Most of you know that Nancy Bartels has returned to us as the Managing Editor of Control. She attended the Siemens meeting in Nuremberg, Germany last week, while Keith Larson and I visited with the folks at Yokogawa’s User Group and Technical Innovation Fair.
Here’s her report, slightly delayed:
Walt,
This is the blog I was going to write while in Germany. As you know, thanks to a computer with a migraine, that didn’t happen. But here, better late than never, is a series of reports, impressions, observations and ramblings about the Control Managing Editor’s Excellent European Adventure.
Entry Eins—The Big Show
Every November in Nürnberg, the automation clan gathers for a “do” called the SPS/IPC/Drives show. Being a newbie to the field
and only a poor provincial, my only point of reference is National Manufacturing Week. SPC/IPC/Drives is the ghost of NMW in its heyday—only better organized and more tightly focused. According to the press releases, there were 1,203 exhibitors, all touting automation- and drive-related goods and services. More than 43,000—around 9,000 more than last year—of us trekked
through 77,500 sqm of exhibit halls. (I can’t think in metric, so I don’t know how much that is in square feet, but my sight and sore feet at the end of the day tell me it’s “a lot.”)
All of the usual suspects—as best I can tell, every major European (and some U.S.-based) automation vendor—were there. Among the names I recognized in the first five minutes or so were Turck, Hirschmann, Festo, Pepperl + Fuchs, Woodhead, Phoenix Contact and Rockwell Automation.
I was at the show as the guest of Siemens Automation and Drives division, which had a giant booth (which is too small a word for the installation) in Hall 9, displaying goodies from its entire A&D portfolio. My little “standplan” of the booth shows 74 separate displays on each of Siemens A&D’s product and service lines. While none of the products struck me as particularly groundbreaking (It seems as though Siemens has just discovered RFID, or maybe just decided this was the year to talk about it), there were plenty of tweaks and upgrades to existing products and services.
Interested folks might want to check out
• The Simatic ET 200pro I/O system, which is specially designed for harsh industrial use and suitable for cabinet-free installation onsite direct at the machine;
• The CP 343-1 Lean communications processor for Simatic S7-300 controllers with Ertec-200 Ethernet controllers. Via two ports on the processor, the controllers can now be connected in one line without an additional Ethernet switch;
• The Simatic Rack PC 847B industrial PC designed for rugged environments. It now comes equipped with the latest Intel generation of Core2 Duo processors, chip-set technology and memory, making it suitable for complex automation tasks such as rapid processing of large amounts of data in measuring systems, test bays or industrial image processing.
• The new range of optical proximity switches for the hazardous area. The Simatic PXO240 sensors are available as diffuse sensors, reflex sensors and one-way light barriers. They are suitable for chemical and pharmaceutical plants, paint shops, tank stations, tank farms, sawmills and grinders. They comply with the Atex safety requirement Zone 2, Classification II 3G (gas, vapor and mist), and Zone 22, Classification II 3D (dust-laden atmosphere, non-conductive dust).
• The Simotion C240 motion control modules that can coordinate up to 32 axes via Profibus with the PROFIdrive profile. The Simotion C240 has four encoders and four analog interfaces for connecting analog drive units or stepper drives with pulse/direction interface. This makes the controller especially suitable for retrofit projects.
Wait! There’s more! But I won’t go through the entire portfolio. Suffice it to say that the take-home CD has 27 product announcements on it. A trip to www.siemens.com will reveal all.
Entry Zwei –The Talking Head Report
New products weren’t the only reason Siemens was flying journalists from around the world to Nürnberg. Like the rest of the smart money, Siemens is moving to a global perspective and wants to make sure the entire world knows who it is and what it does—no small task for a company with fingers in as many pies as Siemens has.
A&D Drives Group President Helmut Gierse walked us through the big picture at Siemens—six divisions—Information & Communications, Automation & Control, Power, Transportation, Medical and Lighting. Then, naturally enough, he zoomed in on Automation & Control and its three groups—Automation & Drives, Industrial Solutions & Services, and Siemens Building Technologies. Automation & Control is the big dog at Siemens, accounting for 28.5% of external sales from the operations groups.
He also made sure we knew that Siemens is Number One in the world in factory automation, with 44% of the market, Number Two in electrical installations for buildings, with 20% of the market, and Number Three in process automation with 36% of the market.
