Siemens paving way to data- and AI-driven future of the industry

Dirk Didascalou, Head of Siemens Foundational Technologies, presented on paving the way to data- and AI-driven future of the industry. We are combining the real and digital worlds. We are combining the physics. Open business platform has been very successful with our customers. Nine out of 10 are small companies. Siemens Xcelerator marketplace has been seeing all this. 

There are technological building blocks for industry of the future. Some are SaaS and cloud, edge and hybrid, digital twins, etc.  We are doing simulation and digital twins for several industries. It is the same for processes. 

Container ships are massive. HD Hyundai was building one. There is humongous data involved. It is combined with Omniverse API, and then combined with Siemens. Another example is PepsiCo. We optimized manufacturing of the drinks. Pepsi is using digital twin, and saw 20% increase in production. 

We have software-defined everything. Mobile phones are personalized. Cars are also different. We now ask what can the car do? Same goes for processes. Now, you can do infrastructure-as-a-service. We can virtualize the same thing. At Audi, they need to change lines all the time. Software can help configure and align in minutes. Then came AI to the fore. 

Industrial AI can solve problems no expert can otherwise do! That changes everything! AI can be used to figure out what to do with an existing machine. We can use that for producing steel, in India. We can do predictive maintenance. There is lot of less downtime. AI is changing everything, and will change industries. We can support you along your transformation journey. 

We provide and support end-to-end transformation to industries. They can be across design, production, etc. We also call it copilot for operations. You can edit the tools, if required. For operations, we can also building edge. We have MINDS Program, an AI Government Alliance, 2025 Cohort One, at World Economic Forum. 

We use all tools in our own factory first. Only then, we sell it to you. We have won Lighthouse Factories WEF Awards. WEF has said we have one of the best factories of the world. Speed matters, a lot, with data and AI. We are here to solve problems with you. We need great talent to overcome problems. 85 percent of entire products are built in India. We are for India, for you!

Transformation opportunities
In a media interaction, Didascalou said Siemens has over 1,500 scientists. Platform organization builds software services. Customers are also our own software developers. We next have developers that build using foundational technologies. Industrial design has been harmonized, leading to user experience. 

AI will have a great effect on the world. Opportunities for transformation are everywhere. There could be slow, capex-invested business. You need to work in that environment, and make that data-driven. With AI, you can solve problems you couldn't before. We are building different products, buying different companies, etc., over the years. 

Industrial OS is a buzzword. AI cannot act in the physical world. Consumer AI speaks the language of human beings, interpret video and picture. You need to build models that can speak the machine language. Industrial AI needs models that are applicable for the series. We need to try and translate the vision. That is where Nvidia comes in. 

We are doing everything in hardware, into software. We have APIs that can do everything, We also offer MCP. AI OS consists of all the technologies that enable you to do everything. Technology that is useful will always find its way. There are things that are prevailing, that can be used anywhere. APIs have become standard. 

Siemens uses several SLMs and LLMs all the time. You need action locally. Very large models are very expensive. Co-pilots work together with others, such as Microsoft. The AI platform is as good as the data.