-demand manufacturing hinges not simply on know-how readiness however on governance, safety, and organizational alignment. Which means managing the whole lot from untrained discipline operators to multi-million-part inventories with automation, coverage enforcement, and strategic vendor choice.

“The folks within the discipline don’t must be consultants,” stated Haight. “We use RBAC—role-based entry management. These are pre-fixed recipes saved in our PLM. They will’t be modified. It’s locked down by design.”

This isn’t solely a matter of usability, but in addition of belief and compliance. Strandquist famous that errors and deviations are hardly ever technological. “In the event you can’t belief your folks to comply with an ordinary working process, you may’t belief them with anything,” he stated. “There’s no fixing deviancy. The very best you are able to do is design programs so it’s laborious to cheat.”

Vestas, working throughout dozens of nations, avoids such threat by selecting closed ecosystem platforms and suppliers. Their preliminary AM rollout centered on closed-loop programs with tight administrative controls. “We personal the mandate for additive,” stated Haight. “We need to discourage non-compliant printers or supplies coming into our factories.”

In some instances, reminiscent of concrete tower parts, Vestas ships all the printing course of whereas sourcing uncooked supplies regionally. This avoids cross-border complexity whereas aligning with longer-term ambitions round circularity. “We’re engaged on reclaiming supplies and recomposing them into new AM workflows,” stated Haight. “Digital twin meets recyclability.”

That mannequin additionally opens a novel geopolitical benefit. “There are not any tariffs on emails but,” Strandquist quipped. “You may rework materials in-country, keep away from customs points solely, and nonetheless ship a spec-inspected half. That’s an enormous benefit when issues get caught on the border.”

Nonetheless, essentially the most enduring problem lies in managing the legacy footprint. “We’ve acquired near 32 million SKUs in our PLM and DMS,” Haight stated. “In order that’s a job for software program.” Vestas makes use of automated half screening platforms to determine additive-suitable candidates, and in some instances, works immediately with operators underneath right-to-repair legal guidelines. Their discipline qualification metric is easy: one yr of steady fault-free operation.

For brand new components, nonetheless, additive has extra traction—significantly in long-lifecycle assist. “Wanting backward for AM is inherently laborious,” stated Strandquist. “The energy is in designing for additive from the start. As soon as your manufacturing tooling wears out, the 3D printed model is already licensed as a result of it was within the authentic check batch.”

This forward-looking view additionally helps dynamic sourcing methods. Each Haight and Strandquist described additive as a bridge and fallback within the face of tooling delays or vendor outages. “It opens up different provide choices,” Haight stated. “You by no means need to be single-source.”

Requirements, Provide Chains, and Stakeholder Belief: AM Leaders Urge Structural Maturity in Digital Manufacturing

The trade’s subsequent evolution relies upon much less on know-how than it does on institutional belief, interoperable requirements, and system-wide course of controls.

Regardless of the give attention to automation and documentation, failures nonetheless require forensic evaluation. “If an element breaks after 10,000 models, that’s not an AM concern. That’s a design concern,” stated Strandquist. “But when one breaks by itself, you begin trying on the black field.”

Resistance from inside organisations stays a hurdle, particularly amongst engineers accustomed to legacy programs. “Loads of them have been jaded by automation that solely delivered 30% of what was promised,” Haight stated. The response has been to exhibit efficiency immediately: “Put the half of their hand. Show it.”

Environmental metrics—one other important efficiency space—stay tough to quantify with confidence. Whereas Vestas aligns its AM programme with decarbonisation objectives and Trade 4.0 rules, the carbon math is elusive. “It’s an extremely complicated mannequin,” stated Haight. “We strive, but it surely’s largely qualitative.” Strandquist agreed: “I haven’t seen a instrument I might guess my status on. There’s an excessive amount of nuance for a punch-in algorithm.”

Nonetheless, the economic logic is difficult to dispute. AM cuts downtime threat and stock prices. But the broader trade stays fragmented by design. Standardised machine communications and cross-platform compatibility are nonetheless lacking. “It’s like early railroads,” Strandquist stated. “Each state had a distinct gauge. They didn’t assume nationally.” He warned that locking customers into proprietary programs was self-defeating: “You don’t purchase computer systems that may’t speak to one another. AM must be the identical.”

There are indicators of motion. Each leaders acknowledged the progress of teams like ASTM F42, which is engaged on standardised information packaging and pedigree dealing with. “To unlock AM’s full worth, new applied sciences should enter with sturdy vetting and a transparent enterprise case. “We take a look at know-how readiness stage and match it to an actual buyer want,” stated Strandquist. “That proof of idea is the place we study essentially the most.” 

“If we’re strategic and objectively searching for enterprise outcomes, we’ll discover a path,” Haight stated. “However you want the mandate, the metrics—and the buy-in.”

As additive manufacturing matures, its success will rely much less on machine efficiency and extra on system integration, regulatory readability, and cultural acceptance. For organisations prepared to spend money on sturdy coaching, digital infrastructure, and strategic sourcing, the rewards embrace provide chain agility, decrease stock threat, and long-term environmental alignment. 

The trail ahead calls for standardisation, openness, and the popularity that AM shouldn’t be a magic bullet—it’s a enterprise instrument. “It’s a shortcut in your provide chain,” Strandquist famous, “however provided that you deal with it like a part of the system, not one thing separate from it.”

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Featured picture exhibits a 3D printed half made with DF2+. Photograph by way of Würth Additive Group.