Accelerate your digital transformation in the electronics industry: Siemens

Electronics manufacturers often face a great deal of challenges, especially when implementing digital transformation. While each customer faces unique challenges, many of them are similar. For example, there are cost pressures, failure to see the bigger picture, and not knowing what to do next.

Siemens has developed a standardized methodology to solve the recurring challenges of the customers. This standardized methodology provides a step-by-step approach to tackling digital transformation, ensuring that customers can benefit from increased efficiency and productivity, while gaining valuable insights from their data.

Johannes Roek, Business Development Electronics, Siemens AG, said digital industries focus on customer needs with software, automation, and services. Siemens' focus areas are software, factory automation, motion control, process automation, and customer services. The industry value chain includes chip manufacturing, surface-mount technology (SMT), and assembly and test components and devices. Siemens also assists customers with proven AI-based solutions from its electronics production.

Christian Maier, Lead Consultant, Siemens AG, noted that it is all about the combination of the traditional productivity methods and digital technologies. SMT market trends include OT/IT horizontal integration, complexity of PCBs and ICs, streamlined production process, standardization, and individualized mass production.

Digital transformation is no guarantee for success! About 70% of digital transformations fail. 16% projects improve the performance. Digitalization often fails in the electronics industry as there are factors such as missing correlation, missing proper translation, digitalization of stand-alone processes vs. digitalization of complete value chain, and short-term optimization vs. long-term digitalization strategy. You are at a crossroad! So, what now?

Digital transformation starts with digital enterprise. You can do implementation, optimization, and consulting. All of this is surrounded by cyber security. We can now have digitalization consulting for a sustainable industry. You can identify the potential and challenges, identify the digitalization driver, and do target/actual analysis of digital capabilities, etc.

You can now accelerate digitalization of sustainable manufacturing environments with digitalization consulting. Start with the analysis of your as-is situation. It involves process and IT/OT landscape, factory walk, challenges and industry trends. Next, move to strategy development and target picture. This includes digitalization areas, maturity assessment, KPIs definition, digitalization strategy and NorthStar. Finally, you need to do the gap-analysis, solutions, and develop roadmap. This means developing a high-level roadmap, solution areas for key initiatives, and effort/impact evaluation.

Doing all of this can give you a high-level implementation roadmap. Customers also need to engage their employees early in the changes, digitalization initiatives, and trainings. You can also develop a consulting portfolio guide. It can start from low, with a digital enterprise experience day, to high, where you can solve the known with a comprehensive IT/OT solution design.