{"id":13358,"date":"2026-06-03T08:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/?p=13358"},"modified":"2026-06-02T19:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T23:12:11","slug":"theres-no-right-place-to-start-with-software-defined-automation-podcast-transcript","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/theres-no-right-place-to-start-with-software-defined-automation-podcast-transcript\/","title":{"rendered":"There&#8217;s no right place to start with software-defined automation &#8211; Podcast Transcript"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Handling the increasing frequent shifts in manufacturing and production has necessitated a shift for the whole industry. Software-defined automation is part of that solution and we talk with the COO of Siemens&#8217; Automation Business, Rainer Brehm to learn how businesses can start their journeys or accelerate their adoption of digitalization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/0hHoEYp92WyOd67cCRtCds?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameBorder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nick Finberg<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>00:10<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We are back for another episode of the Future Ready Podcast from Siemens to talk about software to find with Reiner Brehm. If you missed the first episode, we outlined some of the key terms for the transition happening in industry today, like automating automation, as well as the extent of software-defined everything. But for this one, we&#8217;re tackling what this transition might look like. Picking up where we left off, Rainer, what advice would you give a business that&#8217;s ready to start the journey on software-defined automation? How can we best support them in those first few steps?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Rainer Brehm<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>00:42<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s always a good question, you know, because everybody talks about digitalization and say it&#8217;s very important. And then the question is, yeah, but where I start? Yeah. And uh we get these questions a lot I mean for me the the easiest answer start where you have the the biggest pain point because there you create value No starting with the infrastructure and say now it&#8217;s great to have a certain infrastructure with virtual machines or edge devices, whatever. If you don&#8217;t create value and and solving pain points, you might start, but normally it ends at a proof of concept. Yeah, and then something works. But if then the budget is cut and you don&#8217;t continue. So do it where really you have the highest pain point. Um and solve a problem there and by solving a problem which is use case use that imp have in mind building up our infrastructure uh where you then can use it to leverage building and solving more pain points and and more use cases. So that would be first of me starting there. Normally you need to start it, but it but to get there, you need to somehow connect. Yeah, you need to somehow enable um that the data can be used. And if you use the data, the easiest thing is always, first of all, you know, get transparency. In a lot of cases, even that is a big lever because you get transparency. You see your overall equipment efficiency and already find out maybe something, oops, you know, that and that is the case. So you can always do the first start of analyzing, simply looking at the data. But then you can change, you can go forward and say, okay, now I have the data. Now you can put more sophisticated analysis on there, like of root cause analysis. Or you look at entire value change and say, you know, if this happens, uh, you know, uh what is the root cause for that? And you know, you can go and and analyzing the root cause and then opt and then changing it that it won&#8217;t happen on there. So go more to that one. Um and then step by step, you know, we have a lot of customer where then they uh in terms of the the appetite comes while while you&#8217;re eating. Well then you identify, okay, okay, oh I can do this. Now you identify more and more. And then it comes to a kind of a flywheel effect. So if you have customers where suddenly there gets a certain dynamic um there, and then you do process optimization back and forth because you have the transparency. and and and then you&#8217;re you&#8217;re you&#8217;re leveraging the data even more maybe training training models um to do some prediction and so on and so on yeah but um I think the starting point is as I said the the pain point And and I think we have great customer examples here where this started. The one is public like Audi using our virtual PLC. They said, well. They started also from another side, which was cybersecurity. So if I have a lot of decentralized um IPCs, I always need to keep them up to date and somebody needs to go there and so on. If I put everything on a central managed data center, I I can manage that remotely from one place. I don&#8217;t know to go to every IPC, whatever, so do that uh locally. This was one step they want to solve. And then they put it centrally and said, oh now if it&#8217;s centrally, I can easily access all the data. So okay, what data I had. Oh, now I can see uh do maybe some quality inspection on the data, and they did uh quality inspection uh on this data. Now they develop it further, so I do quality inspection, so now I can also run a parallel to the Classical PLC workload, I can run AI networks which they trained with the data to optimize processes. So you you start with one topic and then you evolve it further. We had customers in the machine tool area, special machine builders, where they said, Well, it&#8217;s always hard for me. I always do some small changes at machines. But I I don&#8217;t want to have programmers doing it. I want to kind of automatically do it. There might be some configuration machine and I want to do it. uh fully automated. So they using um our fully IT engineering tool is called Sematic AX, which is a soft modern software development. where you can have and where you can automate code generation and where they use this in order to be be more flexible. And now building on this AX landscape, they could now include a copilot that&#8217;s generating code They have command line first, they can build now complete workflows automatically, which they couldn&#8217;t have done in the past. Another example. And and other other uh uh companies start to say, hey, I need to have more modularity because you know I have so many changes and it&#8217;s so hard for me always to kind of revamp things. And then they start, okay, I need to have it more