On the path to Industry 4.0: Siemens showcases concrete customer applications

In Hall 11 at the SPS IPC Drives 2016, Siemens will be presenting elements of its Digital Enterprise portfolio which are already available today for realisation of the Industry 4.0 vision.

Under the banner “Driving the Digital Enterprise”, Siemens will be showcasing integrated applications which customers can use to optimize their production systems and processes over the entire life cycle of their plants and products. Working together with customers from both the discrete manufacturing and process industry, Siemens is developing new solutions for plant and production processes. In the specially created “MindSphere Lounge”, visitors will also have the chance to experience the IoT ecosystem live in a unique atmosphere.

“Siemens is actively driving forward the digital transformation. To this end, we have made consistent additions to our Digital Enterprise portfolio, in particular in the field of cloud data platforms which pave the way for new digital business models”, says Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG Klaus Helmrich. “These innovations allow our medium-sized and large-scale customers alike to invest even more into integrated approaches for the end-to-end digitalization of industry.”

MindSphere provides the foundation for applications and data-based services from Siemens and third-party suppliers in fields such as predictive maintenance, energy data management or resource optimization. In this way, MindSphere offers customers a development environment in which they can integrate their own applications and services. In the MindSphere-Lounge – an area over 400 square meters in size – Siemens and its partner companies at the booth will be presenting their ideas and applications and allowing visitors to become immersed in whole new spheres. Visitors will also have the chance to find out just how easily their machines and production plants can be docked onto MindSphere applications with the aid of Totally Integrated Automation.

Siemens will be providing a practical illustration of its digital expertise in the form of two highlight exhibits. The discrete manufacturing application highlight is a model of a pilot plant illustrating the efficiency of the Mechatronics Concept Designer from Siemens PLM Software. All the modules which make up the plant will be merged to create a kinematic model, enabling the creation of a detailed digital copy of all the components. The model is capable of mapping their functional characteristics and simulating both their physical (multibody physics) and automation behavior. This allows users to simulate and optimize the sequence of all individual movements prior to real production using the virtual copy. The Mechatronics Concept Designer also provides open interfaces for additional tools and a Gantt chart depicting all the different phases and dependencies. This means that right from the early planning phase, development engineers are able to detect where sequential movements are required or where parallel ones are possible. For plant builders, this means tangibly reduced project lead times, faster commissioning and – because existing data can be re-used – far simpler replication of identical or similar plants.

The second highlight exhibit uses the example of a pump application to demonstrate the possibilities for systematic optimization across the entire life cycle of a plant based on actual projects. Using Comos as a central engineering and data management platform, a standardized and continuously updated database is available to all those involved at the planning stage, ensuring consistent data management.

The virtual identical copy of a plant generated during the engineering phase – the digital twin – can be used to simulate and optimize commissioning, operating and servicing processes. Comos Walkinside provides the user with a high-resolution 3D virtual reality depiction visualizing all the engineering data. This allows the user to navigate through the virtual copy of a plant right from the initial planning phase of a plant, to check issues such as the availability of critical assets. The control system’s functionality is tested using the Simit simulation software, which enables any errors to be detected at an early stage and worked around before the plant is commissioned.

The bidirectional exchange of data between Comos and Simatic PCS7 means that the digital twin is always fully up to date. Plant operators benefit from a cohesive, optimized flow of information across every level of the production process and throughout the entire operating period. The Operations Intelligence Software XHQ transforms Big Data into Smart Data, making available prepared up-to-the-minute process and plant data almost in real time as the basis for management decisions.

The exhibit at the Siemens booth demonstrates the optimum interaction between all the components used for electrification, automation and digitalization using the example of the real pump drive train. The simple integration of energy-efficient drive solutions into the customer’s application and the automation environment over a plant’s complete life cycle (Integrated Drive Systems) enables customers to reduce their time-to-profit.