Siemens MindSphere Continues to Evolve

Siemens has pushed forward with its open mindset, expanding the different systems, infrastructures, and partners with whom it works to help clients implement its MindSphere platform. In November 2017, it announced a partnership with Software AG and its set of robust software technology offerings. In January 2018, Siemens launched MindSphere on Amazon Web Services (AWS), and in Q4 2018, it will make MindSphere available on Azure. In 2019, it will make MindSphere available on Alibaba Cloud in China. In addition to all this, MindSphere already integrates with almost all Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), historians, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Service Lifecycle Management (SLM), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), and other analytics software. It also provides an open Application Programming Interface (API) that empowers clients to send data from custom apps to store and use in cloud apps. These moves set up Siemens to integrate with as many or more new and legacy cloud and enterprise systems than any other platform.

These sorts of moves make it much easier for potential end users to both feed in data to MindSphere to benefit from its applications and to provide data to legacy enterprise apps from MindSphere. They also expand MindSphere’s regional coverage and allow for some flexibility in cloud infrastructure provider. Such moves empower platform providers to better serve their clients.

Also, these open policies empower third parties to plug in innovative software solutions. Siemens further encourages this through its MindSphere application centers. It already has these centers in 17 countries with 9 more announced. Each has independent software developers to support local MindSphere customers. It has built most of the centers in the United States or Europe but also has some in the Middle East, India, and Asia-Pacific.

Siemens has also improved its own software offerings to its clients over the years through acquisitions and an enormous amount of Research and Development (R&D) spending, with EUR5.6 billion (~US$6.5 billion) in R&D budgeted for 2018 and the lion’s share going into its Digital Factory solutions, including MindSphere.

The acquisitions started with UGS for PLM software in 2007 and have since included Vistagy engineering software in 2011, LMS testing software in 2012, Polarion application lifecycle management in 2016, CD-adapco simulation software for US$970 million in 2016, Mentor Graphics’ Computer-Aided Design (CAD) modelling of control systems for US$4.5 billion in 2017, board- and chip-level access to “things,” Infolytica for its electromagnetics simulation suite, TASS International for its simulation software, and a strategic alliance with Bentley Systems for its digital twins of infrastructure.

In early August 2018, Siemens announced the acquisition of Mendix, a company specializing in low-code app development, for EUR600 million (~US$700 million). Many small and medium enterprises have little or no Information Technology (IT) staff, especially on premise. As a result, platform providers need an easy-to-use Graphical User Interface (GUI) that empowers end users to define analytics and build apps without programming skills. The acquisition of Mendix will make building apps in MindSphere easier for those who lack coding skills.

These acquisitions have helped shift Siemens from an electronics and electrification company to a top software provider.

Open APIs such as those delivered by Siemens can lead to a rich collection of data. When integrated with PLM data and simulation software such as Simcenter(NX Nastran, HEEDS, STAR-CD), Tecnomatix, FloTHERM, or Tass International’s PreScan, vendors can provide high-performance, physics-based digital twin simulations to predict the remaining useful lives of assets. The leading platform providers support such digital twin capabilities already. For the next step, all vendors must integrate more advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) to prescribe actions to extend the useful lives of equipment.

Now, Siemens offers three types of digital twins for the manufacturing value chain:

• Product: This type of twin starts with CAD modelling and aims to reduce prototyping and development time for future generations of products and improve their overall quality.
• Production: This type of twin simulates manufacturing and production processes before they begin. This should help manufacturers design more efficient and flexible processes. Production twins include the twins of the industrial equipment on the factory floor to prevent downtime with predictive maintenance.
• Performance: This type of twin captures and analyzes operational data to provide actionable insights that improve efficiency on the factory floor. It closes the loop by providing analysis of how products in the field hold up under various conditions so that engineers can optimize future designs.

Siemens has implemented digital twins through the Digital Enterprise Suite throughout its own plants for Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and turbines, and clients such as Maserati and Bausch+Ströbel have used Siemens’ digital twin solutions to reduce development and engineering time by up to 30% and increase production as much as threefold. Siemens sees high demand for digital twins of machines in factories.

Another client, Eisenmann, uses MindSphere’s digital twin solutions to help auto manufacturers monitor production systems and painting plants around the globe. The information from these plants has led to improved predictive maintenance and quality control, thereby minimizing reworking and improving cost efficiency.

These technologies and strategies have set up Siemens MindSphere to not only survive but grow over the next five to ten years. ABI Research named Siemens one of the leaders among the smart manufacturing platform providers in its recent Smart Manufacturing Platformsranking, which compared the following 11 major vendors in the sector: ABB Ability, Bosch IoT Suite, Emerson Plantweb, Fujitsu COLMINA, GE Predix, Hitachi Lumada, PTC ThingWorx, SAP Leonardo, Schneider Electric EcoStruxure, Siemens MindSphere, and Telit deviceWISE.

Relative to its competition, Siemens scored high in digital twins, edge intelligence, augmented reality (AR), and protocol adaptability and connectivity. It scored lower in other transformative technologies. Although Siemens has a platform for additive manufacturing, MindSphere does not yet leverage much AI, but it does incorporate simulation software for digital twins and design and ML algorithms workbench used in predictive maintenance. Siemens also does not yet use any blockchain in its product line, but its corporate technologies group has started experimenting with blockchain, mostly for energy management use cases.

In terms of implementation, Siemens scored high on its upfront costs and business model. It makes some of its pricing available on its website, and the small value plans start only a few thousand U.S. dollars. Siemens claims it can get customers up and running and improve operational efficiency in less than eight weeks.

Siemens has developed quite advanced capabilities around its MindSphere platform and has some partnerships in place that could lead to a jump to the top spot in that ranking within a year.

For more insights and perspectives on manufacturing, please check out ABI Research’s Smart Manufacturing service.