modular. Uh but having my modular, uh I if I can configure um a machine centrally, um fitting into the product design I have, um I have a benefit. I don&#8217;t need to go to each and every PLC and do a change, but I do it centrally and deploy it and can uh change my my production much faster than in the past. And they start there and and and then now they see okay if I do that I I I can even go more into centralization. When you go into centralization, you figure out, oh If I have standardization, I can use the data and contextualize the data much more. And they go again into AI topics. So start with pain points and then you see how it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nick Finberg<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>06:05<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, very interesting. The idea of yeah, you can go ahead and make everything the same, but if you aren&#8217;t providing value for it, there&#8217;s just nothing that&#8217;s gonna keep people t using it effectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Rainer Brehm<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>06:17<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, and and and maybe maybe to add on, I think it&#8217;s always and that&#8217;s like a like in every organization. If you want to change management, start with a sense of urgency. And you know, we could say sense of urgency is a pain point. generate lighthouses where you say hey something is really getting uh um the enthusiast at the beginning but having fast followers And then getting a momentum in the organization where, you know, everybody wants to participate on the success, on the change, and then you get a momentum started. And that&#8217;s Hear the same like you have in every transformation in a company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nick Finberg<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>06:52<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, especially for something like software-defined, where a lot of these people in companies might not be thinking about it. like like others do of, oh, this is very flexible to use. Um you might see one of your colleagues doing something very interesting with software defining and you&#8217;re like, wait, what&#8217;s this extra thing that I could do? and add on, that would be the next project effectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Rainer Brehm<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>07:17<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Exactly. And and and with that you take away a fear. Because every every change is a fear and And I understand that, you know, if you have a classical system embedded, everything is set up, you don&#8217;t need any IT, you download your program, you you Switch the start on and it runs and it&#8217;s done and you close the cabinet. Yeah, that&#8217;s great. If you&#8217;re now connected Then you have much more opportunities, but yes, it might get a little bit complicated. And if I need to learn something new at the heart at the beginning it&#8217;s hard, yeah. But Getting excitement being part of a of a bigger movement, I think that gets uh you know over this first inertia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nick Finberg<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>07:59<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, looking into that black box to see what&#8217;s working. Working a little bit rather than just hoping and praying that it stays running the entire time and not turning it off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Rainer Brehm<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>08:07<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, and and and I think uh uh Nick that is something also uh uh we need to learn. Um We sometimes tell great stories where customers can&#8217;t connect where they are. And I think that&#8217;s also something where this this podcast I think is important to say, hey, it&#8217;s not like a completely different word. You can start where you are, you can start where you have automation today. And you know, solving a pain point, adding something new. And it&#8217;s a continuous journey. It&#8217;s not a complete disruption. Everything is new. I need to unlearn everything. But I think we need to do a better story of you know taking the hand of our users and you know and and and guide them, you know, what are the f steps to do, thick step. And and they can and and it&#8217;s human, you know, you always are you always willing to learn a little bit more, but if you move too fast you lose people. So what is the right pace to to move into a reaction that you learn something new? It gets a routine and then you add something new. And that is also here the case. And I think we need to learn how to um um all all automation players how we take our customers along this journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nick Finberg<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>09:18<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay. I think that&#8217;s a good a good reassurance um before we go into this next question. So looking ahead How will software-defined automation fundamentally differ from from today&#8217;s production systems?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Rainer Brehm<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>09:29<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think we will add more and more of features simply by software, so you don&#8217;t need to replace maybe a system because it&#8217;s and the system probably always gonna be somehow up to date. Uh that&#8217;s also maybe some fundamental thing which we which we need to communicate much better to our customers. That means probably a lot of the software defined automation will be more in a subscription mode. Yeah, where currently customers buy automation system and then they have it and run it. If you look at the software world Um most software is sold. Take your office package. Normally, you know, you buy it uh uh Microsoft 360. I mean it&#8217;s a subscription. Yeah, and and it&#8217;s not only a subscription, maybe you even get it offered as a SAS, a software as a service. Yeah. I don&#8217;t know whether automation will be as a service, uh, but it will go into subscription because You always want to be up to date, you always want to be cyber secure. And uh so that will move in this direction. This is also a fundamental change, uh which differs from a software different automation uh compared to a classical automation. Um then I think um it creates a great momentum around uh software-driven ecosystems, which means uh if you go software-defined The time of