Harnessing Technology to Build a Better Future Together’

In conversation with Dr. Peter Koerte, Member of the Managing Board, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Strategy Officer, Siemens AG, at Transform – Innovation Day 2024.

Peter, what brings you to India?

It’s a great privilege to be here in India a third time. I am here to discuss with our customers about what it takes to bring technology to the next level, how far we’ve come with bringing digitalization to India and making them successful. Every week, we see new models and new technologies coming our way, and it’s very important to keep a good oversight and be a step ahead of these developments.

So, what really goes into taking technology to the next level?

There’s one key question that we must start with asking, and that is, ‘what if’? ‘What if’ is a very powerful question because it allows us to look at things from a different angle.

If you take some nice spices and combine them with black tea and a little bit of milk, you get to a warm, delicious cup of chai. This is a great innovation coming out of India. But who would have thought of putting these ingredients together?

We can also do this in technology. What if we combine the technology for lighting, cooling and security in our home with the technology? We create a smart home.

We live in a world full of complex challenges. The power of asking “What if” can help us find simple solutions to these challenges. This is especially important in the industries. Businesses across the board are facing many individual challenges. However, we can sum them up in three main categories: First, businesses have to stay competitive, facing pressure to become more productive. Second, they have to meet increasingly high sustainability targets. And third, they have to become more resilient to keep up with fast-paced developments.

So how can we change this? How can we make it such that we have simple solutions in order to make it work? 

At Siemens, we have one simple solution that is at the core of our business: combining the real and the digital worlds. We make the world a smarter place by harnessing the power of data that you’re creating every day from your operations. This data comes from buildings, factories or trains. We at Siemens, wholeheartedly believe that we can help all our customers to make this work.

What makes you so convinced about this? 

Let me give you an example of how much power data has: A typical factory creates 2,200 terabytes of data every month. This is equivalent to over half a million Netflix movies. This data by itself is useless. But we have a way to make it work for us.

Today, there are an estimated 18 billion IoT devices and this number is growing at 15% every year. Now just think about what that will do to the amount of data you’re going to see in the future. Most of that data in industry is locked, and it’s not being used as much as it should be. This is where Siemens Xcelerator comes in. It helps our customers to combine the real world with all the intelligent assets that they have and combine them with intelligence out of the digital world. To do so, you have to look at the full technology stack: from devices in the real world, such as sensors from robots, to industrial edge, to the cloud and the apps that finally use the data from the real world.

Connectivity is the first step. Next comes the conversation about how we get data from the field devices and sensors, which means very often that you process it on an edge level, on site. We can elevate the conversation to the cloud and we can bring you the dedicated applications and the software in order to make all of this work. Combining the real and the digital world is exactly what we do everyday!

Can you share some examples of how you are combining the real and digital worlds?

Sure, let’s look at some solutions we have already developed.

Feeding a growing global population has become one of the biggest challenges of our times. The Food and Beverage Industry is under immense pressure to deliver to their customers amid rising costs, high quality demands and sustainability targets. My Siemens colleagues in India have developed one solution that tackles all these challenges in the industry. It helps companies to stay competitive.

One of the pain points for food and beverage companies worldwide is the production of milk powder. Liquid milk becomes dry powder by spraying it with extremely hot air. This process consumes a lot of energy and takes a very long time. A great point for optimization.

The spray dryer also gives you a huge amount of data. We used this data to create a digital twin of the spray dryer. The digital twin is physics-based and duplicates the drying process under the exact same conditions as it would happen in the real world – but it saves time and resources that real-world testing would waste.

As a result, the new solution reduced energy consumption by around 10% and increased throughput of the powder by around 10%. This solution is part of our Industrial Operations X portfolio. Thanks to its open architecture customers across various industries can adapt the technology to improve other processes as well.

Another powerful example is of making buildings more sustainable with Siemens Building X. A popular public school in North India found a simple out-of-the-box solution to become more efficient with maintenance and energy prices. It is a software-as-a-service (SS) application, which is very easy to switch on and off, and it is helpful when you don’t have an IT team to implement major projects. At the moment, more than 50,000 buildings around the world are connected to the platform. And we’ve added functionalities such as the Sustainability Manager gradually. We have also created new interfaces, for example, an interface with Electrification X. This is crucial to centrally manage energy loads at any time.

Why do you think Industrial Metaverse will be a game changer? 

Because the Industrial Metaverse combines several powerful technology forces like digital twins, edge computing and generative AI, that we need to tackle the challenges we are facing today. It is a place in the digital world where people and machines connect to solve real world problems. It enables us to work together on the same project in real-time no matter whether we are in Mumbai or in Erlangen in Germany. And the Industrial Metaverse is not just an idea. It is already coming to life and delivers real-world impact. In Germany, we are building a whole city district in Berlin in the Industrial Metaverse and in the rail industry it can help us find the ideal place for a static frequency converter and simulate its usage in the digital world before actually constructing it.

As you can tell, at some point, you must get started, and then really speed up through the deployment of each technology to make this work. It will happen step-by-step.

Dr. Peter Koerte, Member of the Managing Board, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Strategy Officer, Siemens AG: With the power of technology we can create a better future, together. At Siemens, we believe digital technologies will be crucial in helping India achieve its ambitious sustainability goals while further solidifying its position as a global innovation and manufacturing hub.

Sunil Mathur, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Siemens Limited: Digitalization will unlock new potential for India’s industries. Investing in technology would give them the edge amidst intense global competition, regulatory requirements to meet sustainability outcomes and ambitious growth targets.

Siemens Xcelerator: 

Siemens Xcelerator is a digital business platform that accelerates the digital and sustainability transformations of businesses. It provides a comprehensive, curated portfolio that includes digital and IoT-enabled offerings from Siemens and certified partners, a continuously growing, powerful ecosystem of partners and an evolving marketplace, enabling education, exchange and transaction with a community of customers, partners and experts.