Disclaimer: This article is published in partnership with Siemens. Siemens is paying for my engagement, not for promotional purposes. Opinions are my own.

So, what makes industries more sustainable, more responsive and adaptive? How can we build a sustainable industrial capability?

We have entered a far more volatile set of market conditions. Industrial companies are searching for ways to accelerate their digital transformation to keep up with changing demands, managing the increasing complexity and reacting to supply chain challenges.

We are facing up to some of the most significant challenges of our time. Dealing with climate change, we urgently need to rapidly decarbonize in a world where the global industrial sector accounts for 20-30% of global carbon emissions and 1/3 of global energy use.

The imperative is transforming industry towards a greater need to build out a sustainable future as critical to tackling decarbonization in highly collaborative ways through the combination of technology and human ingenuity.

Today, there is a need to manage in a more highly connected, intelligent way through AI and machine learning and by connecting machines into a networked environment to harness the necessary data and intelligence to make more insightful decisions.

Energy efficiency and the need to focus on the aim to recycle are part of our solutions to change today’s environment. As we face a world of limited resources, the circular economy/resource efficiency needs a significant shift to promoting the reuse of materials.

So, what makes industries more sustainable, more responsive and adaptive? How can we build a sustainable industrial capability?

It is only genuinely digital enterprises that are open and prepared to work together in collaborative ecosystems that will be able to gain the flexibility, adaptiveness and capabilities, needing to work with fewer resources, more efficiently, faster and move towards a lower energy consumption that can move towards the required ambitions of becoming net-zero.

Sustainability is becoming central to making any significant transition. Siemens is focusing on being a sustainable industrial company in what it does itself in its solution offerings and with and for its partners and customers. A large part of achieving sustainability comes from applying targeted technologies.

Siemens AG is spending significant time providing sustainable innovations to drive this change. It is simply not just speeding up and scaling the available technology. It recognizes this has to be done in a radically different environment, in ecosystems working together to be the essential game changer to meeting and resolving these challenges.

Collaborating in ecosystems becomes critical to transitioning to a more sustainable industrial sector.

Siemens is empowering the industry through sustainable industrial innovation by providing technology designs that produce sustainable solutions. They are offering a sustainable digital enterprise portfolio, giving significant benefits of reducing cost and waste, managing business variability, and focusing on operational efficiency and optimization. Equally, the potential for new business model innovation in the flexibility of design, re-engineering for reducing waste, recycling and recovery and testing through simulation, generative, and scenario investigations through applying their technology and software solutions.

The power of connecting the real world with the digital world

Digitalization across the whole life cycle becomes critical when 80% of a product’s impact is determined at the design stage. Innovating more energy-efficient products can extend the life and be designed for reuse with a digital twin. Combining hardware and software can accelerate the transformation to a more sustainable future.

Recently at Hannover Messe 2022, Siemens showcased their portfolio through an e-mobility solution that combines the digital and physical worlds where design can be optimized and operations decarbonized, This showcase demonstrated the value of combining the digital and physical by using the digital twins for both product and production that efficiencies, optimization, simulation and the environmental footprint through a circular economy approach in design and material usage could all be addressed and proven.

Showcasing the SimRod- the fun electric roadster

In a panel discussion at Hannover Messe 2022 entitled “Transforming industries: Driving sustainability and profitability along the value chain” with Martin Kyburz, the CEO of Kyburz, Switzerland, Eryn Devola, the Head of Sustainability, Siemens Digital Industries, and Katrien Wyckaert, VP Strategy & Innovation, Simcenter Siemens Digital Industries Software they discussed challenges and solutions of the sustaining transformation by taking a deep dive into e-mobility by using the showcase “SimRod” as a technology carrier.

The SimRod is a roadworthy electric sports car that clearly demonstrates how Siemens is supporting and empowering the industry to design and produce sustainable products that are ecological in thinking and offer the lifecycle reuse potential which is increasingly expected today by the final customers.

The SimRod is a roadworthy all-electric sports car showing the result of the close collaboration with Siemens and Kyburz. This partnership between the two provided an exciting, fun, safe and compact all-electric car. A car designed to offer a good range of distance due to its design as lightweight design and delivering a quality of life return, and most importantly, specifically designed to be recycled.

The Siemens solutions provided the empowering conditions to design and produce a sustainable product. The SimRod had its train, chassis, suspension, battery housing and design, and e-drive systems first simulated in the digital world, before creating any physical prototypes.

This digital design and simulation work allowed for a complete overview to optimize the design and led to identifying where additive solutions can help reduce cost and weight. Finally, harnessing all the data within this digital world gathered in digital design and testing enables a more efficient physical optimization of the car and the production design in producing a car optimized in its final configuration.

Applying Siemens technologies, the solutions can transform automotive products. Using solutions ranging from digital twins and additive manufacturing to automatic guided vehicles – achieving ergonomic designs in factory and production layouts providing more efficient and sustainable solutions by optimizing this in a simulated environment.

Transforming Industry for a Sustainable Future.

Applying this sustainable digital enterprise approach to both the product and production cycle enabled a more explicit ability to manage and engineer for the circular economy.

This showcase provided a significant proof of reference and validation in the design and simulation of the entire Siemens portfolio and strength with a single technology carrier- the SimRod providing what the unique combination of real & digital worlds do to become the catalyst for a Digital Enterprise that drives and integrates sustainability. The SimRod provided the collaboration capabilities by demonstrating technology and engaging suppliers, partners and the people involved in the design and production process.

Drawn from the Siemens Digital Enterprise portfolio was the application of the power of the Digital Twin, with the ability to accelerate product design and development, applying software and systems engineering. This approach allowed for building on Siemens approaches to Smart Manufacturing, Autonomous Production, Additive Manufacturing, IoT & Analytics, Sustainable & Flexible Production, offering Cyber Security, Energy Data Optimization, Product Carbon Footprint management with SiGREEN, and providing advice through Siemens Digital Services.

Siemens is a highly focused technology company that offers solutions ready for sustainability to meet industry challenges. Siemens fully supports the sustainable industrial innovation pathway alongside its customers with its solutions in highly collaborative environments. With the combination of digitalization, automation and the intelligent use of data, customers are equally having the opportunity of becoming Digital Enterprises, enabling them to become more resource-efficient, move towards decarbonizing and apply sustainable solutions to stimulate the circular economy.