Siemens and IBM Collaborate for Sustainable Product Development

Siemens Digital Industries Software and IBM are expanding their long-term partnership by collaborating to develop a combined software solution integrating their respective offerings for systems engineering, service lifecycle management and asset management.

The companies will develop a combined software solution to help organizations optimize product lifecycles, and make it easier to improve traceability across processes, prototype and test concepts much earlier in development, and adopt more sustainable product designs, the companies report. 

The new combined SysML v1 standards-based suite of integrated engineering software is expected to support traceability and sustainable product development using a digital thread that links mechanical, electronics, electrical engineering and software design and implementation. It is intended to span the product lifecycle, from early design and manufacturing to operations, maintenance, update and end of life management, according to the companies.

Initially, the companies are working to connect IBM Engineering System Design Rhapsody for systems engineering with solutions from the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio of software and services including Siemens’ Teamcenter software for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Capital software for electrical/electronic (E/E) systems development and software implementation. The companies have also connected the IBM Maximo Application Suite for asset management with Siemens’ Teamcenter software to support an integrated digital thread between service engineering, asset management and services execution. 

These integrations will focus on reuse of processes and materials to allow traceability for sustainable product development. This can help companies to make informed decisions earlier in the design and engineering process to help drive improvements in cost, performance and sustainability, according to the companies. For example, companies can more quickly identify under-performing components or design elements that consume excessive amounts of power, or require maintenance or early replacement, and product innovation can be driven through an integrated digital thread that connects the physical and software assets back into product development. 

“A significant portion of product innovation and differentiation contains electrical, electronics and software components. Yet, manufacturing companies are struggling to bring new products to market on time, as the current tools, processes, and information to manage these components are siloed and disconnected,” says Kareem Yusuf Ph.D, senior vice president, Product Management and Growth, IBM Software. “To address this gap, IBM and Siemens are collaborating on a digital thread environment to integrate sustainability practices throughout the lifecycle of a product, from design, production, operation, maintenance and beyond. This connectivity will help enable quicker time to innovation and compliance preparedness, and overall improved product quality.”

Siemens and IBM are also collaborating to create a SysML v2 based solution with a migration path to help customers transition to next-generation systems engineering. SysML supports the specification, analysis, design, verification and validation of a range of systems and systems-of-systems. Service lifecycle management can assist in maximizing business value for product servitization by connecting service engineering to service maintenance to facilitate new collaborative processes between OEM and operators.

“Together, Siemens and IBM will deliver a simulation-driven systems and software engineering solution that is designed to cover the full operational lifecycle. This can empower our customers to innovate by helping to reduce product development costs, drive continuous improvement and create operational efficiencies across the extended enterprise throughout the product’s operation lifecycle,” says Tony Hemmelgarn, president and chief executive officer, Siemens Digital Industries Software.

“We are developing this to help companies truly shift left by improving extensibility and reuse of systems models and associated data with standards-based solutions in an open ecosystem and to enable our customers to develop better products,” Hemmelgarn adds.

Siemens will be supported by benefits through IBM's newly launched Partner Plus program and will offer the solution as part of the Siemens Xcelerator ecosystem.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.

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