Siemens pushes to lead digital surge

Lothar Herrmann, chief executive officer of Siemens Greater China, said at the Industry Forum Siemens 2016 organised in mid-July in Beijing, that “I am proud that Siemens is one of the world’s largest producers of energy-efficient and cost-saving resource-saving technologies today. Being active in more than 200 countries, we are at home anywhere in the world.”

Siemens drive and control systems have been installed in more than 3,000 port cranes at almost every harbour in the world.

A total of 77,000 companies worldwide are using Siemens’ PLM software.

In China, for example, Siemens’ hotline of Digital Factory Division and Process Industries and Drives Division has provided technical support for more than 153,000 customers to date.

By early 2016, Siemens had participated in the construction and launch of 14 HVDC lines in China.

“By connecting hardware, software, industry know-how, and data, we push to merge the virtual and physical worlds,” Herrmann said.

From PLM software and smart grids to intelligent traffic management and imaging software, Siemens’ digital technologies and solutions help customers enhance their competitiveness to win in the digital age.

For instance, the group’s newly launched digital service platform, Sinalytics, makes it possible to remotely monitor equipment performance, conduct predictive diagnosis, and optimise plant performance. More than 300,000 devices globally are already connected to the Sinalytics platform.

At Siemens, innovation is the primary value and what the company stands for. It helps Siemens adapt to lead, and succeed changes.

One of the major drivers for Siemens to win enterprises’ confidence consists in its huge investments into research and development (R&D).

Specifically, Siemens plans to increase by some €300 million ($332 million) its R&D investment over the world, to €4.8 billion ($5.312 billion) in the fiscal year of 2016 on the basis of last year. A major part of the additional funds is earmarked for automation, digitalisation, and decentralised energy systems.

“At Siemens, we see innovations with an open mind. We are setting up a separate unit called “Next47” to consolidate our existing start-up activities globally and foster disruptive ideas more vigorously,” Herrmann said.

According to him, the era of big data had been surging . Up to the year 2000, the world generated approximately 2 exabytes of new information. It now generates this much data in a single day. It is expected that the global digital universe will increase 10-fold by 2020, compared to 2013.

“For enterprises, it is important to keep abreast with such a digital surge and quickly adapt to the constantly-changing market conditions,” Herrmann said.

According to him, the tide of digitalisation and expanded use of the Internet are reshaping the faces of many industries. Totally new business opportunities and models are emerging one after another.

The world is becoming more connected. In each aspect of our lives, such as energy, mobility, buildings, and production, the Internet of Things is playing an increasingly important background role.

The Internet of Things leads to ever new ways for machines and people to interact. Such inter-connectedness will open up new opportunities to enhance energy efficiency, increase manufacturing productivity, and improve the resilience of cities.

In the manufacturing industry, for example, interlinked and intelligent machines can communicate with each other via digital technologies and autonomously determine the best possible production path. This means a fundamental improvement from the traditional manufacturing methods.

“At this very moment, digital technologies are used to generate data and analyse it at the same time. Moreover, the devices will use their own computing resources to process the data and provide users with value-adding information,” Herrmann said.

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