Siemens and IBM team up to accelerate sustainable product development

image of IBM building | Siemens and IBM

Key Takeaways

Siemens and IBM are enhancing their partnership to create a combined software solution that integrates systems engineering and asset management, aimed at optimizing product lifecycles and enhancing traceability across processes.

The new SysML v1 software will facilitate sustainable product development through a digital thread that connects various engineering disciplines, spanning the entire product lifecycle from design to end-of-life management.

Collaboration on a SysML v2 solution will provide a migration path for customers to transition to next-generation systems engineering, enabling quicker innovation and improved product quality by integrating service lifecycle management with operational processes.

Siemens Digital Industries Software and IBM are expanding their long-term partnership to develop a combined software solution. 

Integrating the firms’ respective offerings, the systems engineering and asset management solution will help organizations to optimize product lifecycles and make it easier to improve traceability across processes, prototype and test concepts much earlier in development, as well as adopt more sustainable product designs.

The new combined SysML v1 software is expected to support traceability and sustainable product development using a digital thread that links mechanical, electronics, electrical engineering and software design and implementation. It is intended to span the product lifecycle, from early design and manufacturing to operations, maintenance, update and end of life management. 

Siemens and IBM will also be collaborating to create a SysML v2 based solution with a migration path to help customers transition to next generation systems engineering. SysML supports the specification, analysis, design, verification and validation of a broad range of systems and systems-of-systems. Service lifecycle management can maximize business value for product servitization by connecting service engineering to service maintenance to facilitate new collaborative processes between OEM and operators.

“A significant portion of product innovation and differentiation contains electrical, electronics and software components. Yet, manufacturing companies are struggling to bring new products to market on time, as the current tools, processes, and information to manage these components are siloed and disconnected,” said Kareem Yusuf Ph.D, senior vice president, product management and growth, IBM Software. “To address this gap, IBM and Siemens are collaborating on a digital thread environment to integrate sustainability practices throughout the lifecycle of a product, from design, production, operation, maintenance and beyond. This connectivity will help enable quicker time to innovation and compliance preparedness and overall improved product quality.”

Tony Hemmelgarn, president and chief executive officer, Siemens Digital Industries Software, said: “Together, Siemens and IBM will deliver a simulation-driven systems and software engineering solution that is designed to cover the full operational lifecycle. This can empower our customers to innovate by helping to reduce product development costs, drive continuous improvement and create operational efficiencies across the extended enterprise throughout the product’s operation lifecycle. We are developing this to help companies truly shift left by improving extensibility and reuse of systems models and associated data with standards-based solutions in an open ecosystem and to enable our customers to develop better products.”