sponsoredDigital Transformation Software Expertise Accelerates Digital Transformation

Siemens is driving digital transformation: a new business unit pools key software areas contributing to digitalization of the process industry. Bart Moors, Head of the new unit and Head of Portfolio Management Dr. Uschi Mitsching are focusing on comprehensive support for customers and their plants across the entire lifecycle, regardless of where they join the digitalization journey.

When Bart Moors talks about projects and potential, he literally brings the digital twin to life. Software in and for the process industry, from design and engineering to simulation and optimization — somehow, he always manages to take everything into consideration at the same time.

And it doesn’t matter where his starting point is. Ultimately, everything leads to the digital twin. During our discussion, he will go even further, namely to the business ecosystem known as Siemens Xcelerator, which will enable co-creation between Siemens and its customers or partners in the future.

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Must-have Digitalization From a Single Source

Since the beginning of 2023, Bart Moors has headed the new Process Automation Software portfolio unit at Siemens Digital Industries. With this unit Siemens will optimally support its customers during their digital transformation — based on an integrated software landscape containing key software solutions, applications and services. As Head of Portfolio Management, Dr. Uschi Mitsching is setting the course together with Bart Moors.

She recalls, “When I started at Siemens twelve years ago in the area of Comos engineering software, paper was still the predominant medium at all plants. Our first app broke new ground at that time.” Things have changed since then. “Without exception, digitalization is now a must-have for all our customers from the process industry,” says Moors. However, the focus varies depending on the industry. For example, in the chemical industry with its numerous brownfield plants, the emphasis is largely on the sustainability, safety, and optimization of plants.

For the pharmaceutical industry, the priorities are time to market and the rapid commissioning of plants. Surprising for Moors was the high level of interest in digitalization shown by the water/wastewater sector. However, what all industries have in common is that they are asking more or less the same questions: Where is the best place to start? How can we achieve a rapid ROI, save costs, and reduce our CO₂ footprint?

According to Mitsching, customers now approach the topic of digitalization much more strategically and systematically then they did just a few years ago: “Most of them come to us with a whole package of ideas — and they’ve already taken the first steps.” In the energy and hydrogen industries, completely new business models are among the drivers of digitalization.

Very often, though, the motivation simply comes from younger employees who expect good digital tools — or from companies wanting to attract such employees. For many customers, knowledge retention in the context of generational change is one of the top issues in their digitalization strategy. “Tied to this is the aspect of performance reliability,” Mitsching explains. After all, only if a young team is well supported in solving problems and finding documents will it work at its best.

Different Maturity Levels In Several Dimensions

The idea of end-to-end integration is what led to pooling the various software options offered by Siemens. Moors outlines several dimensions: “In our digital maturity checks, we look at the extent to which the customer has already completed horizontal integration — and whether many individual data silos exist side by side in the value chain.

This also includes the interaction with partners, customers, and suppliers. If company leaders are already thinking in terms of ecosystems, that speaks for a far advanced level of digitalization.” At least as important is vertical integration within the classic automation pyramid — and beyond, for instance the integration of edge devices. “Many of our customers have implemented the latter only in a rudimentary form, even though there are, of course, some early adopters. A number of users also have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to the integration of level 3, the MES layer,” Moors says.

Mobile Maintenance

Schluss mit Papierarbeit in der Instandhaltung

He also cites the lifecycle approach as the third dimension, covering everything from engineering to operation and maintenance: “Sometimes we see that even though the maintenance team is using an asset management tool, it later transfers the data available there manually to the ERP system. In such cases, it’s clear that there is still room for improvement.” For Moors, another sign of a mature level of digitalization is the use of virtual training environments.

When faced with this variety of possibilities, the change manager in Uschi Mitsching comes to life: “With every new tool that is to be introduced, a change project is created. The new tool can only work if employees at all levels of the company understand why digitalization is taking place as well as what will be tackled first and what later.”

Effizientes Anlagenmanagement

Von integriertem Engineering zu integrierter Inbetriebnahme

In addition, she says that issues such as the impact on competitiveness or on the company’s ability to attract new employees need to be addressed. “In view of this, it is important to set long-term goals while, at the same time, breaking down the journey towards these goals into manageable steps. That way, everyone will see rapid success,” she says.

Yet what happens if something doesn’t turn out as planned? What if mistakes happen? “That’s quite possible — you can always come up against challenges,” explains Mitsching, adding, “Then it’s a matter of going back a step, reflecting once more, adjusting the procedure — and then continuing towards the goal.

Serving The Dynamically Growing Digitalization Market

Now Siemens can consistently support an integrated approach. Providing comprehensive answers to the digitalization issues driving the different sectors of the process industry succeeds even better when working as a unit. “We’re not only aiming at the interoperability of our own products within a coordinated model,” explains Moors. “Instead, we’re going beyond that and building an open ecosystem that takes into account the installed basis and, at the same time, integrates add-on modules from partners.”

According to Moors, the roadmap of software product developments is designed to ensure that Siemens can sustainably support the long-term digitalization visions of its customers from the process industry. Furthermore, he sees the imminent consolidation of the software environments leading to benefits in terms of user experience: “By continuing to strengthen our software portfolio, we will succeed in optimally serving the dynamically growing process IoT market,” he says.

