Representative End User Clients
Representative Automation Clients
Representative Software Clients
At ARC Advisory Group’s 22nd India Forum (July 10-11, 2024), titled Accelerate Transformation in the Age of AI, Open Automation, and Sustainability, Siemens participated as a Global Sponsor. Vikas Manoria, Head Regional Product Management, Factory Automation, Digital Industries from Siemens delivered a presentation on the shift from automated to adaptive production in the manufacturing industry, addressing challenges such as cost pressure, efficiency, flexibility, and the need for new talent. He introduced Siemens' Industrial Operations X, which leverages IT and software capabilities to enhance automation, and highlighted several upcoming products and solutions that support this transformation.
This blog captures the salient points of his presentation. The entire presentation can be viewed here.
From Automated to Adaptive Production
As a representative of a leading technology company, at the outset Vikas acknowledged and was in consensus with the other presenters that emphasized the importance of openness and hardware-agnostic systems in modern control systems. His presentation connected megatrends impacting the manufacturing sector; and how Siemens looks at tackling them. Vikas set the tone for his session by mentioning “No one can predict the future challenges or anticipate industrial requirements.” As the manufacturing sector grapples with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of current and future times it is imperative to shift from standard automated production to an adaptive production ecosystem.
Through this shift Vikas highlighted the following challenges that could be addressed by manufacturers:
Industry challenges that continue to grow: Cost pressures, efficiency, quality, flexibility, scalability, and the need for faster innovation cycles.
Talent and workforce shortage: Finding skilled talent familiar with traditional PLC programming languages is a challenge, as fresh engineers are more well-versed in modern languages like Java and Python.
Volatility of supply and demand: The impact of global events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, semiconductor crisis, and geopolitical issues affect supply chains and manufacturing processes.
Growing need for Sustainability: This is no longer a moral dilemma or responsibility; it has commercial value as norms and regulations are structured keeping the sustainability aspect at the core of business operations.
How to Shift to Adaptive Manufacturing?
The future of manufacturing is adaptive. To achieve this objective and migrate from fixed production to an adaptive future, an open industrial ecosystem is required. When we talk about the future of manufacturing, terms and concepts such as “lights-off manufacturing, dark manufacturing, fully autonomous factories” and so on are bandied about. But to reach there, first you must adopt an adaptive production ecosystem. In this context Vikas spoke about Siemens’ Industrial Operations X, an interoperable portfolio that integrates IT and software capabilities to enhance automation, emphasizing the importance of an open ecosystem. This portfolio of Industrial Operations X covers the entire gamut of the production lifecycle and attempts to bring the strengths of the IT world into the automation world, empowering OT with IT. This is possible only if there is a very strong and open ecosystem. Siemens automation portfolio revolves around the Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) platform; next is adaptive production, which is a stepping stone to the future. Industrial Operations X is based on three pillars: software defined automation, data-driven production, and industrial ecosystem. It is also an integral part of Siemens Xcelerator. To quote portfolio developments within these offerings, he mentioned Siemens’ Industrial Edge hardware-agnostic ecosystem that is developing very rapidly. Further, Vikas outlined several established and upcoming Siemens solutions, including the Virtual PLC (1500V), Modular operation software, and digital twins, aimed at achieving adaptive manufacturing.
Panel Discussion
Vikas was also invited to a dedicated panel discussion during the forum wherein he extended his thoughts and emphasized about Siemens Xcelerator that supports the shift to adopting adaptive production.
Xcelerator is Siemens’ open digital business platform that accelerates digital transformation and value creation for customers of all sizes by bringing its domain know-how, together through three major pillars: portfolio, marketplace, and ecosystem.
While citing an example, Vikas shared a vendor agnostic reference deployed by Siemens with OPC UA. The customer wanted to address growing concerns with increased cycle time in operations, necessitating a detailed analysis and operational efficiency improvements in their production process. With amplitudes of data generated through thousands of assets on the shopfloor possibly affecting this, it required a data-driven analytical approach to find the root cause. This is where the Xcelerator portfolio offerings like Industrial Edge were utilized. Interestingly, the firm did not have a single Siemens component in their plant. The entire communication was through other third party PLCs. The Siemens solution was still able to gather the data via OPC UA with Industrial Edge as the connector and run the required analysis to address the concern.