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Siemens Has Had a Busy Month

Several news items came my way while I have been traveling. These four are from Siemens. One follows the trend of industrial automation companies incorporating Microsoft Copilot for Augmented Intelligence (AI) application. The company announced expanded collaboration with Service Now. Finally, two releases reflect the ongoing portfolio realignment we are witnessing among all the major automation suppliers—further evidence of a market maturing and consolidating.

Siemens and Microsoft scale industrial AI

Siemens with its collaboration with Microsoft claim they have enabled AI to handle the most demanding environments at scale. Combining Siemens’ domain know-how across industries with Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, the Copilot further improves handling of rigorous requirements in manufacturing and automation.

Over 100 companies, including Schaeffler and thyssenkrupp Automation Engineering, are currently using the Siemens Industrial Copilot to streamline processes, address labor shortages, and drive innovation. With 120,000 users already leveraging the Siemens engineering software TIA Portal, they now have the opportunity to enhance their work with the genAI-powered assistant.

Since the product’s availability in July 2024, customers across various sectors have started using the Siemens Industrial Copilot for Engineering to boost efficiency. Engineers can now create panel visualizations in 30 seconds and generate code that requires only 20% adaptation. This streamlines workflows, reducing manual effort and addressing the skilled labor shortage. The chat function also provides instant, precise answers, eliminating the need for lengthy searches. By leveraging the Copilot, companies are driving productivity and innovation. 

Siemens and ServiceNow strengthen shopfloor security and drive generative AI-powered automation for shopfloor operations

Siemens and ServiceNow announced a new collaboration at the ServiceNow World Forum in Munich, Germany. The companies intend to enhance industrial cybersecurity and drive the integration of generative AI into shopfloor operations. This mutual cooperation leverages Siemens’ Sinec Security Guard for industrial vulnerability management and the Siemens Industrial Copilot for generative AI-powered automation – with ServiceNow providing the workflow automation needed to streamline and enhance factory operations. 

ServiceNow’s Operational Technology Service Management (OTSM) suite integrates IT and OT workflows, providing real-time visibility, and automating processes across the entire factory floor. With the addition of Sinec Security Guard, ServiceNow’s OT Vulnerability Response (OT VR) will be further enhanced to include more insights into vulnerabilities of OT equipment, enabling faster detection and remediation of security threats. 

Siemens strengthens leadership in industrial software and AI with acquisition of Altair Engineering

Siemens has signed an agreement to acquire Altair Engineering Inc., a leading provider of software in the industrial simulation and analysis market. Altair shareholders will receive USD 113 per share, representing an enterprise value of approximately USD 10 billion. The offer price represents a 19% premium to Altair’s unaffected closing price on October 21, 2024, the last trading day prior to media reports regarding a possible transaction. With this acquisition Siemens strengthens its position as a leading technology company and its leadership in industrial software.

“Acquiring Altair marks a significant milestone for Siemens. This strategic investment aligns with our commitment to accelerate the digital and sustainability transformations of our customers by combining the real and digital worlds. The addition of Altair’s capabilities in simulation, high performance computing, data science, and artificial intelligence together with Siemens Xcelerator will create the world’s most complete AI-powered design and simulation portfolio,” said Roland Busch, President and CEO of Siemens AG. “It is a logical next step: we have been building our leadership in industrial software for the last 15 years, most recently, democratizing the benefits of data and AI for entire industries.”

By adding Altair’s complementary simulation portfolio, with strength in mechanical and electromagnetic capabilities, Siemens enhances Digital Twin to deliver a full-suite, physics-based, simulation portfolio as part of Siemens Xcelerator. Altair’s data science and AI-powered simulation capabilities allow anyone, from engineers to generalists, to access simulation expertise to decrease time-to-market and accelerate design iterations. Additionally, Altair’s data science capabilities will unlock Siemens’ industrial domain expertise in product lifecycle and manufacturing processes.

Siemens to sell airport logistics business to Vanderlande

Siemens AG has agreed to sell its Siemens Logistics business to Vanderlande, a company owned by Toyota Industries Corporation. Vanderlande is a leading global partner for future-proof logistic process automation in the warehousing, airports, and parcel sectors, and with that will be a strategic long-term owner for Siemens Logistics. The purchase price (enterprise value) is €300 million. Closing is expected in the course of calendar year 2025, subject to regulatory approvals.

Predictive Maintenance and Inventory Optimization

Fluke Reliability partners with Verusen to Drive Predictive Maintenance and Inventory Optimization

The new trend for 2024 involves spreading applications from the factory floor specifically to maintenance and repair and parts. Here is a partnership designed to enhance spare parts inventory plus predictive maintenance. It does make sense to bring those two together. I sold a program once a long time ago that would have been a first step along this journey.

