Raj Batra on Global Trends

July 23, 2008
Raj Batra keynote: Global Trends Driving Your Business Raj Batra is Vice President, Automation and Motion Division, Siemens Energy and Automation. Exiderdome is Siemens’ way of saying our portfolio is unparalleled and we’re saying that we’re close to our customers and our customers applications. Batra talked about “open innovation” and distributed co-creation. He used Wikipedia and Mozilla as examples. “Our user group is another example of distributed co-creation,” he said. Industries range fr...
Raj Batra keynote: Global Trends Driving Your Business Raj Batra is Vice President, Automation and Motion Division, Siemens Energy and Automation. Exiderdome is Siemens’ way of saying our portfolio is unparalleled and we’re saying that we’re close to our customers and our customers applications. Batra talked about “open innovation” and distributed co-creation. He used Wikipedia and Mozilla as examples. “Our user group is another example of distributed co-creation,” he said. Industries range from food to aerospace, from automotive to cement. Diversity breeds Creativity, he said. “Expand your world of automation,” he noted, “is the theme of this conference. This conference gives you a chance to unplug and expand your worldview.” We are being forced to rethink the relationship between our reaction to global trends. Energy Prices, Asset Management, Safety and Security, Globalization are the significant trends. China and India, just a year ago the boogieman of offshoring, are today being scooped by lower cost manufacturing themselves, leveraging the work arbitrage unfavorably to them, just as it has to us. The theme behind all these trends is productivity. How can you use technology to run your plants more profitably, safely, and thrive in the world today. Siemens bases its core research on key economic trends that are already in play. $6.1 Billion annually, with 32K employees (23% in the US, 36% in Germany, 12% in Asia) the largest R&D investor in electronics and engineering globally. Energy Efficient Manufacturing. Motors used in drives conveyors and pumps account for nearly 70% of all industrial power consumption globally, with over 20 million motors and less than 20% of them are controlled by software to optimize efficiency. Siemens software can save between 10 and 50% power use, having a huge impact on CO2 globally. Process Control Systems with security built in. (AstraZenica) Aging systems—some 20+ years old; maintenance and spare parts problems, needed a holistic approach with built in security. Siemens came up with a stepwise, adaptable and flexible migration strategy…a safe and low risk migration strategy to modernize their aging assets, add functionality and integrate multiple vendors. Batra quoted ARC that they feel that Siemens migration tools and strategy are the most comprehensive in the industry. Speed to Market—the DuPont Tedlar Story. Tedlar is growing 30% annually. Large plant expansion needed in the plant in Fayetteville, NC. They needed a 16 week schedule, with 500 field devices with multiple vendors and 3600 I/O points. The only way to implement this was with PCS7, redundant client/server architecture and fieldbus. The project was completed in 8 weeks, and $6 million UNDER BUDGET. Profinet—the strongest value proposition. Profinet and Profibus are the fastest growing architectures with 2800 device types, and intelligence in network topology with over 23 million Profibus devices installed, and 600K Profibus PA nodes. Join PTO, Batra said. It’s the world’s largest and oldest fieldbus organization. The power of network topology and wireless safety control is moving like a freight train through our plants today, and Profibus embodies that technology. Dramatic Growth of Product Data Requires New IT Architecture. Canon Electronics, in 2002 dealt with 1.8 TB a day..now over 300Tb in 2008. Data architecture is critical and important to the industrial plant, as it is in commercial business. An Update on the Joint Strike Fighter: 600 Suppliers, 30 countries, 16 time zones, 6500 engineers. At the heart of the project is Siemens industrial software. The goal is to cut delivery from one jet every 15 months to 5 months. The first F-35 LightningII took its test flight in June, and the project is under budget. Expand your world of automation.