Siemens unveils further plans for the Digital Factory Division

German manufacturing giant Siemens has revealed more details about the vision for its ‘Digital Factory Division’.

In a blog post on LinkedIn, the company’s Head of Planning and Controlling at the Siemens Digital Factory, Stephen Pierer von Esch, said the scheme will transfer complex data into support by separating surfeit hype from important information.

Siemens aims to connect technologies through its plan, allowing it to tackle future problems within the industry. In order to do so, the company has established it’s DigiRoadmap to highlight key trends within the industry and evaluate their potential impact on E2E business.

In his posting, von Esch detailed the key aspects of the firm’s DigiRoadmap as follows:

• Common Data Lake: Basis for becoming a data driven organization is a trusted and integrated data lake serving as single source of truth
• Analytics & Visualisation: Moving from descriptive and diagnostic to action oriented analytics and from static standard reporting to a flexible, self-service BI landscape
• Predictive & Simulation: Evolving from predictive use cases to complex simulations and finally closed-loop performance management by taking action on results of performance monitoring blended with updated plans
• Robotics & Digital Assistance: Digital hands running through structured workflows while cognitive bots handle unstructured data and apply probability weighted judgement where straightforward decision making is not enough

In order for the strategy to be executed effectively, Siemens is to focus on developing its ‘digital DNA’ in order for new capabilities to encourage the benefits of the plan.

“There is also the question around centralisation versus decentralisation in order to manage the trade-off between standardisation and experimentation,” von Esch wrote.

“While the responsibility of executing our digital strategy clearly lies within the organization, there is a benefit in supporting the individual initiatives with a capability centric approach to allow agility and drive synergies.”

Siemens will be launching its Data Visions lab, featuring experts from a range of technology fields that will enable the firm to implement new technologies such as robotics and data analytics.

von Esch also discussed how the German manufacturer will be ready to embrace new future technologies, no matter how challenging.

“We have to be aware that digital processes in the future look different to what we were used in the past,” he said.

However, he also noted that digital transformation is more than just the digital technology, emphasing the importance of empowering a workforce to enable innovation and change.