Siemens Industry has been named the "2013 Company of the Year" by Frost & Sullivan for offering innovative machine safety products, and leveraging its global manufacturing facilities and supply chains for the smart machine safety market.
Each year, Frost & Sullivan's Vision of the Future of Manufacturing and Production 2.0 (Visi-MAP 2.0) research identifies the “Top 50 Game Changers” in manufacturing hardware and software who demonstrate a critical convergence of “Mega Forces” that allow manufacturers to innovate, design and drive next-generation best practice, according to Frost & Sullivan.
With the machine safety market driving end-user demand for greater flexibility and universal safety standard compliance, component-based offerings are becoming a thing of the past. The shift to integrated total solution offerings is being driven by the easy of use and cost effectiveness of single-system platforms for safety and automation control.
"Many best-in-class global manufacturers are planning on integrating their machine safety and automation control systems to simultaneously improve worker safety and manufacturing productivity," said Muthuraman Ramasamy, industry analyst for Frost & Sullivan. "This move will also reduce manufacturing operations costs through easier troubleshooting and integration with non-safety control systems, better diagnostics and improved modularity."
Siemens' totally integrated automation (TIA) architecture does just this. The architecture provides a single automation platform, integrating plant floor-level automation processes with manufacturing execution systems, according to Frost & Sullivan. This process enables data visibility, security and control using access protection, role-based availability and private virtual networks.
Customers can receive benefits such as shorter lead times, and software and control system test and operation savings with Siemens' TIA portal. They can create, implement and maintain their own scalable, flexible machine safety solution.
"Siemens engineers understand and consistently monitor the changes in ongoing international safety standards and regulations,” said Ramasamy. “No other automation company has greater experience in applying the appropriate safety solution based on the application. The company continues to stay true to its strategy of delivering flexible and scalable integrated machine safety solutions that increase both operator and manufacturing operations productivity and efficiency."