  • Verusen enables visibility into customers’ spare parts and inventory data across the enterprise
  • This complements Fluke Reliability’s commitment to providing enhanced visibility into enterprise asset management operations 
  • The two companies provide customers with an expansive toolset to shift from reactive to predictive maintenance utilizing AI functionality 

Fluke Reliability has entered into a formal partnership agreement with Verusen. The agreement combines Verusen’s AI-driven visibility of MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operations) spare parts inventory and back-office functions with Fluke Reliability’s AI-powered enterprise asset management solutions to increase uptime, enhance maintenance and reliability operations efficiency, and drive customer productivity.

Verusen has been added to Fluke Reliability’s Industry and Technology partner program which is designed to enable customers to better integrate and automate connected reliability workflows for improved operations. This move underpins both companies’ commitment to helping customers shift to more proactive maintenance and reliability operations, maximizing uptime and accelerating efficiency worldwide.

AI Solution for Manufacturing Services

Remember when AI was hidden, buried deep within the program? Now a marketer is derelict in duty when not promoting AI in the product. Not to say it isn’t beneficial. Just that there’s more to it, we hope, than AI meaning that it solves a real problem.

This news is from ServiceNow. Their solutions span broader industries than manufacturing. I have parsed the news for what is relevant to me.

ServiceNow announced new purpose-built solutions for the manufacturing industry to help power faster, more efficient operations and better employee experiences. Manufacturing Commercial Operations (MCO) incorporates generative AI (GenAI) to streamline sales, service and support, and order-to-cash processes. Employee Center (EC) Pro Kiosk brings intelligent self-service experiences to deskless workers, making it easy for them to access company communications, relevant resources, and seamlessly navigate hire-to-retire processes.

Manufacturing Commercial Operations is built on top of ServiceNow Customer Service Management and Sales and Order Management. It offers a single, generative AI-powered solution for order exceptions, dealer operations, customer service and support, order-to-cash operations, and product and quality management. It seamlessly integrates with manufacturers’ existing systems to help make work easier, faster, and more transparent.

Capabilities within Manufacturing Commercial Operations allow manufacturers to:

Transform field operations: MCO integrates with ServiceNow Field Service Management, making it easy for manufacturers to deliver proactive, preventative maintenance and dispatch and route technicians to the right work to fix problems fast. If a customer reports an equipment issue, customer service teams can quickly log the problem and deploy a field technician with the necessary knowledge, skills, and equipment to manage the task – all from within MCO. Real-time updates are sent to the technician’s mobile device, including the customer’s location and details about the product model, helping ensure that the technician has the necessary information and assets for their visit, reducing downtime and solving problems as efficiently as possible.

Employee Center Pro Kiosk is an intelligent self-service walk-up experience that provides a front door for everything the manufacturing factory worker needs, from requesting time off, to reviewing benefits, asking a payroll question, or accessing the latest company news and information. With EC Pro Kiosk – part of ServiceNow HR Service Delivery – employees can access critical company information and applications via a kiosk on the manufacturing floor by scanning a QR code on a personal phone or through personalized SMS messages. By bridging the communication gap between the employee and the company, leaders can help ensure deskless workers are in the loop on important updates or decisions and have the resources they need to stay informed and receive support, improving employee engagement.

Ocean Data Systems Launches Dream Report Professional Services 

What can you do when you have a product, but its lifecycle appears to be nearing saturation? Turn to services. That’s what all the big boys are doing. So also is Ocean Data Systems. Known for Dream Report, the company is launching Dream Report Professional Services. 

New Dream Report services include:

• Project development 

• Technical audits and review of existing projects 

• Technical consulting and applying best practices 

• Development of custom reporting objects and custom communication drivers

• Fundamental, advanced, and custom training programs

These and other customized initiatives offered by the newly formed services team will significantly increase user satisfaction by optimizing the value of their Dream Report software. 

The professional services team is comprised of experts with in-depth regulatory and compliance expertise. Training and project consulting experts draw on an extensive knowledge base of product use cases, technical hints, and best practices. Direct access to Dream Report R&D will also give users a faster path to key technology experts, who can solve complexities and challenges in reporting. The Dream Report Services project development team members, experienced with a wide variety of automation platforms and product implementations, will deliver unique insights on how to achieve specific and customized requirements that drive ROI.

Schneider Electric Launches Digital Transformation Services

My first digital transformation project in manufacturing was in 1978. We had an IBM Series 3 minicomputer. I procured (leased) a set of programs from IBM. There were classes and other training. I remember a trip to New York City. We put all current engineering data on that little machine (not nearly as powerful as the thing in my lap that I’m typing on). Then…the market tanked, the company was sold, the president was fired by the corporate overlords, the new president fired my boss the vice president, the new vice president fired me (stuff runs down hill).

