Full control over 67 GW: ENERCON masters the complexity of diverse wind turbines

The wind energy industry is facing ever-increasing product variety and complexity, dynamic market conditions, growing compliance requirements, and rapid technological advancements. At the same time, individual project requirements are on the rise—coupled with the need to deliver products faster, more flexibly, and more cost-effectively.

Against this backdrop—as many manufacturers transition to Configure-to-Order Plus (CTO+)—the focus is increasingly shifting toward early, system-supported management of product variability throughout the entire lifecycle.

The Starting Point

ENERCON, too, faced the challenge of developing and configuring complex products with numerous variants in such a way that engineering decisions could be made early on—in a valid, consistent, and reliable manner—without jeopardizing existing order processing workflows. The goal was not to view product configurations in isolation, but to make them a seamless control element that could be utilized from development all the way through to service.

How ENERCON Integrates PLM and ERP

ENERCON implemented a new, modular, and end-to-end product structure and migrated the management of manufacturing bills of materials, work plans, and product configuration from SAP ERP to Siemens Teamcenter.

The challenge was to systematically integrate PLM-driven product logic into existing execution processes without disrupting ongoing projects or jeopardizing operational stability. The SAP-based project and order processing system had been tailored to specific requirements over many years; existing downstream processes (e.g., reports in Controlling) had to remain functional.

Frank Richter, Module Owner PS at ENERCON, explains the complexity: “A process landscape that had evolved over a long period and was tailored to project management at ENERCON first had to be thoroughly analyzed.

The specially adapted bill of materials explosion, in particular, presented us with significant challenges.”

The implementation must therefore support multiple environments in parallel:

• PLM-driven configurations for newly developed products based on the modular product structure
• ERP-based processing for older or not yet migrated products
• Hybrid scenarios with the gradual adoption of new configuration logic

The biggest challenge lay not in the technical implementation, but in understanding ENERCON’s processes, which had evolved over the years. “Every customer has unique requirements, but ENERCON’s project management is exceptionally specialized,” according to BDF EXPERTS. Thanks to this decoupling, the PLM system remains the primary source for product logic and variant information, while large parts of the existing ERP processes can continue to be used.

ENERCON’s success story demonstrates that cross-industry CTO+ principles can be successfully implemented in a mature, highly customized system landscape. With this architecture, ENERCON has a robust foundation for further scaling product variability, shortening development and turnaround times, and implementing future enhancements—such as in the area of Bill of Process—in a structured and controlled manner.