Siemens’ €200 Million Amberg Automated Factory Investment to Showcase Digital Transformation Proof Points

Companies involved in the digitalization of manufacturing need a litany of case studies to prove the value of transformation initiatives. To this end, Siemens is adding a €200 million smart factory to its Amberg, Germany production site, making electronics for its Smart Infrastructure business unit. The factory is being virtually commissioned and designed with Siemens’ digital twin tools to be Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based and fully automated with a completion date of 2030. The factory will also display tools in robotics, AI, and digital industries businesses by digitally coordinating the factory with fully automated logistics, including driverless transport and humanoid robotics. Within this automated factory is a clean room for high-tech electronics production.

Siemens has responded to the need for case studies through a series of activities, such as achieving World Economic Forum (WEF) Lighthouse factory status for its Nanjing Digitally Native Factory, supporting PepsiCo with digital twin solutions (see ABI Insight “PepsiCo Digital Twin Project with Siemens Provides a Blueprint for Successful Digital Twin Ventures”), and now its Amberg production site initiative. Amberg will also be looking to build case studies for other capabilities beyond digital twins, namely robotics.

Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) will make up much of the intralogistics operations at this new facility; however, there will also be a new foray with humanoid robots. Humanoid robots have struggled to make their way to production environments due to technological immaturity. For this reason, Siemens will develop a foundational case study for humanoid robots to make the case for further deployments.

There is also a geopolitical impact within the Amberg announcement. The Made for Germany pledge, the proposed Industrial Accelerator Act in the European Union (EU) Parliament, and the U.S. CHIPS Act are driving reshoring, and are products of receding globalism, and a rise in emphasis on domestic production and industry, particularly across Europe and North America. As a result of this receding globalism, both Europe (30.2%) and North America (28.9%) are seeing higher forecast growth of key industrial automation innovation such as software-defined virtual controllers compared to Asia-Pacific (26.8%) (see ABI Research’s Industrial Automation: Software-Defined Automation (SDA) market data (MD-SDA-101)).

The Amberg factory is a bet by Siemens to generate true case studies in efficiency gains for digital twins in design and operations, as well as for robotics. Other vendors offering digital twin and AI functionality such as ABB, Bosch Rexroth, Emerson, Honeywell, Rockwell Automation, and Scheider Electric must also invest in internal case study development consistent with their core industrial automation manufacturing business or risk ceding market share.

As for Siemens, the Amberg factory is capturing the importance of novel case studies for greenfield deployment. This approach pertains directly to the other 123 companies in the Made for Germany pledge that promotes reinvestment into Europe. Alongside brownfield case studies, such as the work at PepsiCo, Siemens has positioned itself well to highlight strengths in both.

Initiatives such as the Amberg factory development are a signal of challenges that Chinese industrial automation firms such as SUPCON and Inovance will face as they attempt to expand their presence in Europe. With a stated goal to focus on international expansion into Europe, SUPCON must change its Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy, having to find a way in through local partners, or set up separate subsidiaries under a different name, much like it did in India with Supinco.