Industry
Manufacturing
Goal
Increase agility and supply chain flexibility
From gutfeel
to confidence
What if you could connect the digital twin of production to enterprise and shopfloor systems to create an always-on predictive engine? What if this was as easy as saying “Optimize my plant.”
This is the goal that a team at Siemens Digital Industries Software set out to meet and turned to Squad Apps, a Mendix partner, to assist with the development process.
Guillaume Cordonatto, who leads the co-creation group within the Digital Manufacturing segment of Siemens Digital Industries Software, tells us: “Across all industries, manufacturing companies need a higher level of agility and supply chain flexibility. It is becoming more and more difficult to accurately predict the performance of their production systems. This is what we’re trying to change. We’re enabling them to manage their operations with data-driven decisions, go from gut feel to confidence.”
“With Optimize My Plant, the comprehensive digital twin, connected to real data, provides powerful predictive capabilities to many users in operations. Imagine quickly validating a production plan, optimizing lot size or water consumption, or being able to answer to a customer with confidence that you can produce an additional order in time.”
Optimize My Plant is now one of the fastest growing SaaS solutions on the Siemens marketplace. It comes in two flavours. One is the standard SaaS solution, offered as a service on the Siemens Xcelerator platform and is the quickest way for customers to get started and access the predictive capabilities of the digital twin.
The other, a Mendix adaptive edition, is intended for customers who need to take ownership of the solution, integrate it in their IT-OT landscape, deploy it on their platform of choice and tailor the user experience.
Guillaume: “What we observed is that many of our customers were aware of the power of a digital twin but struggled to make it accessible outside of a small group of experts. There are two main reasons for that: Complexity of data connectivity, and the need for a tailored user experience for each role. This is why we decided to offer it as a Mendix adaptive edition”.
The Mendix low-code platform was used to develop Optimize My Plant. Guillaume: “For us, Mendix was a no-brainer to address our data connectivity and user experience challenges. It has a wealth of connectors to a variety of systems and the platform allows to quickly iterate and create these role-based user experiences. On top of that, it’s also about the agility and speed that it provides. We co-developed this solution with customers, and I can’t think of any other platform that would have allowed us to go in six months from an idea to a minimum viable product up and running in a customer’s factory.”
Guillaume is very clear about the collaboration with Squad Apps: “I honestly couldn’t be happier with the support from Squad Apps. They have been with us from day-one and play a dual role. They’re part of our development team, and they’re also able to engage directly with Optimize My Plant customers to adapt and extend the solution for their needs.”
“I have nothing but good things to say about all the people that have been involved. They are professional, super skilled and engaged in the outcome. That’s invaluable. I would happily recommend Squad Apps to anyone looking for skilled Mendix consultants who are really invested in your success. Their squads are made up experts across a wide range of skills. With every problem we face, they will find someone who can help us with that,” Guillaume concludes.
Guillaume is thrilled with the initial reception and customer feedback. “It’s been fascinating to see customers go from one use case in a pilot factory, to expand to more users, more disciplines and sites. We’ve also been very pleased to see how the solution has been applied in industries as diverse as Automotive, Aerospace, Consumer Packaged Goods, Logistics and Batteries.”
Guillaume has ambitious plans for Optimize My Plant: “We will integrate Optimize My Plant further in the rest of the Siemens ecosystem, to enable end-to-end digital threads for our customers. We’re already addressing other domains to address customers challenges around energy usage and CO2 predictions. We are also actively working on AI and advanced optimization techniques to further the capabilities that we will offer.”
