During his keynote presentation on the first day of Siemens Automation Summit 2008, held at Navy Pier in Chicago, Dennis Sadlowski, Siemens’ president and CEO, outlined many of the changes the world, manufacturing and automation are facing, and how Siemens is helping its customers handle them.

“Our users tell us there’s lots of change going on in automation, and there’s lots of change going on at Siemens too,” said Sadlowski. “Now, we’ve seen many changes in the 160 years we’ve been in business. However, I think the changes we’ve seen in the last six months are more numerous and more significant than any we’ve seen in the past 20 or 30 years.”

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Acquisitions, Innovation Driving Siemens’ Global Growth
The U.S. figures prominently in Siemens’ global strategies for automation. Ralf-Michael Franke, CEO of Industrial Automation Systems at Siemens, discussed the vital role of the U.S. in the company’s growth plans during his keynote presentation at the 2008 Siemens Automation Summit in Chicago.

“Innovation is not an issue for a week or a month,” said Franke. “You have to be patient. It sometimes takes years.” Siemens’ large investment in research and development, combined with its acquisitions of integral companies, is the stuff that will allow the global technology organization to follow the lead of its largest sector—industry—which accounts for 51% of its business, explained Franke.

“We at Siemens know that we have to react faster to the market,” he said. “That is why we reorganized the company.”

Within the industry sector that Franke manages are six divisions, including industry automation, drive technologies, industry solutions, building technologies, mobility and Osram/Sylvania. Siemens expects a 10% increase in its U.S. business from 2007 to 2010, with market growth predicted to rise from €100 billion to €110 billion over the three-year period.

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“Engineers have to learn they can improve productivity and manufacturability before the first spade is dug into the ground.” Ralf-Michael Franke, CEO, Industrial Automation Systems, at Siemens, discussed the game-changing impact of product life-cycle management (PLM) integrated with industrial automation.

“Open Innovation” Key to Tackling Global Challenges
Raj Batra, vice president of Siemens Energy & Automation’s Automation and Motion Division, discussed the global trends driving industry in his keynote address to assembled users and guests at the Siemens Automation Summit and Users Conference this week in Chicago.

Batra called the current era one of “open innovation,” calling out Wikipedia, Mozilla and the Siemens User Advisory Board as agents of what he called “distributed co-creation.”

“The industry diversity of this conference is so important to us because it lets us explore and get fresh perspectives on creative solutions and alternatives at the intersections of these industrial landscapes,” he said. That, he added, brings us to the theme of this year’s conference: Expand your world of automation during a time of great global change.

“The price of energy is making us rethink our relationship with fuel and power in our daily lives and our work,” he said. “Self-sustaining offices and homes and systems that can sell power back into the grid truly are within reach. Even glass and cement production now can make great strides with waste-heat-recovery systems.”

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Raj Batra, vice president of automation and drives for Siemens Energy & Automation, had a chance to sit down on the barge deck outside exiderdome with Walt Boyes, editor in chief of Control, to discuss the global trends impacting the automation business.

Siemens’ Automation Roadmap for Machine Control
Forgoing the traditional PowerPoint presentation that often causes attendees to try to take too many notes and by default listen too little, a handful of Siemens product managers and specialists provided a mid-level review and display of new and soon-to-emerge products relevant to factory automation in a Wednesday morning session at this week’s 2008 Siemens Automation Summit.

The presenters focused their attention on what key strategic products in areas of Total Integrated Automation the user community finds most important:

• Performance—How fast is fast enough for a particular process?
• Ethernet—Its impact on existing fieldbuses and what’s needed for its factory-floor use.
• Wireless—Its pervasive adoption in industrial environments—faster than any other protocol.

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From a new S7-mEC modular embedded controller to a wireless operator interface complete with e-stop, Siemens’ Bob Nelson reviewed what new machine automation products are on the horizon.

Siemens Technology Advances Ethanol Research
At the National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center (NCERC) at the Edwardsville campus of Southern Illinois University, Siemens has engaged in a 10-year partnership to develop technology and training in this burgeoning field.

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The ‘Must Knows’ of Process Safety
“Process safety is getting less expensive to engineer and keep current,” said Bill Goble, principal partner and co-founder of exida, a provider of process safety consulting, training and certification services.

Goble provided a detailed overview of the state of the safety instrumented system (SIS) world at this week’s Siemens Automation Summit in Chicago. He noted that when the standard ANSI/ISA84.01-2004 was first published, it created a firestorm of protest from people who insisted that it was impossible to engineer to, too expensive to comply with, and would never be implemented. With the inrush of training and tools available to today’s safety engineer, that simply is not the case, he said. “Today it is easier and less expensive to implement IEC 61511/ANSI ISA 84.01-2004, and this trend will continue,” Goble declared.

The outlook from the vantage of 2008 is far different than it was in 1998, with strong recognition of the need for functional safety and programs established in many companies. “The procedure development is in progress or finished,” Goble said, “and software tools are standardized.”

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“We’ll see better products, better engineering tools, safer plants and lower costs.” Bill Goble of exida discussed how new safety life-cycle tools are making safety-instrumented systems easier to design correctly in the first place—and easier to manage properly over the long haul.

Design Guide Complements Company Standards
What if we had to reinvent the wheel each time we used it? That would certainly slow automotive manufacturers’ time to market. Under circumstances where something is created and then used more than once, it makes perfect sense to copy what already has been done, modifying it if necessary. So it goes with designing controls, at least at DuPont.

“Why reinvent the wheel?” said Karl Stevens, division engineering designer, instrumentation and controls, at DuPont Engineering. Along with Winfried Stach, global automation alliance manager at Siemens, Stevens explained “What You Do NOT Know About Design Guides” at the 2008 Siemens Automation Summit in Chicago.

“Why do we need a design guide?” asked Stach. “Most of us know that sometimes we want to reinvent the wheel so it’s ‘my own solution.’ If you have a good solution, then you don’t tell anybody. Then sometimes mistakes get into the design because people aren’t well-informed. That’s what the design guide should address. What are the strategies, and what should be the standard functionality of the system?”

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“So easy a caveman can do it.” DuPont’s Karl Stevens explained how his company uses design guides to streamline and unify control system configuration processes.