But they couldn’t take away the learning.

That’s why I look with prejudiced eye at the marketing and analyst aspect of today’s articles on digital transformation. We’ve been at it for a long time.

On the other hand—

  • Compute platforms grow ever more powerful
  • Databases become ever better servants of our data needs
  • Organizations grow to incorporate new digital realities

New products and services that help end users get better at this digital journey provide needed support. Aside from hype, these are good. 

At the ARC Industry Leadership Forum in Orlando February 6-9 this year, I had a chance to listen to people from Schneider Electric describe their new offering. I’m sure many customers will find it quite useful.

  • Industrial Digital Transformation Consulting and Deployment Service 
  • Specialized end-to-end service to accelerate successful digital transformation strategic planning and implementation for industrial businesses 
  • Sustainability, industrial performance, digital operations, and energy management experts to drive transformation at enterprise and local levels 

Industrial Digital Transformation Services offering is designed to help industrial enterprises achieve future-ready, innovative, sustainable, and effective end-to-end digital transformation. (OK, that was the marketing hype.)

The targeted benefits include:

  • operational efficiency and workforce empowerment 
  • sustainability and energy efficiency 
  • asset optimization 
  • cybersecurity

And, I’ll close by giving you a quote from the organization leader:

“Successful industrial digital transformation requires a global vision that is agile enough to support local needs,” said Marc Fromager, SVP Industrial Automation Services, Schneider Electric. “Successful programs encompass efficiency, sustainability, and employee empowerment, underpinned by robust cybersecurity. What elevates Schneider Electric is our unmatched combination of digital transformation experience across a myriad of industries, supported by our world-leading energy management and automation technology and software—all delivered by local experts with the full backing of our global teams.” 

Emerson Exchange 2022

The control and automation market I’ve been in since the late 90s has definitely become a software market. Yes, the main players that remain do still have their legacy controllers, instrumentation, sensors, and networking. The excitement that remains is mainly software and services. Domain expertise within the supplier community becomes increasingly important. 

I was coming off a vacation (not planned by me) and couldn’t work out the logistics of making it to Dallas. I kept up with things through press releases and reports from social media guru Jim Cahill. I survived missing presentations by the inimitable CTO Peter Zornio. News came through, anyway.

Announcement summaries follow. 

Boundless Automation

This next-generation architecture will empower companies through “boundless automation” to manage, connect and deliver operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) data seamlessly and easily across the enterprise. Moving data freely and securely across OT and IT domains – from the intelligent field to the edge and cloud – will enable operational and business performance optimization across the enterprise.

It really is all about the data.

Check out Jim Cahill’s report.

DeltaV

  • Emerson’s Latest Control System Update Lays Foundation for Software-Driven, Data-Centric Automation Platform
  • DeltaV version 15 helps drive faster, easier digital transformation to accelerate IT/OT convergence, enabling easy upgrades and modernization

Intelligent Field

PlantWeb plus recent acquisition AspenTech = Emerson’s Plantweb digital ecosystem, optimized by AspenTech, enables industrial manufacturers across all industries to “See, Decide, Act and Optimize” their operations. Leveraging a robust suite of sensors, software and control technologies, Plantweb now enables companies to optimize the business and sustainability performance of their plants and enterprise through advanced asset and business optimization software.

SCADA

Movicon.NExT 4.2 is a flexible, modular platform that provides local HMI, supervision and analytics that scale from small IIoT or WebHMI applications on embedded Linux devices to large Windows server systems, allowing users to achieve sustainability and performance improvements, one step at a time, easily and cost effectively.

I/O Interface

Emerson has released DeltaV IO.CONNECT, a new subscription software service designed to help plants simplify modernization with an open architecture pathway that makes it possible to transition to more efficient control schemes without the need to completely overhaul existing infrastructure. In a traditional plant with tens of thousands of I/O points and many controllers, this can save hundreds or thousands of hours of labor and up to 40% of the capital required for a total rip-and-replace upgrade.

Hydrogen Production

Southern California Gas (SoCalGas), a regulated subsidiary of Sempra, has selected Emerson’s digital technologies, software and services to demonstrate the resiliency and reliability of its new [H2] Innovation Experience in Southern California. One of the first microgrid projects of its kind in the United States, the [H2] Innovation Experience is a technology demonstration that aims to show how carbon-free gas made from renewable electricity can be used in pure form or as a blend to fuel clean energy systems of the future.

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