Part of the message for process pack leaders Emerson and ABB was that Siemens doesn’t intend to stay Number 3 forever. Gierse reported that Siemens’ growth in the last year has been more than double that of the total global automation & drives market.
Like every other automation vendor, Siemens is preaching the integration and synergy gospel. Gierse says Siemens is more than glad to sell you products, but would much rather sell you a system or a solution. The underlying logic of its synergy gospel is the view that most manufacturing isn’t exclusively process or discrete, but rather hybrid. Think about verticals such as food and beverage and pharma. At some point after you’ve brewed the beer or mixed the drugs, that batch becomes discrete bottles or capsules, and a whole different set of manufacturing issues arise.
The Siemens vision is to have a presence everywhere in production workflow, from inbound logistics, through both the process and/or discrete phases of production, and then outbound logistics. At the same time, Siemens wants its products throughout the production life cycle, beginning at design (the digital factory and virtual design were big in the Siemens booth) and running all the way through asset management (Siemens has its own MES system) and out to modernization. This vision all comes neatly together on slide 7 of Herr Gierse’s presentation where the blue triangle of Totally Integrated Automation (automation, MES, and ERP) and the red triangle of Totally Integrated Power (both low and medium voltage) come together for “automation and energy management in process and manufacturing industries.”
Seriously, the vision makes sense on paper. But integration at that level is always a lot harder in reality than in PowerPoint. Still this is the direction Siemens and other vendors are attempting to drive their customers.
Entry Drei—Back to the Future
Before we leave the show floor, so to speak, I want to share with you a picture from the Siemens booth.
One of the attractions was a dune buggy running on Siemens drives. You could sit in it and rev the engine and get the sense of driving without actually going anywhere. Of course, the thing was a young (and not-so-young) boy magnet. I watched from across the way while a kid of about 12 or 14 got in and started messing with the controls and jonesing on pushing that needle up into the red zone. You could almost see him making the connections between that thrill and the business of engineering. What I was thinking was “Here’s a Damascus Road experience for one of the next generation of engineers, and how come can’t this kid’s counterparts back home get the same kind of experience?” Obviously he was there either with some parent or, more likely, as school group. If we’re really serious about filling that “age gap” we’re all so worried about, we need to figure out ways to give our 12- and 14-year-olds a chance to see what they’re missing.
Here’s her report, slightly delayed:
Walt,
This is the blog I was going to write while in Germany. As you know, thanks to a computer with a migraine, that didn’t happen. But here, better late than never, is a series of reports, impressions, observations and ramblings about the Control Managing Editor’s Excellent European Adventure.
Entry Eins—The Big Show
Every November in Nürnberg, the automation clan gathers for a “do” called the SPS/IPC/Drives show. Being a newbie to the field
and only a poor provincial, my only point of reference is National Manufacturing Week. SPC/IPC/Drives is the ghost of NMW in its heyday—only better organized and more tightly focused. According to the press releases, there were 1,203 exhibitors, all touting automation- and drive-related goods and services. More than 43,000—around 9,000 more than last year—of us trekked
through 77,500 sqm of exhibit halls. (I can’t think in metric, so I don’t know how much that is in square feet, but my sight and sore feet at the end of the day tell me it’s “a lot.”)
All of the usual suspects—as best I can tell, every major European (and some U.S.-based) automation vendor—were there. Among the names I recognized in the first five minutes or so were Turck, Hirschmann, Festo, Pepperl + Fuchs, Woodhead, Phoenix Contact and Rockwell Automation.
I was at the show as the guest of Siemens Automation and Drives division, which had a giant booth (which is too small a word for the installation) in Hall 9, displaying goodies from its entire A&D portfolio. My little “standplan” of the booth shows 74 separate displays on each of Siemens A&D’s product and service lines. While none of the products struck me as particularly groundbreaking (It seems as though Siemens has just discovered RFID, or maybe just decided this was the year to talk about it), there were plenty of tweaks and upgrades to existing products and services.
Interested folks might want to check out
• The Simatic ET 200pro I/O system, which is specially designed for harsh industrial use and suitable for cabinet-free installation onsite direct at the machine;
• The CP 343-1 Lean communications processor for Simatic S7-300 controllers with Ertec-200 Ethernet controllers. Via two ports on the processor, the controllers can now be connected in one line without an additional Ethernet switch;
• The Simatic Rack PC 847B industrial PC designed for rugged environments. It now comes equipped with the latest Intel generation of Core2 Duo processors, chip-set technology and memory, making it suitable for complex automation tasks such as rapid processing of large amounts of data in measuring systems, test bays or industrial image processing.
