ECONOMIC ENGINEERING, Issue June/July/August 2009, Page 41-43
The synergies are obvious

In September last year the German anti-trust authorities approved the acquisition of Innotec by Siemens without  imposing any conditions. The system provider for the process industry headquartered in Schwelm, Germany, was assigned to Siemens‘ Industry Automation division as a wholly-owned subsidiary. Talking to our editorial staff, Jochen Schüler, CSO of Comos Industry Solutions, and Cristina Brandtstetter, responsible for Comos integration as Head of Integration Management at Siemens, commented on the current status of company integration.

Mr Schüler, how far has integration of Innotec into Siemens progressed?

Schüler: The integration process is well underway. The change of legal form into Comos Industry Solutions has just taken place.

It was suggested that you give up your other CEO functions.

That’s right. I am still CEO of Innotec Systemtechnik GmbH. That company, however, has nothing to do with the old Innotec acquired by Siemens. Innotec Systemtechnik deals with Computer Aided Quality issues focusing on automotive suppliers. Due to the amount of work I am facing here I will formally resign from that operative function shortly.

Has the transition from Innotec to Comos Industry Solutions resulted in any change to the board composition?

The old management board has been complemented by a new CFO, Frank Ebert, who joined us from the Siemens management. My position has changed insofar as I now hold the function of “CSO“, Chief Strategic Officer, which means I am responsible for corporate strategies, product management and marketing.

What was your former position at Innotec?

As one of the CEOs I was responsible for global sales. Now I have just an advisory function as far as sales are concerned.

What may we expect from Comos Industry Solutions in the coming years?

For quite some time our porfolio has focused on supporting the entire life cycle of a plant or equipment. Through our collaboration with Siemens we will increasingly attend to mechanical engineering. We opt for full integration into overall automation solutions such as the Simatic PCS 7 control technology.

Will there be any changes to the geometry engine accessed by Comos?

We might be offering an additional one. After all, two and a half years ago Siemens welcomed the UGS family, and synergies in the NX environment should be utilised.

Do you intend to resort to Teamcenter technologies?

For data management in our segment, Comos is clearly the favourite. Our domain is plant engineering, documentation and maintenance, whereas Siemens PLM software addresses product lifecycle management.

Is there any significant overlap?

No, the overlaps are hardly worth mentioning. I am quite confident that the interaction with Siemens PLM software will help to produce very interesting solutions for our customers.

I suspect that motives such as pushing the Digital Plant concept were an important consideration in the decision for the acquisition. Are there any plans for incorporating hardware component data into Comos?

Siemens distinguishes between the Process Automation (PA) and Factory Automation (FA) segments. There is the Simatic Automation Designer product, for example, where Simatic stands for a whole product family. Simatic Automation Designer focuses on engineering support for mechatronics plants with full integration into the software and hardware universes. Even today, this product from the FA segment is based on Comos technologies.

The challenge is to transfer our holistic concept of process automation, which we have been putting forward for many years, to discrete manufacturing. There, as we all know, the focus is not on 3D installation planning for pipes but on layout planning. Here I envisage exciting application scenarios for Comos.

It seems the integration of Innotec is progressing at a faster pace than that of UGS...

Brandtstetter: For one thing, there is a size difference – UGS was a far bigger company – and secondly company integration has of course not only technical but also organisational aspects. You are right, things at Comos are moving faster. But then this is not a speed competition. It was a deliberate decision to choose a different approach for Innotec than for UGS. From the outset we had the intention to initially  maintain UGS as an autonomous subsidiary. True, we had this in mind for Comos as well but wanted to achieve partial integration in the first year. Full integration is to be reached in the coming year. The differing speeds of integration are not a yardstick for measuring success or failure.

Schüler: The synergies we are now creating for our customers under the Siemens roof are obvious. Our clients like the idea that we are now part of Siemens. What we hear is: “Finally we are making headway in the transition from functional engineering to automation.“ This was in fact one of the reasons for the acquisition. It was totally clear that the Comos family would be a perfect complement to the Siemens portfolio. After all, it was us who came up with the slogan “From integrated engineering to integrated operations“.