It is clear to see how inspiring the first time has been for Mitsching and Moors. “We’ve met so many great new colleagues – AI experts from the labs, SaaS professionals, outstanding architects, all of whom perfectly complement the industry expertise of the Comos teams in engineering and operations. Our colleagues from gPROMS with their know-how in process simulation and modelling, the employees from Simit with their marked aptitude for combining hardware and software – they all enrich our ecosystem mindset,” says Mitsching. “It’s now a matter of committing to a common way of working, then we can really play out our huge benefits on the market, namely the continuity and comprehensiveness of the portfolio across all lifecycles.”

With this consolidated strength in conjunction with a modular approach and the open ecosystem based on standards such as DEXPI, OPC-UA, and MTP, Siemens aims to serve the process industry in an optimum way — better than any competitor. And this despite — or rather because of — the open concept that does not exclude third-party suppliers. An important role is played by coordinators who support customers in strategy development and who have direct access to the project or product development level if necessary.

The benefits of all this for the customer should, of course, also have a positive effect for Siemens. “We want to grow fast,” says Moors when explaining the overarching goal. To this end, focus areas with high potential and strong customer interest have been identified for each portfolio segment and initiatives have been launched. However, it is not only products such as gPROMS in design, Comos in engineering, Simit for simulation, PlantSight for the digital twin, or XHQ for analysis and visualization that need to evolve. A further push should come from competence teams that promote the operability of the products within the user industries. Moors refers to these as ‘growth initiatives’. “They are intended to show customers the path within the open ecosystem along which they can generate added value,” says Moors, adding, “Our focus here goes first in the direction of managed service and ultimately towards software-as-a-service.”

Artificial Intelligence Makes Its Way Into Engineering And Operations

Mitsching and her portfolio team are responsible for driving interoperability for all products and thus, for example, making simulation and AI components easier to use in engineering and operations. Modularity and scalability are additional aspects. “We want to give the customer the possibility to enter at any point, for example with Comos Mobile Worker, which supports maintenance staff and plant technicians with up-to-date information,” Mitsching points out. Subsequent re-engineering projects would then be relatively easy thanks to the integration of Comos. “In the medium term, we want to increase the availability of the knowledge contained in the customers’ data, supported by AI,” says Mitsching. Moors adds that there is a lot of potential in this: “Everyone benefits from this — the end customer who no longer has to worry about things such as spare parts inventory, and the process machine builder, who gains more knowledge about the plant and its operation and can use this as a basis for identifying optimization potential.”

Platform Facilitates Cooperation Across Company Boundaries

Excellent results come from synergies and cooperation. “That’s why we want to offer a collaborative platform and invite people to help build the future of digital transformation for us all. The expertise to do this does not come from us alone, but also from our customers and partners,” says Moors, envisioning a globe where everything is connected to everything else. With the Siemens Xcelerator, Siemens has created a platform that enables customers to drive forward their digital transformation. Mitsching explains, “The SaaS trend and reusability through APIs are core elements here.”

The success of this interplay between Siemens expertise and software as well as the knowledge of its customers is verified by a number of projects. One example is the strategic partnership with Zeta, a general planner and system integrator for the biopharmaceutical industry. Based on Comos, Simit, as well as automation, qualification, and diagnostic software, a continuous and comprehensive system landscape is being created that will allow Zeta to develop completely integrated digital pharmaceutical plants based on a digital twin in the future.

Success Storys In Plant Engineering

Success stories in the plant engineering, chemicals, pharmaceutical, and water industries, to name a few. Wacker is also setting out to support the digital transformation with a central platform. Besides Comos Mobile Worker and Simit, the platform also incorporates PlantSight for creating digital twins. Lanxess, on the other hand, has found its entry into digital transformation via the planning tool and simulation.

For the cellulose and fibre manufacturer, Lenzing, Siemens has already developed a tool that supports the design of a digital twin. Several oil and gas customers use the data from plant planning for the immersive training of their operating teams. Also, well advanced in the use of the new digital possibilities is a mining company that makes extensive use of Siemens software to carry out planning, simulation, and automation tasks, and that uses the digital twin during operation to optimize sustainability KPIs and make plant operation safer and more reliable.

Another example is a Swiss food plant manufacturer that initially needed a collaboration platform for its engineering staff. Now the company is moving towards offering customers services such as spare parts management. Two customers from the water industry show how different the approach can be. While one is focusing on optimizing a pumping plant, the other is taking measures to make the status of its plant transparent as a first step.

This list of example projects is far from exhaustive. What is particularly important to Moors is the flexible approach: “One company creates a digital twin and then ensures that it’s always up to date, in other words, that changes made in the real plant are also reflected in the digital twin — and then uses this for modern maintenance strategies, for optimizing operations, and so on. But it also works the other way round, too.”

The future Is Foreseen

Once the data is available and contextualized, it can be used in many different ways. In the future, artificial intelligence will play an increasingly important role here. It already makes things much easier today, for instance when P&IDs, which are only available in paper form in the archive for brownfield plants, are scanned in so that they can ultimately be used to “build” a digital twin. Moors expects AI to grow in significance when it comes to anomaly detection for improving processes. However, he says that the technology is not yet ready for the use of augmented reality glasses in an industrial environment, adding, “But we are already building interfaces today to take advantage of these opportunities when the time comes.” For that is what lies at the heart of Siemen’s ambition: to enable both itself and its customers to embrace the challenges of the future. (agk)

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