• The new range of optical proximity switches for the hazardous area. The Simatic PXO240 sensors are available as diffuse sensors, reflex sensors and one-way light barriers. They are suitable for chemical and pharmaceutical plants, paint shops, tank stations, tank farms, sawmills and grinders. They comply with the Atex safety requirement Zone 2, Classification II 3G (gas, vapor and mist), and Zone 22, Classification II 3D (dust-laden atmosphere, non-conductive dust).
• The Simotion C240 motion control modules that can coordinate up to 32 axes via Profibus with the PROFIdrive profile. The Simotion C240 has four encoders and four analog interfaces for connecting analog drive units or stepper drives with pulse/direction interface. This makes the controller especially suitable for retrofit projects.
Wait! There’s more! But I won’t go through the entire portfolio. Suffice it to say that the take-home CD has 27 product announcements on it. A trip to www.siemens.com will reveal all.
Entry Zwei –The Talking Head Report
New products weren’t the only reason Siemens was flying journalists from around the world to Nürnberg. Like the rest of the smart money, Siemens is moving to a global perspective and wants to make sure the entire world knows who it is and what it does—no small task for a company with fingers in as many pies as Siemens has.
A&D Drives Group President Helmut Gierse walked us through the big picture at Siemens—six divisions—Information & Communications, Automation & Control, Power, Transportation, Medical and Lighting. Then, naturally enough, he zoomed in on Automation & Control and its three groups—Automation & Drives, Industrial Solutions & Services, and Siemens Building Technologies. Automation & Control is the big dog at Siemens, accounting for 28.5% of external sales from the operations groups.
He also made sure we knew that Siemens is Number One in the world in factory automation, with 44% of the market, Number Two in electrical installations for buildings, with 20% of the market, and Number Three in process automation with 36% of the market.
Part of the message for process pack leaders Emerson and ABB was that Siemens doesn’t intend to stay Number 3 forever. Gierse reported that Siemens’ growth in the last year has been more than double that of the total global automation & drives market.
Like every other automation vendor, Siemens is preaching the integration and synergy gospel. Gierse says Siemens is more than glad to sell you products, but would much rather sell you a system or a solution. The underlying logic of its synergy gospel is the view that most manufacturing isn’t exclusively process or discrete, but rather hybrid. Think about verticals such as food and beverage and pharma. At some point after you’ve brewed the beer or mixed the drugs, that batch becomes discrete bottles or capsules, and a whole different set of manufacturing issues arise.
The Siemens vision is to have a presence everywhere in production workflow, from inbound logistics, through both the process and/or discrete phases of production, and then outbound logistics. At the same time, Siemens wants its products throughout the production life cycle, beginning at design (the digital factory and virtual design were big in the Siemens booth) and running all the way through asset management (Siemens has its own MES system) and out to modernization. This vision all comes neatly together on slide 7 of Herr Gierse’s presentation where the blue triangle of Totally Integrated Automation (automation, MES, and ERP) and the red triangle of Totally Integrated Power (both low and medium voltage) come together for “automation and energy management in process and manufacturing industries.”
Seriously, the vision makes sense on paper. But integration at that level is always a lot harder in reality than in PowerPoint. Still this is the direction Siemens and other vendors are attempting to drive their customers.
Entry Drei—Back to the Future
Before we leave the show floor, so to speak, I want to share with you a picture from the Siemens booth.
One of the attractions was a dune buggy running on Siemens drives. You could sit in it and rev the engine and get the sense of driving without actually going anywhere. Of course, the thing was a young (and not-so-young) boy magnet. I watched from across the way while a kid of about 12 or 14 got in and started messing with the controls and jonesing on pushing that needle up into the red zone. You could almost see him making the connections between that thrill and the business of engineering. What I was thinking was “Here’s a Damascus Road experience for one of the next generation of engineers, and how come can’t this kid’s counterparts back home get the same kind of experience?” Obviously he was there either with some parent or, more likely, as school group. If we’re really serious about filling that “age gap” we’re all so worried about, we need to figure out ways to give our 12- and 14-year-olds a chance to see what they’re missing.