in the automation in the past you had a lot of there was a f you know Nick probably don&#8217;t know that there was a field bus war. Uh so basically every every vendor uh defined its own field bus and uh and basically with that had a certain, you know Community, uh uh a closed community. Software defined animation needs to be open. Software defined animation needs to use standard IT mechanism. in order to um enable the richness of all the knowledge around the the the um ecosystem. And I give you one example, what what we as Siemens do, we we our edge system, for example. is Docker based. It&#8217;s Docker. It&#8217;s nothing else, nothing changed. So everybody says, okay, I know Docker. And if you do put something into into into a Kubernetes workload, we we can put it in Kubernetes. So it&#8217;s nothing special. But that is great because now uh every IT person know how to build a Docker container and if you can build a Docker container you can bring a workload on an automation field. So it needs to be more open. And with that, we&#8217;re leveraging ecosystem of of skills uh which enriches automation and brings even new people into that field, which which I find exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nick Finberg<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>12:03<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And for the audience not fluent in information technology, Docker is a powerful tool for IT and increasingly OT that lets us put applications in standardized and virtualized boxes secured and self-contained like a shipping container. If it fits in one box, it&#8217;ll fit in another, and it can sit beside any number of other containers on a on a ship or in a port. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is an orchestration platform. The crane at the port, if we&#8217;re continuing the metaphor. It&#8217;s to move around the individual containers and adjust how they fit together. If you want to learn more about this, we&#8217;ll have a link in the description for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Rainer Brehm<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>12:37<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then and we discussed at the beginning, software automation, what will be fundamentally different? You have constant updates. This was you know coming from a never-change running system and constantly update and and validate. And if you do that, then you go further and said, okay, now I can now bring in a software development, I can bring more AI into that play, which enables a more adaptive manufacturing uh which will then uh basically adapt adapt to the need of of what needs to be manufactured on the one side. But it also would enable us to adapt to the operator. Uh because if the system is smart enough to detect what You know, what what skill level operator has? So we can go more into assistant functions on a software-defined automation because you have that intelligence of you know how good a operator is operating. Um and at the end it will go to assistant and maybe in some area um it will go into uh more autonomous production. Yeah. But that are uh ways um which which I foresee uh which will fundamentally differ uh from today&#8217;s production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nick Finberg<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>13:48<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s an interesting concept, the customization for the for the worker on the floor. I know we&#8217;ve talked about that a little bit in the software design area for Siemens, like picking, okay, this might be the next tool you want to use when you&#8217;re doing CAD design or something. Is that kind of what you&#8217;re talking about, customization, or is it very much like uh giving extra data to the person who may not be thinking to look for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Rainer Brehm<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>14:16<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, if a system sees, you know, uh how it&#8217;s optimized run and you see if you you&#8217;re you&#8217;re differing from that, you could say you give some a system some hints, yeah, what or proposals what can be done. Yeah, or or you or you uh maybe change the way how you explain it to an operator. And in in my opinion, that&#8217;s a big lever. Um I just was recently talking to a customer in the US and they were saying The biggest limitation factor is to build up manufacturing. Um, for example, now in the S, I don&#8217;t find people in the factory. I don&#8217;t find somebody who want to work, so I cannot expand. because we don&#8217;t find people uh um which want to work there. Number one. Number two, if you have find those people, there is a um um uh a fluctuation of of 20 percent of the of the factory worker leaving every year. So every year you need to bring 20% more in and they might be not highly skilled. So you have a have a low skill level and have a high fluctuation. So that means you have constantly new persons operating, a machine, a line, and and therefore I think if the if the Machine itself gets smarter and adapt to to the skill level of the operator, I mean that will solve um some of those problems. And what and what we talk about to make it more concrete, we&#8217;re working, for example, something called a copilot for operations, where um Imagine like a like a fighter pilot who get out of a system system what&#8217;s what&#8217;s going on and get some advice is what to do. And you know, you get this kind of smartness in your cockpit. uh to to to fly a plane in this case you don&#8217;t fly a plane but you operate a machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nick Finberg<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>15:56<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Awesome. Thanks Rainer. I feel like you might be able to talk about that for even an entire series. Um, but let&#8217;s save some of it for our next episode and and thank you to the audience. Uh if you haven&#8217;t already, make sure to subscribe so you don&#8217;t miss new episodes on software defined and also other topics like AI and the comprehensive digital twin we&#8217;re lining up. We&#8217;ll be back soon to delve into the role of industrial automation as well as the differences between applying software defined to greenfield installations versus existing facilities. Until then you can find out more information in the episode description.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Handling the increasing frequent shifts in manufacturing and production has necessitated a shift for the whole industry. 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