The Siemens equipment factory in Erlangen is intended to become the blueprint for the use of artificial intelligence in industry. How the two companies want to benefit from each other.
Siemens and Nvidia want to develop the device factory in Erlangen into a blueprint for autonomous factories.
At the Erlangen factory, around 100 AI algorithms are already in use in production, logistics, quality testing and maintenance.
Siemens and Nvidia create virtual images of new circuit boards to train quality inspection with AI models weeks before physical production.
Digital twins and AI shorten the time to market for new circuit boards in Erlangen by up to 40 percent and reduce engineering effort by up to 85 percent.
Erlangen. As part of its investment tour through Europe, the US tech group Nvidia also stopped off at the Siemens flagship factory in Erlangen. The two companies presented a series of new AI solutions for the industry on Monday and announced a deepening of the partnership.
“The historic opportunity for Germany and Europe lies in bringing artificial intelligence from the data centers to the factories – and using it there on an industrial scale,” said Siemens Industrial Director Cedrik Neike. Together they want to make the device factory in Erlangen a “blueprint for autonomous factories all over the world,” added Nvidia Vice President Rev Lebaredian.
Nvidia is currently promoting politicians and companies in Europe intensively. The US group is expanding existing partnerships and announcing new collaborations. Its chips often form the basis for AI data centers and AI solutions. A partnership with the federal government to develop AI models for industry is also planned, as the Handelsblatt exclusively reported. This week, numerous companies also want to tie themselves more closely to the US group at an offshoot of Nvidia's GTC in-house trade fair in Berlin.
Siemens had formed an alliance with Nvidia early on. Four years ago, Siemens boss Roland Busch and Nvidia founder Jensen Huang announced that they wanted to develop the industrial metaverse together. Like a further developed digital twin, this should enable 3D simulations of production in real time. Customers could essentially rewind to catch errors and fast forward to see the consequences of changes.
The Siemens equipment factory in Erlangen serves as a pilot factory and is intended to become the world's first fully AI-driven and autonomous manufacturing site. AI solutions are developed here and tested during ongoing production. According to Siemens, a good 100 AI algorithms are currently in use in production, logistics, quality testing and maintenance. The digital twin and augmented reality, in which digital information is displayed in the real environment, are also already integrated.
An example of the cooperation between Siemens and Nvidia in Erlangen is the quality testing of circuit boards, the carriers of electronic components. Until now, the image processing systems had to wait for the first physical prototype. This could take several weeks. The inspection systems were then set up manually based on the sample.
Siemens and Nvidia are now using digital twins and AI models from Nvidia to create photorealistic virtual images of new circuit boards before they are physically manufactured. According to Siemens, this creates thousands of artificial images that show both error-free circuit boards and possible defects. The systems for optical quality inspection are trained with the virtual data sets weeks before the start of production.
According to Siemens, the time to market for new circuit boards, the heart of the drives and frequency converters manufactured in Erlangen, is shortened by up to 40 percent. The engineering effort is even reduced by up to 85 percent. Overall, such improvements increase the productivity of the Erlangen plant by an average of seven percent per year, according to Neike.
Such AI solutions are now to be marketed commercially. Such collaborations are undoubtedly worthwhile for Nvidia because they tie up a lot of computing and graphics power to the US company, which developed the 3D simulation and collaboration platform Omniverse.
For its part, Siemens sees itself as a leader in industrial AI as well as industrial software and automation technology. There are different business models in the collaboration from which both sides benefit, said Neike, without going into detail. “Every industry is interested in these technologies.” Nvidia is a preferred AI cooperation partner, but not the only one.
