Innovation Leadership Summit: “We, Emerson, are very competitive and we like to win with the help of Siemens”
In this year’s Innovation Summit, I got a chance interviewed Dr. Randall Ledford, Chief Technology Officer and senior vice president of Emerson. Dr. Ledford shared his valuable observations on the industry trends and Emerson’s PLM user experience in the interview.
Emerson is a 25 billion dollars’ company with diversify products, from the world most sophisticated process management computers and sensors to tool-boxes with around 80 different businesses around the world.
“Industry trends and legislative trends from different companies are dictating how companies like Emerson and others, that what they can sell and what is in those products, lead-free of course, other chemicals are also being excluded,” said Dr. Ledford.
“By the year of 2020, some experts say, there will be close to two thousand different materials that cannot be put into products. Teamcenter must allow for these different standards…companies, like Emerson and Siemens have to work together to understand the trends from governments as well as from our customers, to incorporate into PLM. It’s a challenge, it’s exciting and we all need to compete.” added Ledford. “We, Emerson, are very competitive and we like to win and with the help of Siemens and PLM and hopefully moving faster with ECAD environment, Siemens and Emerson can be a winner.”
Dr. Ledford was impressed by Chuck Grindstaff, CEO of Siemens PLM Software’s demonstration on Active Workspace at the Summit in Arizona. “I have been to Siemens Innovation Conference, probably since it began. I may have missed one…maybe two, but I have been to all of them. One of the exciting things about this conference was the introduction of the concept of Active Workspace, that thing’s very promising. If it live up to what I have seen, I think that will be a very exciting step forward for Siemens, Teamcenter and PLM. It’s a first look, it was a canned demo, but the look from it, seems to indicate it puts at the fingertips of the designer or the procurement person, all the information he needs to have. Not only as the information vitally available, it seems to be a different kind of searches of information, by name, by shape are also embedded in this activity. It’s major step forward for Siemens and PLM. It will really make Siemens competitors struggle to keep up,” conclused Ledford.
