• As manufacturing continues to experience a disruptive shift toward digitalization, Siemens is investing in initiatives to help transform U.S. manufacturing

Today, Siemens unveiled the Siemens Digital Enterprise Showcase at the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII) in Chicago. This showcase is designed to help enable industrial manufacturers to observe and explore a working digital enterprise so they can better understand its potential value to their own organizations.

Siemens has been a tier one partner with DMDII since its inception, with a focus on joint collaboration with the government, industry and academia. The partners work on solving some of the most challenging questions facing manufacturing today through the Project Call process established by DMDII. Siemens Digital Enterprise Showcase creates a hands-on environment to illustrate how digitalization can help answer questions such as how manufacturers can extend the digital twin strategy across the value chain, including supply chain and the factory floor, to realize bottom line results; how to optimize human-systems integration; how to make organizational transformations to experience the full potential of digitalization of the value chain; and how to educate America’s workforce on digital manufacturing and design technologies.

“Siemens and DMDII share a vision of transforming American manufacturing,” says Raj Batra, President, Digital Factory US, Siemens. “Working together with DMDII and its partners, we can create the tools and technologies to help solve today’s most pressing manufacturing challenges and help U.S. companies become more competitive through digital technologies. The Siemens Digital Enterprise Showcase is an example of how Siemens and DMDII are partnering to break new ground in manufacturing innovation.”

“With its Digital Enterprise Software Suite, Siemens offers companies a holistic set of hardware and software solutions to establish their Digital Enterprise,” says Bob Jones, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Americas, Siemens. “Siemens Digital Enterprise Showcase at DMDII provides a hands-on opportunity to see how these solutions can help play a stronger role in the future Internet economy being brought on by Industry 4.0.”

The Siemens Digital Enterprise Showcase includes kiosks with automation and software demonstrations of the Digital Enterprise Software Suite, which is Siemens answer to the technology requirements of the digital age. Software suites such as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), MOM (Manufacturing Operations Management) and Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) provide the required functionality to remove barriers and merge engineering disciplines that can connect operations from the shop floor to the enterprise level of a manufacturing organization.

DMDII was established in 2014 as a partnership among industry, academia, government and nonprofit organizations. Among the consortium’s members are world-leading manufacturing experts and cutting-edge software companies that work together to enable interoperability across the supply chain, develop enhanced digital capabilities to design and test new products, and reduce costs in manufacturing processes across multiple industries. To help support the lab and its mission, Siemens provided an in-kind grant of its digital design and manufacturing software with a commercial value of over $80 million. In addition to the new digital showcase at DMDII, Siemens implemented an automation controlled conveyor system and virtual commissioning system to provide hands on experience in bringing digital and real production together as one. Siemens is also a supporting member in the DMDII work force development program designed to educate the U.S. manufacturing sector on digital manufacturing and design as well as the benefits they bring to industry.