Connected Bolting Tools with Atlas Copco

Opportunity overview

The global wind energy market is a highly competitive business with strong outlook for growth. However, cost pressure and regulatory requirements are driving the industry to work smarter. As major OEMs publicly state in their annual reports, inadequate quality control is a key obstacle to unlock profitability and productivity.

Tightening of bolts is a critical part of the quality process in wind turbine construction and maintenance. Today, state of the art assembly plants have a fully digitalized assembly process. The conditions off-shore and even on-shore are vastly different and the work environment is rough. Out in the field, the quality control and documentation process is still handled very manually using pen and paper. Consequently, data transparency and integrity are key challenges for the industry.

This is now changing with smart tools making their way into the field. These tools control the process and produce a digital record of the job done. We are now searching for partners with industry experience to jointly develop a solution for remote bolt tightening data collection.

We envision a solution where tightening data is collected from the tools and uploaded seamlessly to a cloud database. The wi-fi and Bluetooth connectivity built into the tools can be used for data extraction and linked to the cloud via mobile devices when connectivity is available. A desired solution should also work with limited connection and be compatible with various different wind turbine models and bolting tools.