|
contents | business | |||||||||
| German Chancellor Merkel visits Siemens' showcase "digital factory"  On February 23, 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Siemens' Electronics Factory in Amberg, Bavaria, and was briefed on the current status of production automation as it moves toward Industrie 4.0. Key elements of the coming industrial world are already being used at the Amberg factory: Products communicate with machines and all processes are optimized and controlled via IT."Amberg is the best proof that high tech and top innovations can sustainably secure Germany's position as an industrial location over the long term, " said Joe Kaeser, President and CEO of Siemens AG. "Our Electronics Plant is a prime example of a digital factory, and shows that Siemens is already implementing key elements of Industrie 4.0. The organizational model of the "Digital Factory" as a Division, established on October 1, 2014, also reflects this development in our company." The Amberg Electronics Factory showcases Siemens' concept for a "digital enterprise." The factory already employs production methods that will be the standard in many manufacturing facilities in a number of years. Products in the plant control their own assembly by directly communicating their specific requirements and their next production steps via a product code to the machines. The Amberg factory has made substantial progress on the way to the future, where real and virtual worlds will be even more closely merged in production, and products will communicate with one another and the machines and optimize their own production process. In the future, factories will be far more flexible than today in producing individual products and achieving higher efficiency – faster, at lower cost and with highest quality. Production is largely automated: Machines and computers are responsible for 75 percent of the value chain, and employees handle the rest. The product is touched by a human hand only at the beginning, when the basic component – a bare printed circuit board – is placed on the assembly line. From then on, everything is run by machines. Yet humans remain indispensible – for developing products and production processes, for planning production, or for handling unexpected incidents. The factory produces around fifteen million Simatic products a year. This means that one product leaves the factory every second on 230 working days a year. write your comments about the article :: © 2015 Construction News :: home page |