SIEMENS: Transformation Occurs When Real and Digital Worlds Collide

Focused on industry, infrastructure, transport, and healthcare, Siemens is a technology company which exists to create technology with purpose, which in turn adds real value for customers spanning the fields of IT, industry, finance, and energy. Over its lifetime its success has been exemplified in the provision of state-of-the-art solutions including the likes of resource-efficient factories, resilient supply chains and smarter buildings and grids, to cleaner and more comfortable transportation as well as advanced healthcare. 

“By combining the real and the digital worlds,” Siemens proclaims, “we empower our customers to transform their industries and markets, helping them to transform the everyday for billions of people. As an integrated technology company, Siemens aims to play a constructive role in Africa‘s success story.”

SUPPLY FIRSTS

“We anticipate what our customers need before they even know they need it,” Siemens outlines of one of its four key strategic priorities, enriched in its drive to increase production capacity to meet the rising demands for COVID-19 vaccines in Africa, through deploying digital technologies to enable faster and more efficient production while ensuring consistent product quality.

A strategic partnership with Aspen SA Operations has not only ignited increased production capacity at Aspen’s Gqeberha-based manufacturing facility, it has succeeded in strengthening the global competitiveness of the South African pharmaceutical industry and improving the continent’s resilience against other diseases and future pandemics. South Africa is the most advanced pharmaceutical market on the continent, and Aspen the industry’s leading manufacturer in Africa.    

The first African COVID vaccines will launch as Aspenovax, providing Africa with its very own COVID vaccine, produced on the continent by Aspen for African patients. “We are pleased to be able to partner with Siemens for additional digital technologies that will further complement our existing high-technology, state-of-the-art pharmaceutical equipment and systems used to manufacture advanced sterile medicines, including vaccines for the continent,” commented Stephen Saad, Aspen Group CEO.

These will bolster Aspen’s current manufacturing processes and entail enhanced production execution, energy efficiency and central management of the entire production network; additional energy monitoring devices, flow instruments and temperature sensors will also be introduced. “We are proud to collaborate with Aspen and DEG in South Africa, thereby supporting the pharmaceutical industry to intensify the production of vaccines globally,” explained Sabine Dall’Omo, CEO for Siemens Southern & Eastern Africa.

“This partnership between Aspen, Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft (DEG) and Siemens clearly demonstrates how our digital technologies can benefit society, and will ultimately accelerate the development of vaccines thereby reducing time to market while maintaining quality as we try to win the race against time to save lives.”  

In another monumental first and a further example of the transformative power of Siemens’s digital twin systems, residents in rural areas of Botswana now finally have access to safe and clean drinking water, thanks to automation and electrical engineering from Siemens Solution Partner Moreflow at the new Thune Dam water treatment plant.

Botswana’s Central District is a semi-arid region especially susceptible to periodic drought, exacerbated by a growing population and a strong economy which together drive water consumption. The Thune Dam is one of several built in recent years to secure supply, and its plant now delivers 11 million litres of this precious resource every day.

“Siemens provided digitalisation, flexibility, and customisation in deploying the technology, which was the right fit for the project,” Dall’Omo relayed, “and the fact that it was all brought together by our Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) Portal makes it even better.” With the treatment plant in full operation, Moreflow Director Mike Tearnan already has further plans to harness the Siemens digitalisation portfolio: “We look forward to introducing the digital twin concept in future projects,” he enthused. “This will allow us to do an upfront design confirmation to better mitigate project challenges, which will translate into significant cost savings and ensure that projects are completed on time.”

4IR KEY PLAYER

Siemens SA’s partnership with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has provided a huge boost to the country’s pursuit of being a key player in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), as it sets out to empower the country’s economy and citizens with hotly-demanded digital and technical skills. Their collaborative fostering of technical vocational education and training (TVET) has majorly impacted the employability of the local workforce and enhancement of the quality of job profiles.

“We are very pleased to join hands with Siemens in this huge and compelling task of ensuring that our country does not miss out on the gains of the 4IR,” was the take of CSIR CEO Dr Thulani Dlamini, in the continued bid to forge partnerships with the private and public sectors to respond to the needs of industry in order to improve the lives of South Africans.

“The CSIR strategy requires us to work very closely with the private sector to address the needs of industry and society, and to use science and technology to fast track digital skills of the future. To achieve this, the organisation is leveraging emerging technologies, especially those rooted in the 4IR, as well as its current capabilities and those of its partners.”

Through this partnership, Siemens will also be part of the South Africa Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR-SA), and will assist in positioning it as a thought leader in innovative digital technologies. As South Africa strives to rebound from the devastating impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic, the 4IR offers an unparalleled opportunity for re-igniting economic growth, social equity and environmental sustainability.

“Siemens is proud to partner with the CSIR with this initiative and is ready to deliver on the fourth industrial revolution roadmap,” commented Dall’Omo, in as content of accelerated digitalisation sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, requiring companies and society to respond faster and more efficiently to changing market demands.

“Our goal as a company is to make sure that while we focus on continuously adapting, we’re also contributing to uplifting and building a sustainable economy.

“The business environment is getting more entrenched in the constant technological evolution and the industrial sector has been gradually integrating the use of automation and connectivity in its everyday business practices,” Dall’Omo furthered, a digital transformation which ensures that industrial processes become more adaptable, flexible and efficient and which Dr. Roland Busch, President and CEO of Siemens AG, agrees is vital.

“Digitalisation is transforming the backbone of our economies,” he concludes. “This transformation is key to business success and for shaping a sustainable future. With our technologies, we’re helping our customers to accelerate their own digital transformation and to reinvent their companies and industries, to become more sustainable.”