Siemens survey of machine builder digital readiness highlights opportunities for UK & Ireland industry

Siemens Digital Industries Software is today highlighting opportunities for machine builders in the UK and Ireland to increase efficiency and boost productivity through digital transformation.

According to the benchmark report, over two-thirds of machine builders see increasing productivity and efficiency as the most significant challenge, yet 48% of companies have no strategy in place to begin their digital transformation.

“Digital transformation is coming, and it will profoundly alter the competitive landscape in the machine building industry, with smart technology greatly improving the efficiency of critical processes.” said Ben Sheath, VP and Managing Director, UK & Ireland, Siemens Digital Industries Software. 

“Machine builders who are digitally ready can respond to market trends and customer demands faster, better, and at a lower cost. The old objections of scalability and affordability no longer apply. Our technologies make it easy to bring production machinery online, to pilot a digitalization initiative on a single machine and then scale across the full global footprint of the enterprise. And the changes announced to the UK Spring Budget allow companies to write off the full cost of IT equipment, plant and machinery against taxable profits in the year of investment, instead of over the life of the asset.  The first-mover advantages will be enormous. The time to act is now. And we’re here to help.”

Other highlights from Siemens’ industrial machinery benchmark report include:

• Strategic focus on improving delivery speed and reducing time-to-market are respondents’ primary challenges.
• Almost 50% of respondents do not have a digital transformation strategy.
• Only 21% of respondents practice parallel product development, creating both a physical and digital product (referred to as a Digital Twin) simultaneously.
• 15% of respondents add value through the provision of remote maintenance, training and other services but an alarming 48% claim to generate no value from services.
• Only 14% are very confident that they can measure the return on investment in digital technology and skills for their manufacturing processes.
• Nearly half of the machine builders consider preventive and predictive maintenance to deliver the greatest benefits in reducing risks and downtime.

To learn more, visit www.siemens.co.uk/benchmark2023. Interested companies in the UK and Ireland can also benchmark their activities to their peers by taking part in the online survey and will receive feedback in the form of a personal benchmark. To take the survey, visit here