At the second day of Realize LIVE, the flagship event that brings together the Siemens Digital Industries Software community, attendees were promised that this is the place “Where digital transformation gets real. Fast,“ and the second day’s general session brought together the world of sustainable design, battery development and digital transformation to show how leaders and pioneers are transforming the world around us at speed.
Succeeding with digital transformation at Harman Automotive
Dylan Neal, Manager, PLM Business Systems & Data Standards at Harman Automotive led the audience through how the company is achieving its goals by focusing on problem identification, process optimization and clarity of thought
First on stage was Dylan Neal, Manager, PLM Business Systems & Data Standards at Harman Automotive, a leading provider of innovative solutions that create smart experiences to make life easier, productive and entertaining. Neal is driving Harman Automotive’s journey to become a digital thread-led enterprise.
As Neal explained “At Harman we believe in innovation. But in order to deliver on such promises of innovation, we have to build a strong foundation in order to deliver those promises that we make. So we set off on a journey about three years ago where we said we need to build a global digital foundation for the entirety of the automotive business. And when I say the entirety I mean all at once Big Bang, Let's go.“
Neal walked the audience through the driving factors behind the company’s digital transformation, gave insights into how to address an increasingly complex manufacturing environment with considered thought, focus on problem solving and taking a process-first approach – all based on Siemens’ Teamcenter software for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) to help it build a global digital foundation for the entirety of the automotive business
Neal detailed four key benefits that Harman Automotive has achieved since going live in 2023. It’s change request cycle time is improved by 40%, approval time on change requests have improved by 50%, change notice execution time has improved by 20% and the duration change and rejected state is reduced by 75%. As Neal summarised, “And let me tell you what that means. That means that our users are writing better changes and working collaborating together. Doing it right the first time.”
Sustainability isn’t an option
Next to the stage, Eryn Devola, Head of Sustainability at Siemens Digital Industries discussed how nature can inspire us to tackle the environmental challenges we’re facing. By 2030, the global population is expected to reach 8.5 billion and the demands on our resources are stark - with an increase of over 30% for food, 40% for water and 50% for energy. She also detailed how only 13% of global waste is recycled – but with those challenges, there is huge opportunity for innovation, and nature provides inspiration needed to make it real.
Devola explained that “We have a lot of opportunity in front of us by using circular economy principles. By committing to safe design, we can cut our CO2 emissions by more than 39%. This means we need to reduce our use of new materials, we need to extend products' lifetimes, we need to recover, reuse and recover waste. And we need to really think about our supply chains and how far we're moving resources around to use them. It also means working together in new ways, both within and along your value chains, with new partners, redesigning networks and rethinking processes.”
But Siemens is also here to help with these challenges and provide innovative new solutions that can help companies achieve their sustainability goals – as Devola explained, “The digital twins that we have allow us to generate, evaluate, and optimize at speeds we've not seen before. We can leverage AI to obtain insights for our data, the terabytes of data that we're collecting every day. We can immerse ourselves in environments and in plants and in products that have not been realized yet. And we can do this by collaborating in new ways without borders. These technologies are foundational to addressing our biggest challenges.”
Addressing the challenges in the energy industry with FREYR
Tom Jensen, Executive Chair of Board of Directors, FREYR brings the story of how digital transformation and AI have the potential to revolution the battery industry.
Devola was followed on stage by Tom Jensen, Executive Chair of Board of Directors at FREYR, a manufacturer of high-density and cost-competitive battery cells for stationary energy storage (ESS), electric mobility and marine applications. Jensen told the story of how combining digital transformation with breakthrough battery technology is helping to address challenges and opportunities in the energy industry. Jensen explained how FREYR is partnering with Siemens to build "the world's cleanest Giga factories" in Norway, harnessing renewable hydropower and industrial expertise and to accelerate the decarbonization of energy with cost-competitive batteries, at scale.
Jensen highlighted how batteries will enable the transition to localized renewable energy systems powered by sun, wind and water. He predicted this will transform industrialization and energy systems. He emphasized that batteries are complex systems with many permutations, requiring digitalization and AI to optimize production and performance. Freyr is implementing Siemens' digital twin technology in its factories to simulate and continuously optimize processes before and during production.
As Jensen explained, “We like to say that the energy transition will not happen without digitalization and digitalization cannot scale without AI. So, what we are doing with Siemens is obviously implementing these digital twins in our factories. That allows us to simulate upfront in vitro, how things will perform. But more importantly, it allows us to continuously optimize the production process.”
Jensen also discussed the importance of being able to trace the digital footprint of every molecule of input into batteries throughout their lifecycle, including recycling as it could enable up to 90% of battery materials to potentially be recycled, representing a 600x efficiency improvement over oil.
Diving into the product roadmaps
With over 300 breakout sessions at Realize LIVE this year, the attendees can learn best practices and gain insights from peers and learn from the teams behind their solutions of choice
At Realize LIVE, Siemens Software users have the unique opportunity to learn more about the future of their tools and to engage directly with the teams responsible for the development of those mission critical toolsets. Across multiple product specific keynote sessions throughout the event, users can learn about product roadmaps, allowing them to plan for future capabilities and envision how these might fit into their ever-evolving workflows, processes and digital threads.
They also get a sneak peek into some of the amazing technologies that Siemens is building. From the future of immersive engineering and new capabilities that take advantage of AI to help with the increasingly complex materials selection and sourcing process within NX.
A thriving ecosystem in the Solution Center
If there is a hot ticket for this year’s Realize LIVE, it’s getting hands on with the demonstration of our collaboration with Sony to bring immersive engineering to the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio – and of course, try out Sony’s spatial computing device first hand.
While the keynotes deliver a glimpse into Siemens’ vision, the 2,000+ attendees are also here to explore the wider eco system around Siemens’ software solutions and learn from their peers. For 2024, the Solution Center, the hub of activities for Realize LIVE has brought together 58 sponsor booths from partners offering tools and technologies that supplement Siemens’ core offering. The Solution Center also features smaller stage presentations where our customer community is encouraged to learn from their peers and ask the experts over 23 sessions during the event.
Students solving sustainability challenges
Fostering the next generation of engineering and manufacturing talent has been a focus for Siemens (see our recently announced new credentials program) and manifests itself at Realize LIVE. Kicked off on the first day of Realize LIVE and continuing throughout the event, the Student Sustainability Design Hack features five student teams from six universities across North America. These teams, sponsored by Deloitte, Microsoft and Andretti, will tackle a sustainability challenge for Andretti Global using Siemens' NX software. With only 48 hours to complete the challenge, students must work creatively to redesign Andretti's current scaling system for their race cars while prioritizing sustainability, innovation and manoeuvrability.
Our sponsors will judge the teams' design tomorrow on Day 3 of the event, and the winners will be presented in the afternoon. Matt Moulds, a participant in the Design Hack and student at Seneca Polytechnic, shared his positive experience with the challenge, stating, “I'm passionate about learning, meeting new people, and design, so it's a perfect mix of all three.”
