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Siemens PLM held their annual analyst event for 2017 the first week in September. As far as analyst events go, this was one of their better ones, particularly in terms of content, technology, and strategic direction. The clear theme of this event was the Digital Twin, and how Siemens is implementing this concept into products and services, connecting product design, production planning, production engineering, and production execution with the cloud-based open IoT operating system of MindSphere. The Mentor Graphics acquisition stole some of the spotlight over the course of the week, as both Siemens and Mentor executives illustrated how the semiconductor technology, the IP, and brain trust of people that came with this acquisition will distinguish Siemens from competitors in the areas of IIoT, the digital enterprise, and smart connected edge technology.
Driving the Digital Enterprise
Jan Mrosik, CEO Siemens Digital Factory Division kicked of the event with his keynote, Driving the Digital Enterprise. Mrosik presented a look at some of Siemens’ major initiatives which included additive manufacturing automation, intelligent infrastructure, moving to the next level of intelligence with AI, and autonomous driving. The interesting commonality of each of these technology initiatives was how the concept of the digital twin was involved. Mrosik put up some interesting numbers around Siemens’ three main businesses: Electrification, Automation, and now, Digitalization. Clearly, electrification is a legacy business for Siemens, accounting for €42B, and automation, where Siemens dominates globally, is around €18B. Classic services associated with these legacy businesses accounts for around €17B. Digitalization, its newest business initiative, accounts for around €3.3B, with digital services at €1.1B. Growth in the legacy businesses is stable, but modest, with 1-2 percent for electrification, and 3-4 percent for automation. But the future for Siemens is clearly in digitalization, with projected growth over 8 percent. Much of this digitalization and the concept of the digital twin will be centered around Siemens’ Mindsphere and IIoT.
MindSphere and the Digital Twin
Tony Hemmelgarn, CEO of Siemens PLM, presented a look at how Siemens is going to realize the digital twin. He began with a theme of how monitoring a system provides insight that can lead to meaningful action. This is the basic premise of the Mindsphere platform. Siemens is characterizing Mindsphere as a cloud-based open IoT operating system that can monitor a system, gain insights about performance and condition, and provide actionable information to improve the system. The digital twin of both the product and the production process can be interrogated through simulation by Siemens simulation tools like Simcenter (product) and Tecnomatix (production). Mindsphere will also use predictive and prescriptive analytics to enable improvements across the design/build lifecycle.
Hemmelgarn went through a bit of history around Siemens PLM to provide a look at how it has evolved since the 2007 acquisition of UGS that first brought together the virtual world of PLM with the physical domain of TIA and automation. By 2011, Siemens had developed a unified product and production model across the PLM lifecycle. 2015 brought a smart innovation portfolio that included adaptive systems, intelligent models, and products realized through systems design. The current Digital Innovation Platform appears to be a culmination of this product and process, virtual and real, systems design evolution. This digital platform concept brings together product and process design software, simulation across the lifecycle, mechanical and electronic systems design, analytics for production systems, automation, and production execution.
Siemens mission, as described by Tony Hemmelgarn, is to continue significant investment in advanced technology, and deliver solutions based on this technology that will transform industries and society.
Steve Bashada, EVP and GM for Cloud and Data Services is now leading the MindSphere business unit. Siemens introduced MindSphere as the platform for digitalization in 2016, and Bashada continued to emphasize that MindSphere is the platform and cloud-based operating system for IoT and the connected intelligent edge for IIoT ecosystems. Bashada also pointed out that Siemens, as the global market leader in industrial automation clearly understands IIoT and connected devices. MindSphere, as a platform for IIoT, smart connected edge devices, and analytics will serve a range of industries and infrastructure, including the digital factory, process industries, medical, smart cities, building technologies, energy management, and energy generation both fossil and alternative.
Mentor Graphics Acquisition
Since the 2007 acquisition of UGS, Siemens PLM, as a part of the Digital Factory business unit, has made over $10B in acquisitions to date. This has included significant pickups in the simulation (CAE) space like LMS and CD-adapco which have formed the core of the Simcenter simulation platform. However, in this ten-year history of acquisitions, I believe the most significant of all is Mentor Graphics, the market leader in electronic design automation (EDA). Mentor clearly represents the direction and strategy going forward with Siemens’ digital enterprise initiatives and the Mindsphere platform. Mentor solutions in PCB design, chip design, and embedded systems software will play a major role as Siemens goes forward with its intelligent edge device and overall IIoT market strategies. Moreover, with Siemens’ strong focus on systems design overall, combining Mentor’s technology with the systems simulation capability of Siemens’ Simcenter platform will provide a multi-domain orchestration and development environment across systems design, mechanical design and physics, embedded software and controls, and electronics and PCB design. This will clearly set Siemens apart from the other PLM players in systems design space, and will enable and enhance the overall function of Mindsphere as an IIoT operating system for analytics and process improvement.
There will be immediate synergies between Siemens PLM and Mentor. These would include areas like PCB design and manufacturing, cabling and wire harness design, and thermal analysis and computational fluid dynamics in the simulation space. Siemens is a leader in manufacturing automation and controls, and, as such designs and builds its own PCBs, systems on a chip (SOC), and has been a long-time user of Mentor solutions.
Chip design is essential to electronic system design automation. More than one third of Mentor’s systems design customers’ purchases are tools for chip design. Large companies in A&D, automotive, and controls such as Boeing, Airbus, Raytheon, GE, Johnson Controls, BMW, Agilent, and of course, Siemens all design and build systems that require specialized SOCs. Moreover, leading information technology companies and manufacturers like Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Telsa, and Bosch are becoming the new SOC designers and manufacturers. Clearly, this is a very large market for Siemens PLM to penetrate.
Additionally, with Mentor, Siemens PLM gains a better position for systems design and CAE in the automotive sector. By integrating Mentor’s wire harness and electrical design, and simulation, it will have an even stronger position for CAD/CAE. Mentor also enhances Siemens positon in autonomous driving with Mentor’s Level 5 autonomous drive platform, already a strong position with the TASS acquisition for autonomous driving technology.
Additive Manufacturing
Siemens PLM forges on with additive manufacturing (AM) technology as a part of the overall digital thread theme. Essentially Siemens is industrializing AM through a simulation-driven generative design approach. This allows the product design engineer to re-think a design that is a radical departure from traditional design constraints. The generative aspect automatically generates a design that focuses on the most efficient form in terms of weight, strength, and functionality, and that can be fabricated using AM. AM, for Siemens, is the way to completely re-imagine part design and re-think manufacturing and the overall business process of fabricated parts. Siemens’ vision is to create one integrated end-to-end system for industrializing AM, connected by the digital thread, and implementing the digital twin.
Another aspect of the AM for Siemens is the partnership with HP and their new Multi Jet Fusion (MJF), and multi-material printing technology. This could represent a very large disruption to the plastics and resin AM market. If Siemens maintains a strong partnership it could evolve into the go-to AM design software supplier. Siemens is also teaming up with Deloitte to scale up the AM process for industrialization. They have developed a digital thread for AM (DTAM) that begins with concept and design, and progresses to simulation, validation, quality assurance, fabrication, field service, and end of life in a continuous process flow.