This week, German multinational companies Siemens and SAP announced a new partnership to deliver integrated and more powerful software solutions across product lifecycle management (PLM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) management (supply chain, service and asset management). The move signals a new era of collaborative business models that will accelerate the industry’s digital transformation globally.
Commenting on the partnership, Robert Parker, Senior Vice President of Industry Research at premier global provider of market intelligence International Data Corporation (IDC), said:
“Combining Siemens’ Teamcenter and SAP S/4HANA solutions provides companies an end-to-end process capability from product design to decommission. The IT benefits of pre-integration of PLM, ERP, asset management and supply chain applications and the business benefits from having a more resilient response to changing market demand make this a compelling consideration for companies seeking a competitive advantage in the digital economy.”
Siemens + SAP Software Solutions for Industry 4.0
As advances in mass connectivity, the interconnection of technologies (through iOT, blockchain, AI and machine learning), and data analytics development are occurring at a much quicker pace, many believe we are now living through the fourth industrial revolution, referred to as ‘Industry 4.0.’
This ongoing disruptive technological transformation across all industries is driven by rising data volumes, computational power and connectivity, emerging analytics and business-intelligence capabilities, new forms of human-machine interaction, and improvements in transferring digital instructions to the physical world.
Industry 4.0 technologies have the potential to provide a major boost to economic competitiveness across nations and can substantially offset traditional challenges such as silos between engineering and business, high labour costs, and distance to markets.
Leveraging each of their expertise and technologies, Siemens and SAP aim to develop what they call a new era of “truly integrated and enhanced solutions for product lifecycle management (PLM), supply chain, service and asset management” for Industry 4.0. This will enable customers to eliminate process and information silos and drive their enterprise’s digital transformation journey.
Thomas Saueressig, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE and responsible for SAP Product Engineering, breaks down the partnership’s benefits to customers:
“Bringing together expertise from SAP and Siemens to offer Industry 4.0-enabled business processes allows enterprises to create a digital thread for the entire product and asset lifecycle. With this end-to-end solution, teams across the business network can efficiently work together to design and deliver innovative products productively, profitably and sustainably.”
The initial focus of Siemen and SAP’s partnership is on manufacturing industries. Klaus Helmrich, Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO of Siemens Digital Industries, said:
“Digital transformation will be critical for the manufacturing industries to increase productivity, flexibility and accelerate innovation, so companies must come together in new ways to enable the digital enterprise. This exciting collaboration between two industry leaders is about more than just interoperability and interfaces; it is about creating a truly integrated digital thread that unites product and asset lifecycle management with the business that enables customers to optimize production of products.”
As the first step of the new alliance’s goal of bringing innovative solutions for Industry 4.0, Siemens will offer SAP software solutions (SAP Intelligent Asset Management solution, SAP Portfolio, and Project Management applications) and SAP will offer Siemens’ innovative PLM suite (Teamcenter software) as the core foundation for product data management.
About Siemens
Siemens Digital Industries Software (formerly UGS and then Siemens PLM Software) is a computer software company specializing in 3D & 2D PLM software. The company has its global headquarters in Nuremberg, Germany, and has around 76,000 employees internationally. Its core product, Teamcenter, is a cloud-based PLM platform that allows users to edit product data and processes such as 3D designs, embedded software, documentation and bill of materials.
About SAP
SAP SE is a German multinational software corporation that makes enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations. The company, founded in 1972, has evolved from being an ERP software provider to becoming an experience management company. SAP software solutions provide end-to-end business software to a global network of customers.