Just think of the enormous scope of Siemens products, whose data will now be incorporated in our portfolio. This alone constitutes considerable added value for our customers.

In other words, the customer is offered an end-to-end digital plant model as the Comos libraries are being significantly enriched?

Right.

Brandtstetter: I would even go a step further. From the very conception of a plant through to its final realisation, the portfolios of Siemens and Comos Industry Solutions enable an integrated stream of data without cross-media conversion. This is a revolutionising achievement.

Schüler: Support for plant operation has considerably gained in importance in our considerations over the past few years. However, to be absolutely clear, this is not about manufacturing execution systems (MES) but about the planning of plant maintenance, shutdowns/revisions or closedowns. 

Would it not be possible to handle this equally well via SAP DVS DM?

The benefits of our maintenance solution are obvious. Comos is able to seamlessly further process all engineering data for maintenance and operation purposes. Using other systems available in the marketplace, you first have to go through the laborious and time-consuming work of collecting and entering the requisite information.

At which point does the acquisition improve the ROI for the customer? Things must have become more cost-effective in one way or other.

Schüler: There are various aspects here. The integration of Comos into the Siemens portfolio permits the number of tools to be reduced. Mind you, the life cycle costs of IT tools should not be underestimated. Each software platform requires the provision of staff for administration, adaptation or helpdesk support. All this constitutes costs, a sizeable part of which could be saved.

Brandtstetter: We envisage savings in the range of up to 20 percent, a figure which can vary considerably from case to case.

So now the consolidation of software platforms is taking place at Siemens. Customers need no longer take charge ...

Schüler: It is taking place through Comos, for Comos is the integration platform for the technology data. At the moment we are involved in large-scale projects, for example in the Norwegian oil industry, in which we are implementing our holistic concept. This is where our strategy of “integrated operations“ comes into full play, guaranteeing a seamless, end-to-end flow of information whereby the data generated in engineering is readily available for use in plant operation and maintenance. In interplay with the Siemens automation landscape we enable our customers, whenever a trouble signal is received, to immediately jump to the right place in the plant documentation based on corresponding links in the 3D models. RFID techniques and 3D visualisation, by the way, make it possible to see the exact whereabouts of a service person at any given moment.

Talking about Norwegian oil rigs: There is the independent Scandinavian organisation POSC Caesar, which intends to more widely spread the ISO standard 15926. What is the stance of Comos Industry Solutions in this matter?

We are a member of this organisation and have been involved in the relevant work. However, standardisation work has not yet been finished. Activities were started at the structural level and must now be broken down.

The Fiatech association in the United States is also driving this topic on the basis of the POSC Caesar guidelines. When will we see corresponding solutions in Comos?

The oil and gas industries are pushing this standard, that’s right. They are familiar with the activities of POSC Caesar. Other process industry segments, however, are not involved in this standardisation process. But of course we do support these endeavours because any type of standard helps to reduce the adaptation effort and shorten implementation times.

Will this be the end to long-winded customising?

Adaptations will always be required, if only because the customer wants them. The appetite comes with eating, doesn’t it? If it is just a question of deploying a tool such as P&ID EMR, the implementation effort is minor. But when it comes to rationalising (for example by introducing intelligent assembly groups throughout all subsections), that will take its time.

Good for business. Is Comos also targeted at SMEs?

By all means! Chemieanlagenbau Chemnitz GmbH - CAC, for instance, has been using our tools for totally integrated plant engineering. We are able to address SMEs because today we can achieve total integration at a far lower cost than even ten years ago.

Thank you for your comments.

Interview: Bernhard D. Valnion

Link to orignal article please klick here

For further questions please do not hesitate to contact:
Comos Industry Solutions GmbH, Ms Evelyne Kadel, Manager Public Relations, Tel: +49 2336.9188-176 or eMail: evelyne.kadel(at)comos.com