Graeme Coyne, business development manager at Siemens Industry Services, explains the firm’s position in the manufacturing services landscape.
Sum up Siemens’ experience with manufacturing services to date, both within its own operation and that of its customers?
Our customers in all manufacturing and process industries have benefited from Siemens UK support services for the last 50 years.
Our own manufacturing facilities in this country have improved productivity and availability through lessons learned, attention to lean manufacturing and continuous improvement. We use this knowledge to offer the same to our customers.
As new products and systems are brought on to the market, and as customers focus on operational costs over the lifetime of a production facility, our technical support, product training and service capability has to evolve to meet and anticipate new demands.
As pressure on industry continues to grow and global competition increases, how do Siemens’ Industry Services enable manufacturers to tap into the potential of their machines and plants?
The last 20 years has seen a standardisation of industrial networks to connect automation, drives and instrumentation products.
We took the approach of adopting open standard networks that allow all product suppliers to connect on to a common bus based on copper, fibre optic or wireless.
Our service teams are able to use the power of the networks to diagnose faults quickly and efficiently, and to rectify them in a timely manner.
Using the Siemens Industry Online Support website, we are able to provide technical information and advice 24/7 as worldwide users contribute to our knowledge base.
The SITRAIN department offers structured training programmes for all levels of staff from apprentices to qualified engineers to help customers be self-sufficient.
With the importance of data ever-increasing, how does Siemens’ offering – Plant Data Services – help to optimise overall plant efficiency and that of individual machinery?
The recent shift is to offer a proactive rather than reactive approach to service.
Data Services use the established networks and intelligence built into the connected devices to collect data from them to analyse machinery condition and performance as they are running.
It is now possible to set up customer dashboards that show them machines that have reduced performance, lower quality finished products and higher energy usage.
That allows the customer to compare different performance indicators in a single or multiple locations and take the appropriate remedial actions.
How do these services feed into Siemens’ larger vision of an intelligent digital infrastructure to enhance existing systems in cities?
The data services backbone is our standard internet enabled nodes, industrial networks and the cloud-based services using SAP Hana.
These are equally suited to manufacturing and buildings, transport and utilities that are essential to our cities.
The global population is expected to grow by 2 billion by 2030 and there is a constant shift of the population from rural to urban dwelling.
Using our data, services customers will be able to monitor and reduce energy usage and optimise their operational costs.
What role is Siemens playing in driving a wider adoption of manufacturing services across industry?
Siemens is spending more time collaborating with bodies actively involved in the service industry.
We have considerable experience in product services, however, the move to servitization by our customers leads us to develop new service strategies with bodies like the MSTLN, the Service Community and to be involved with Through Life Engineering Services and the Cambridge Service Alliance.
There exists within the Siemens Industry Services global community, which comprises more than 20,000 staff, a culture that challenges us to continually evolve our service offers for the benefit of our customers.
