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

A very first Siemens factory, built from scratch on the Siemens Digital Enterprise concept, utilizing the full scope of the Digital Enterprise portfolio was successfully planned, simulated, realized and in operation, initially as fully digitally, then optimized in the digital world before it was physically built in Nanjing, China. This came on stream in late 2021.

Optimized in the digital world, realized in the real-world

Siemens Digital Native Factory

Digital rendering of the Digital Native Factory

The issue was to build a sustainable future in a highly efficient way requiring a new plant.

Siemens previously had two plants in their Motion Control division in Nanjing producing drives, motors and CNC controllers operating at two separate locations. Plus, the logistics were handled elsewhere, making it increasingly complex and inefficient. So, a combination of sub-optimal delivery performance, optimization difficulties, production flexibility and older designed sites, needed to be changed.

Market demand and future business growth capitalizing on the dynamic market opportunities demanded a solution of building a new greenfield factory to enlarge the production capacity and give greater sustainability to the business.

A deployment of Siemens Digital Enterprise concept

In facing a challenge like this, Siemens applied their Digital Enterprise concept to deploy their Digital Twin and Digital Industry software to build up and validate a new facility by using a virtual approach throughout the whole lifecycle of the project.

The principal objectives were to make this entirely digital in planning, simulation and operation before it was physically built in the real world. To make it lean, green, and highly customer orientated in End-to-End value streams, in cooperation to simplify communications from PLM and SCM planning software, offering flexibility on shopfloor design for the new operation.

Finally, to be highly sustainable in energy saving, environmental protection, and EHS management.

The planning and simulation were constructed and built firstly in the digital world.

The criteria set were based on determining challenging targets in productivity increases, deploying a larger volume flexibility from the variants of motors, controllers and invertors needs in the marketplace for line change quickly and the Siemens Tecnomatix Plant simulation software was applied here.
Also, to ensure a higher space efficiency, reducing space requirements a new high-bay warehouse was created, firstly in the virtual environment, simulate and thoroughly tested and then finally built. The added needs were material replenishment to productivity and throughput required the design of deploying the Siemens NX software.
In delivery performance the Siemens Tecnomatix Plant simulation software planned firstly in the virtual environment how machines and operators work, perform and can optimise to meet customer requirements efficiently and then fully use the Digital Twin to firstly simulate capacity and make changes to production cells and lines to optimize the real or actual operation.
Lastly the improving product quality needed was to be highly competitive in the market, so the deployment of IoT devises, sensors, LCD displays with cameras were set up in new inspection approaches utilizing Artificial Intelligence, data collected in real time at the Industrial Edge, on the machine and production line so as to give precision, speed optimization and enabled built in planning for predictive maintenance and deliver this sustainable quality consistently.

Supporting this impressive design Siemens utilized Siemens consulting arm Advanta, Siemens Digital Industries Software division, a global network of experts, mostly on remote support and delivered this through a multiple stakeholder’s communication tool, where around 150 people were involved and a small, dedicated project team, working on this full time.

So, what was achieved was an integrated site covering all functions of PLM and SCM, on a new 71,000 m2 site where 44,000 m2 was for production and logistics.

The result was a lean, and green digitally native enabled factory

This lean digitally enabled factory was specifically built as a showcase of how one could effectively achieve through the full application of digital solutions, a digital world planned before production and being the digital/real sustainable operation going forward, to achieve high levels of flexibility and efficiencies as an ongoing result.

It gave a total concept proof of the Siemens Portfolio and has become a Digital Lighthouse where a customer’s hands-on Digital Experience Center is now set up and on site to show all the different digital and operations benefits of taking this comprehensive and holistic approach.

To understand this digital approach the planning and validations needed to be managed each step of the way.

Planning the steps as they went through different stages

Initially the target planning was defining and accepting the defined project visions and have included all the multiple stakeholders in that, determine the type, location of the premises and most importantly the boundary conditions for targets, alignment, and measurements.

The analysis was simulated and optimized into future value streams designing future capacity considerations including equipment quantification, derived space demand and buffer definition needs through Siemens Plant simulation and their Teamcenter platform

In defining the overall site and building concepts Siemens used their Teamcenter platform approach as the backbone, with the application of NX Line Designer to define plant and building concepts, determine variants, workflow options and routing and options on space demand and bring this together in a Masterplan for the digital building and factory planning.

A more detailed BIM model deployed Siemens Building Technology suite that includes building automation designing to take it from a concept plan, through a rough definition staging into a more detailed definition. In this stage preferred layouts were reviewed in collaborations with the experienced shop floor operators to gain their feedback and contributions to move towards a more preferred layout.

In the final detailed design production lines, material supply and baseline criteria were established with the result of a fully defined digitalization and automation roadmap and implementation plan were determined.

This moved the Digital Twin into the physical realization of the plant. The construction of building, layouts of production lines and staged ramp-up approaches to production, again by support from Siemens Building Technology software and applying, where needed the Siemens

Digital Industry Software combined with Siemens Digital Solutions in Hardware (HW) alongside their Software (SW) in phased and coordinated ways.

The result was having in place a new operating plant in 2021 delivering high-performance production, significant improvements in quality and logistic solutions and an established maintenance plan digitally designed and aligned with the real production and logistic needs. To achieve this, Siemens deployed Cloud, MindSphere, Edge solutions online, in real-time analysis and on the machines and plant lines.

It must be recognized, much of this period China, along with the rest of the world was in the grip of the corvid-19 crisis. This limited freedom of movement and allowed the true effectiveness of having available a remote, virtually collaborative environment, only able though applying a digital approach for exchange, validation and expert assessment and advice.

The impact has been impressive

Using the digital model (DT) throughout the whole process Siemens found this virtual approach gave key benefits

There were significantly fewer planning efforts and higher accuracy in taking this digital, virtual first approach into then the actual physical realization.
The new operation reduced planning resources and collaboration issues or bottlenecks and found a significant benefit compared to equivalent projects where this level of digital application was not applied previously.
The flexibility in production has increased by 30%, given flexible scenarios for existing and future extensions to raising production.
Production is not simply a production line but has been fully recognized as a complete value stream approach, as essential for gaining throughput, replenishment, flexibility, and efficiency gains.
Space utilization by simulating and visualizing has given a 40% gain on the previous factory layouts.

This new plant is within the Motion Control Division of Siemens DI. It consists of the following assets to provide a better understanding of the facility.

So, in a plant that focuses on electronics manufacturing and Motion controls, it rehoused and built out seven surface mounting technology (SMT) lines, 89 cells, 20 soldering machines, 15 coating machines and 130 testing machines. It installed a new automatic material warehouse system of auto-cabinets (16.8 meters high), a capacity of 180,000 rolls of SMT material and a WMS (warehouse management system) planned to be fully operational in 2022.

This first Digital Native Factory has been a realization and successful deployment of the Siemens Digital Enterprise concept.

References for further building out this achievement

To follow the story in a 30-minute video where the Project Manager and GM of the plant walk you through this, then follow this link www.siemens.com/digitalnativefactory.

Siemens Stories Article SNC Digital Native Factory

Landing Page for SNC Video