Siemens user conference offers high-wire solutions for plant-floor/enterprise integration
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 8/1/2006 12:00:00 AM MDT
Blown out of New Orleans by Katrina, Siemens had to relocate its 2006 Automation Summit user conference to one of the few places that has the capacity to handle short lead times: Las Vegas. And while the theme was Winning Together, the more pervasive message heard in keynote addresses involved innovation.
More to the point, Siemens is repositioning its SIMATIC IT product suite from being primarily a manufacturing execution system (MES) to that of a manufacturing process framework comprised of its MES Production Suite, and its R&D and Manufacturing Intelligence suites.
The suite's foundation is based on Siemen's acquisition of MES vendor ORSI, while the R&D and Manufacturing Intelligence Suites are similarly based on earlier acquisitions—Compex and Indx, respectively—and ongoing development.
Compex morphed into Siemens' SIMATIC IT Interspec specifications requirements system, which together with its Unilab LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System) provides the base functionality that is augmented with best-practice rules and packaged as the new R&D Suite.
Indx was acquired in 2003 primarily as a component to Siemens' oil & gas endeavors, but lost sponsorship and its way within the multi-industrial organization until recently finding synergy within its Automation unit. The R&D and Manufacturing Intelligence Suites are positioned as co-equal components, alongside the Production Suite, of the SIMATIC IT framework.
In keeping with the spirit of Las Vegas and the unofficial theme of innovation, the two keynote speakers on opening day were refreshingly atypical: James Tomlinson, automation head for Cirque du Soleil's stage production of Ka; and Tom Fitzgerald, executive VP and senior creative director with Walt Disney Imagineering.
Tomlinson's presentation highlighted the role Siemens automation and drives components play in producing moving stages, flying platforms, and aerial performances of actors in Ka, while Fitzgerald offered perspective on the long legacy of innovation within Disney. The back-to-back keynotes sparked the imaginations of many of the 600 attendees.
One of these was Huw Evans, R&D information director for Unilever's global R&D efforts in Cheshire, U.K.
"Fitzgerald's presentation on the upstream part of turning ideas into reality—and harnessing technology to enable creativity—was the highlight of the conference for me," says Evans. "I'd like to think that in the future, we can look back on what we do with R&D and say, 'There's no way we could have been able to do that without the technology. Technology is not the Holy Grail of the creative process, but it can provide a good start."
