Siemens on its way to Industrie 4.0 with the Digital Enterprise

At this year’s SPS IP Drives, Siemens emphasizes its way towards the digital future of industry under the banner “On the way to Industrie 4.0 – Driving the Digital Enterprise”. The entire Hall 11 will be occupied by Siemens, where the company will be providing a comprehensive overview of its achievements as a leading global expert in driving forward developments in the electrification, automation and digitalization of industrial processes. Visitors may look forward to an array of product innovations across the fields of industrial software, automation and drive technology as well as services.

The theme of the Siemens presentation focuses on the interaction between hardware, software and services along the entire industrial value chain, with a broad selection of exhibition highlights, product innovations and graphically illustrated application examples taken from producing companies clearly pointing the way to the Digital Enterprise of the future.

As the central exhibition highlight at the booth, Siemens will be showcasing the four pillars needed for the digital transformation of industrial processes: software, communication solutions, safety concepts and solutions as well as digital services.

Next to the Digital Enterprise presentation in the center of the booth, two additional exhibition highlights will be given special prominence in the form of graphically presented application examples and practically-based solutions featuring the electrification, automation and digitalization of industrial processes.

The first of these is a multi-carrier system for packaging and filling machines developed in association with Festo. The simulation and downstream engineering using the TIA Portal (Totally Integrated Automation) permits the highly flexible transport of goods, enabling maximum individualization right down to batch size one. By linking to the cloud, all the production data generated by this machine can be seamlessly tracked and monitored live while in operation. With this capability, this exhibit is a representative example of digitalization in machine building from the engineering stage through to operation.

The second exhibition highlight illustrates how electrical power distribution is integrated into digital industrial processes in practical operation today. Using the model of a Sivacon sicube 8MF1 series control cabinet, visitors experience how a “digital twin” unites virtual control cabinet engineering with real production automation. The integration of electrical power distribution into digital environments takes place here on three levels: into automated engineering processes with an extensive spectrum of software and data, into industrial automation through devices and open interfaces with communication capability, and finally into integrated energy efficiency concepts using systems, components and software for energy data measurement.