Actemium partnership expands industrial IoT solution possibilities for customers
Our open partnership ecosystem relies on delivering best-in-class technologies and solutions, but also maintaining long-term, strategic relationships between Siemens and our partners, and the partnership with Actemium echoes this concept. Actemium is creating multi-technical sustainable solutions and services for major industrial customers operating in different discrete and process market segments such as Automotive, Aerospace, Chemicals, Food and Beverage, Pharmaceutical and more. We spoke with Jürgen Knörrich, Director of Innovation Germany at Actemium about the partnership, the benefits of working with Siemens and the customer solutions we provide through this invaluable partnership.
Facing customer challenges
When some of Actemium customers from the process industry had a problem with the connection of older Brownfield systems to the industrial Internet of Things in the implementation and establishment of solutions in the area of data analysis, Actemium turned to Siemens. With Siemens as a strategic partner in the areas of electrification and automation, Actemium looked back on their history and earlier successes with the company. Actemium recognized the value of Insights Hub IoT solutions as a good solution to the challenges of its customers. Knörrich says: “One of the most valuable arguments is that the customer receives new data and existing data without changes from the existing infrastructure. Actemium does not have to change the software at the automation level – without new cables we get more data.”
“Actemium is a trusted partner in the industry – they are the closest to the customer because they are going in and out daily and they have access to the people who have OT experience and are developing and implementing the solutions needed to address specific industrial use cases.”
Andreas Kappler, Manager Technology and Digitalization at Siemens
Trusted partners in the industry
Andreas Kappler, Manager Technology and Digitalization at Siemens, says that partnering with Actemium is important for Insights Hub because “Actemium is a trusted partner in the industry – they are the closest to the customer because they are going in and out daily and they have access to the people who have OT experience and are developing and implementing the solutions needed to address specific industrial use cases.”
Jürgen Knörrich adds, “We are in daily contact with our customers in the plant; they trust us – they ask us ‘how should we do this?’ with questions about automation and new solutions for their plants.”
Actemium customers in the pharmaceutical and chemical industry change their system infrastructure less often than companies with discreet production. The products (often basic materials) change rather rarely and manufacturing processes are subject to special regulations (GMP), especially in the Life Science sector. It is therefore difficult to implement innovations, experiment with new technologies and benefit from all the available data. But now with the Insights Hub partnership, Actemium can get the data to your machines that you need without changing your infrastructure. Access to this data means the ability to use it with industrial IoT solutions in order to obtain new insights into the manufacturing process.
Leveraging data with IoT solutions
Jürgen Knörrich has found that customers in the process industry have a great interest in reducing downtimes or having practically no downtimes, as well as increasing quality and yield. The use of the IoT including data analysis and AI for forward-looking solutions for quality, maintenance and yield can therefore be a significant competitive advantage. By using new technologies with products like SITRANS SCM IQ, SIMATIC Industrial Edge, Insights Hub and Mendix, it is much easier to get data, use it in solutions and turn it into more output through a better understanding of the process.”
Another potential manufacturing challenge is customers’ fear of cloud-based solutions, but with Insights Hub private cloud options, Actemium can easily offer out-of-the-box secure options that provide customers with security and protected storage solutions for all their IoT data.
“Siemens is our biggest partner and Industrial Edge products in combination with Insights Hub is a comprehensive solution, from the automation level to the sensors up from Insights Hub and the addition of the Mendix low-code application development platform.”
Jürgen Knörrich, Director of Innovation Germany at Actemium
While Siemens is not Actemium’s only partnership, Jürgen Knörrich says, “Siemens is our biggest partner and Industrial Edge products in combination with Insights Hub is a comprehensive solution, from the automation level to the sensors up from Insights Hub and the addition of the Mendix low-code application development platform.” With the partnership, Actemium is very active in value co-creation like developing and implementing use cases. Jürgen Knörrich says, “We as the creator see it also as our task to give feedback from the market from our customers to our solution provider – what they need and what they have. Concerns and worries and so on. We bring this information back to Siemens to create better products, better solutions, better customer experiences.”
Jürgen Knörrich also notes the human element in the partnership, “Siemens is the leader in automation technology, so our customers are willing and able to work with these products. We are in close contact with Siemens on a daily basis we know each other, we trust each other – this partnership is not only a connection on paper, it’s a living partner.”
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