Siemens and IFS announced June 29 they’re partnering to help manufacturers use industrial AI to connect engineering intelligence with operational reality. This is intended to optimize production assets across their lifecycles, and increase the value of their products.

Their collaboration brings together Siemens' leadership in industrial AI, engineering, automation and manufacturing execution with IFS's strengths in industrial AI, enterprise asset management and field service domains. Together, they aim to help manufacturers close a persistent gap—the disconnect between how factory operations are designed and how they run in reality, where unplanned downtime, disconnected maintenance schedules, siloed production data and supply-chain disruptions erode throughput, agility and margins.

Siemens and IFS report that many plants still operate with production, maintenance planning and supply chain management systems that don't talk to each other, so engineering intent, real-world performance, and service strategies remain disconnected. Consequently, they add that industrial AI is central to their shared goal. This is because they believe the next era of industrial performance will be defined by bringing physical and digital worlds together to help manufacturers translate design intent into operational reality, and connect that operational reality back into better design to accelerate innovation.

For instance, Siemens’ Digital Twin software provides engineering, simulation and manufacturing context, while IFS delivers the service history, asset behavior and operational lifecycle data that show how products and assets perform in the real world. Together, they plan to create closed-loop Digital Twin software grounded in design intent and field performance that’s secure, governed and auditable across design, simulation, service records and factory execution, and can be trusted to deploy at industrial scale.

Unlike generic AI models, Siemens and IFS report that industrial environments demand accuracy, reliability, regulatory compliance and adaptability to drive optimization and agility because even small error rates are unacceptable when decisions affect safety, compliance and costly physical assets. They add their shared approach to industrial AI is built for this reality.

"Industrial AI only delivers value when it’s grounded in both engineering intent and real-world performance," says Tony Hemmelgarn, president and CEO at Siemens Digital Industries Software. "Together with IFS, we’re bringing these domains together by connecting design, manufacturing and asset-lifecycle data in a secure, contextualized data fabric. By converging our combined strengths in industrial AI, we’ll empower our customers with our vision of an executable Digital Twin that will enable them to accelerate innovation with confidence.”

Mark Moffat, CEO at IFS, adds, "Manufacturers need their factory floor to behave the way it was designed. This partnership with Siemens brings together two companies that each own a critical piece of the puzzle. Agentic AI is the critical frontier, and industrial leaders need solutions with closed-loop models and data, and a rich set of context that won’t hallucinate in active operations. By combining our collective strengths in industrial AI, we can help manufacturers close the loop between design and reality, and unlock real, measurable performance gains."