Siemens innovation day in mumbai saw the launch of its digitalisation platform, mindsphere, and an industry vertical report.
Siemens is serious about digitalisation. After organising Siemens Innovation Day in Munich, and then taking it to the USA, China, and the UAE, it reached India on May 10, 2018. Showcasing the path toward the digital transformation and the role of India’s industries, it brought together 300 participants representing business, government, media and finance. Sunil Mathur, CEO & MD, Siemens India, related what Innovation Day means to Siemens and how digitalisation will play a big role in the company’s manufacturing domain. Siemens launched its digitalisation platform ‘Mindsphere’ in India, along with four application centres in Pune, Noida and Gurgaon (two). Mindsphere is Siemens’ open, cloud-based operating system for the IoT that connects products, plants, systems and machines with advanced analytics.
Siemens currently has 20 such centres for digital customer applications in 17 countries and each of the centres specialises in a particular industry in which Siemens is active. At the four centres in India, around 900 software developers, data specialists and engineers will work together with the customers to develop digital innovations for data analysis and machine learning, said Roland Busch, chief technology officer and member of the managing board of Siemens AG.
“Siemens is taking the Fourth Industrial Revolution from concept to reality. The MindSphere Application Centers will enable us to apply our industry knowledge, scale up our digital enabled solutions and enhance long-term support to customers in infrastructure, process industries and the power sectors. We are now one of the world’s top 10 software companies, creating digital solutions that enable customers to reduce costs, improve reliability and develop new business models,” Busch said at the Siemens Innovation Day in Mumbai.
These new solutions developed on MindSphere will help Siemens experts to work together with customers to co-create solutions, which will be part of over 100 digital projects that will transform the entire value chain, and deliver productivity, flexibility, speed and quality in the customer’s operations.
Digital e-way
Approximately one million devices and systems worldwide are now connected via MindSphere, and this figure will reach 1.25 million by the end of fiscal 2018. Interactive exhibits showcased MindSphere, MindApps, Predictive Maintenance and Smart Manufacturing.
Siemens also launched an industry vertical market report ‘Unlocking the potential with digitalisation’. The report provides insights on the impact of digital transformation on manufacturing technologies in the market verticals automotive, food and beverages, aerospace & defence, pharmaceuticals, minerals, oil and gas, power utilities and data centres.
“Our customers rely on our domain know-how and digitalisation innovations to make them more competitive. We are seeing traction with the implementation of over 100 digitalisation projects for approximately 150 customers pan India,” said Mathur. Over 2,500 Siemens engineers in India contribute to delivering these cutting-edge digital solutions to the customers.
Speaking on the digital factory, Ashish Bhat, executive VP, country division lead – digital factory, Siemens Ltd, said, “The digital factory starts with product design, production design, PLM, automation and MES. With Mindsphere, all these technologies will address the complete manufacturing value chain. Manufacturing starts when you first thing of what to make. In a way, you create a digital twin of the whole chain which means while your plant is in operations and you are planning a new product, or an upgrade, you can do all your ideation based on the actual plant parameters. You can do all this on a virtual site and test the idea, test the layout and change the design, and once you’re happy you release it for the build.”
Brig. Prakash Tolani, strategy & business development, aerospace & defence, says, “Siemens Industry Software India (SISW) has gone digital. We help with virtual manufacturing of the product, make a digital twin of the process. Earlier we were a support company for defence, and did not respond to RFPs directly. Now we are getting into large projects. One day we hope to become a major player in Indian defence.”
During fiscal 2017, Siemens further extended its lead in software solutions and digital services. Revenue from digital technologies, for instance, rose to €5.2 billion – of which €4 billion was attributable to software and €1.2 billion to digital services. This corresponds to a 20% increase year-over-year and means that Siemens clearly outpaced market growth of about 8%. Siemens will again increase its R&D expenditures in 2018 and invest an additional sum of around €450 million. As a result, R&D spending will increase from about €5.2 billion in fiscal 2017 to over €5.6 billion in fiscal 2018.
Siemens has a strong innovation footprint in India. This includes developers and researchers engaged in developing solutions in Siemens Company Core Technology areas as well as PLM and manufacturing operations management (MOM) software, systems and services.