Islands in the Sun (sidebar)

Siemens Energy & Automation, with headquarters in Alpharetta, Ga., held its Seventh Annual Process Automation User Conference and first-ever Simatic IT Summit in Tampa, Fla., May 4-6, bringing together more than 500 manufacturers, analysts, partners and Siemens employees under the theme, “Bridge to Innovation.”

天气下雨可能并未减弱husiasm of Siemens executives, in a strong show of support and commitment to the U.S. process automation and manufacturing execution system (MES) markets. Top-level executives were on hand from Siemens locations in Germany, and from U.S. offices in Alpharetta and Norcross, Ga., and Spring House, Pa.

Anton Huber, group vice president, Siemens Automation & Drives, Nürnburg, Germany, addressed Siemens global turnover and corporate strategy. With 2004 sales of $91.5 billion, research and development spending of $6.1 billion, 48,000 patents and 324 manufacturing plants, Siemens is well positioned to build customer solutions based on its own portfolio of products, said Huber, whose Automation & Drives business is part of Siemens’ $24 billion Automation and Control division. “Our strategy is not to outsource our product manufacturing—it’s our value-add. If we get rid of it, the whole company is in danger.”

Huber’s comments about the growing complexity of automation hardware, software and communication infrastructure point to the need for stable and maintainable platforms that serve real-time supply and demand, and made-to-order manufacturing. “Automating a typical chemical plant requires eight gigabytes of software—three gigabytes for the operating systems and the remainder for applications. About half of the code is for automation and half for MES applications,” said Huber. He encourages manufacturers to control costs with careful selection of suppliers and technology that will maximize flexibility and productivity while minimizing total cost of ownership (TCO).

A clear path

Tom Kopanski, vice president Automation and Motion division, Siemens E&A, reinforced Huber’s remarks in positioning Siemens as the company that will help manufacturers define a clear path forward and not leave them stranded on that path. “These are our three business imperatives: provide technology that serves the customer; improve product and services quality; make it easier to do business with Siemens,” said Kopanski.

Karsten Newbury, general manager for the Siemens process automation and MES businesses in the United States, located in Spring House, discussed how these solutions, part of Siemens’ Totally Integrated Automation architecture, can lower TCO and drive higher return on net assets (RONA) and operational excellence (OpX). The new release of Siemens’ process automation system, the PCS 7 version 6.1, improves asset management and adds Web functions to the operator stations, allowing processes to be monitored and controlled over an intranet or the Internet.

The Siemens Simatic IT solution provides MES functionality—such track-and-trace, quality management and resource allocation—and is built on the ISA-95 standard for enterprise integration, promulgated by the Instrumentation, Systems and Automation Society. Specifically, Simatic IT bridges the plant-floor controls layer with the business layer using a Business-to-Manufacturing Mark-up Language (B2MML) that complies with ISA-95 and interfaces to solutions from SAP AG, the Walldorf, Germany, leader in enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, and other ERP packages. With Simatic IT, noted Newbury, “Siemens wants to be the SAP of MES.”

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