Navigating complexity through innovation

By: Kathryn Gerardino-Elagio

At the heart of Detroit’s innovation hub, Siemens gathered global media, partners, and industry leaders for Realize LIVE 2025—a premier event showcasing the future of digital manufacturing. Among the invited media was International Metalworking News for Asia, joining fellow journalists from around the world to witness firsthand the unveiling of Siemens’ latest strategies and technologies.

Kicking off the event, Tony Hemmelgarn, President and CEO of Siemens Digital Industries Software, delivered a powerful keynote that set the agenda for the days ahead. His message was clear: to thrive in today’s industrial landscape, companies must embrace complexity, accelerate their digital transformation, and harness the full potential of artificial intelligence. With this bold vision, Siemens reaffirmed its commitment to shaping the future of engineering and manufacturing through cutting-edge innovation.

Engineering in a State of Constant Change

Hemmelgarn opened with a candid reflection: “We are in constant transformation.” As industries continue evolving, so too must engineering tools, product development processes, and organisational mindsets. Complexity, long viewed as a challenge, is now positioned by Siemens as a competitive advantage. From rapid regulatory changes to sustainability pressures and global supply chain dynamics, adaptability has become paramount.

The Siemens Xcelerator and the Digital Twin

Central to Siemens’ digital strategy is the Siemens Xcelerator, a comprehensive platform designed to accelerate digital enterprise transformation. A cornerstone of Xcelerator is the comprehensive digital twin, which spans mechanical, electrical, software, and automation domains. Hemmelgarn emphasised that digital twins are only effective when tightly coupled to the real-world product lifecycle, enabling real-time, confident decision-making.

Key acquisitions such as Simcenter and Ultramain Systems enhance Siemens’ nonlinear simulation and AI capabilities. Additionally, high-performance computing tools now allow customers to balance workloads across GPU, CPU, on-premise, and cloud systems seamlessly.

Adaptive Solutions and Scalable Software

Hemmelgarn highlighted Siemens’ commitment to adaptability. Whether customers are scaling from basic 3D models to advanced multiphysics simulations or transitioning between cloud and desktop environments, Siemens ensures data continuity and software scalability through tools like Design Space Exploration and low-code platform Mendix.

Tackling Bill of Materials (BOM) Complexity

The talk delved deeply into a long-standing industrial challenge: the bill of materials. Hemmelgarn recounted a telling story—asking 26 people to define a BOM resulted in 79 different answers. With enterprise models and configuration complexity increasing, Siemens’ enhanced Teamcenter PLM platform now enables real-time BOM performance, dependency management across life cycles, and alignment between sales configurations and engineering feasibility.

Automakers, for instance, face millions of part configurations. Siemens' configurators and out-of-the-box solutions help validate and eliminate invalid configurations, turning variability into structured, scalable processes.

Leveraging AI with Lifecycle Intelligence

AI’s true potential, Hemmelgarn asserted, relies on data integrity and integration. Siemens’ Teamcenter now features AI-powered copilots that use data science tools like RapidMiner to analyse BOM discrepancies, supply chain risks, and change management—dramatically reducing response time and manual workload.

In one example, AI was able to identify and resolve a connector issue in the product lifecycle—from detection and analysis to part replacement and stakeholder notification—all within a single, traceable digital thread.

Expansion into Pharmaceuticals and Data Centers

Siemens is broadening its footprint in life sciences through the acquisition of Zapata AI and expansion into pharmaceutical software systems. By integrating siloed data from R&D to factory execution, Siemens aims to provide enterprise-level intelligence to industries like pharma, personal care, and oil and gas.

In data centers, Siemens takes a chip-to-grid approach—integrating infrastructure, automation, and chip-level thermal analysis using EDA tools such as Tessent. This comprehensive digital twin of data center operations helps predict component failures and optimise energy management at scale.

Manufacturing the Future: Industrial Metaverse and Adaptive Production

Hemmelgarn introduced Teamcenter Digital Reality Viewer, powered by NVIDIA GPUs, which merges photorealistic rendering with engineering data. The tool allows teams to walk through digital prototypes, compare design iterations, and validate configurations in virtual reality—reducing the need for physical mockups.

Adaptive manufacturing is another frontier. Siemens’ approach to recipe transformation enables companies with hundreds of factories to dynamically adapt production recipes to local conditions, cutting weeks of reconfiguration time down to minutes—critical for companies looking to localise production and reduce carbon footprints.

Empowering Users with Mendix Low-Code

Finally, Hemmelgarn celebrated the success of Mendix, Siemens’ low-code platform. Customers like General Atomics and Sony have used Mendix to replace legacy systems, streamline workflows, and even reduce development time from years to weeks—saving millions in the process. Embedding AI into these low-code applications allows for rapid creation of intelligent, task-specific agents.

Looking Ahead

Tony Hemmelgarn closed by comparing the impact of digital transformation to the slow growth of bamboo: unseen for years but rapidly accelerating once foundations are set. Siemens, through sustained investment in its digital ecosystem, AI, and customer-centric adaptability, is poised not only to meet the future—but shape it.