Siemens, Microsoft, and Rolls-Royce collaborated to demonstrate the power of Digital Transformation with AI at Hannover Messe 2025 [VIDEO]
Over 130,000 visitors from 150 countries attended Hannover Messe, the premier industrial technology trade show, in April 2025. And many of these visitors relied on airplanes to get there. Getting huge aircraft off the ground and up to altitude to deliver smooth, enjoyable rides and safe landings requires powerful, secure, and trustworthy engines.
Rolls-Royce, a world leader in the provision of aerospace engines, teamed up with Siemens and its strategic partner, Microsoft, to demonstrate a future concept for the production process for a re-imagined engine component and how AI can be used to optimize the entire product design and development process. Watch the video to learn more:
The challenge of complexity and robustness
Aircraft engines have many critical components that must be engineered and manufactured to deliver reliable performance over time. One such component is the hydraulic pump, a key part of the airplane’s hydraulic system, powered by the engine. Designing, engineering, and manufacturing this hydraulic pump can be a challenging task.
The hydraulic pump must generate and maintain hydraulic pressures to service the engine whistling, operate at a wide range of temperatures and be reliable. It needs to be resilient and withstand stresses due to engine loads such as vibration and maneuvers during flight. At the same time, the pump must be optimized to meet the weight requirement and improve sustainability. The Design and Manufacturing process involves many steps, software, equipment, and people with varying skillsets. It also requires different types of data and information at every stage. Using conventional manufacturing processes can lead to a disconnected process, duplication of effort and additional time spent, resulting in manufacturing efficiencies and even errors.
New concept to solve complexity with AI-driven optimization and automation
At Hannover Messe, Siemens and Microsoft, along with Rolls- Royce, demonstrated how the combination of generative design, additive manufacturing and CNC machining, quality inspection capabilities from the cloud-based Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, delivered on Microsoft Azure and which take advantage of the Azure AI Platform have enabled them to rethink the entire design and production process.
The demonstrator delivers a conceptual digital thread using a digital twin to streamline the creation of these critical components, sharing managed data across integrated software solutions for design, engineering, manufacturing and quality inspection. This unified digital environment results in the optimal design and manufacturing process by iterating and evaluating a very large number of possibilities using the comprehensive digital twin.
Bringing AI to the production process
Once the final optimal design is created, comes the manufacturing or machining of the parts that make the final product, involving specific requirements based on the design, material and machine being used.
Using traditional CAD/CAM software to generate the toolpaths to produce the final CNC operations to machine and inspect the part, can be a lengthy, highly iterative process. The demonstrator showed how Siemens’ NX X Manufacturing software with the power of AI, the process can be automated. The streamlined process can save up to 80% in programming time while ensuring compliance with company standards and best practices.
Not only that, but it also helps companies like Rolls- Royce to improve the performance of their engines by innovating to create lighter, more sustainable products and more sustainable manufacturing processes.
The end result
While a demonstrator for now, the new AI-based digital thread for the design and production of the hydraulic pump is able to deliver a fully developed and ready for manufacture that is 25 percent lighter, 200 percent stiffer, has a safety factor of 9 and bringing sustainability benefits in weight reduction leading to lower fuel consumption.
To learn more
To learn more about how Siemens and Microsoft are leveraging 35 years of strategic partnership to empower businesses to achieve their digitalization goals through cutting-edge solutions tailored to the challenges of today’s industries, visit: Siemens and Microsoft | Siemens Software.
