INTERVIEW
‘It’s the pace of change that’s so noticeable, especially in the past five years, and that’s what I think is so impressive’
established in 1986). Companies also became better at organising their supply chains and the sector was doing amazing things. However, the past five years has seen the sector just become completely revolutionary in terms of what we’re now able to do in manufacturing operations, especially with data and the power of digital and simulations. “For example we can now create a product’s digital twin
in order to design the product totally vertically and then take that into the production. You can map everything out virtually in a manufacturing environment and keep a digital copy of what is happening. Then you can move all of that through the performance digital twin, so that is now how the product – be that a car or aircraft parts – works and you can keep data from that as it moves into a service environment before feeding that data back into the manufacturing environment to optimise what you are doing. This stuff is mind-blowing in terms of improving productivity; it’s a fascinating industry at the moment.” So did the sheer pace of change take Juergen and those
in the industry by surprise? Perhaps – but now how you might think.
“We did envisage the pace of change and in a way we have
been a little bit surprised about how long it has taken to take hold from a manufacturing sector perspective,” says Juergen. “We’ve all seen the digital revolution happening around
us and we’re all involved with it - we’re all streaming music and content from our smart phones for example – so we’ve seen it happening but it has taken a little longer to get into the industrial manufacturing world and the reason is very simple. In the manufacturing world it is even more complex, the data is bigger, what you’re then able to do with it in terms of applying elements such as artificial intelligence is more complicated, so it has taken longer but it has now well and truly arrived.” Manufacturing is a massive driver for the economy at
local, regional and national level - Siemens employs 15,000 British employees alone. In a highly competitive environment and with innovation occurring all the time, the onus on leading companies such as Siemens to stay ahead is huge; something not lost on Juergen. “There’s a massive responsibility to adopt these technologies and make sure we’re leading and
business network April 2018 37
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