The impact of information sharing on installation processes of offshore wind farms - process modelling and simulation-based analysis

摘要

The installation of offshore wind energy turbines is accompanied by great challenges arising from the dynamic environment, which influences logistics processes. Communication plays a major role for cost-efficient installation processes, due to the coordination needed between different partners involved in the offshore wind energy supply chain. A detailed process analysis revealed the importance of shared information about weather conditions, storage capacities and vessel availabilities. By applying a simulation study, which evaluates eight information sharing scenarios, the influence of the following execution time-related performance measures is investigated: average time in manufacturer storage, average time in port, total installation time and average vessel usage time. As a result, the simulation study verifies that sharing information between supply chain partners can contribute to more efficient logistics processes. However, the achievable prediction accuracy and the interdependencies between the information items have a major influence on the quality of results.