Siemens' Customer Value Proposition for the Migration of Legacy Devices to Cyber-Physical Systems in Industrie 4.0

Introduction

Within the context of digital disruption, Industrie 4.0 is a vision for the digital disruption in manufacturing. This vision involves a proposal of technology to be developed, cyber-physical systems, as manufacturing equipment. This chapter explores, analyzes, induces, critiques Siemens’ research and development strategy for cyber-physical systems as manufacturing equipment, as products, the manufacturing processes they perform, their capabilities and performance achievements, the smart factories they are part of and the new business models they enable. The ground of this research is the advent of Industrie 4.0 at Siemens, competitors and customers (manufacturing industries). The research methodology for the literature review follows the main topics proposed by the Industrie 4.0 project in the journal databases. For the empirical study, the research relies on a large body of evidence about Siemens that covers all publicly available communications about Siemens in annual reports, on the Siemens Web site, in Siemens Pictures of the Future, Siemens the Magazine, in press releases, other reports and Google searches by key words. As Siemens is researching and developing cyber-physical system technology, this chapter expounds how Siemens complements cyber-physical systems technology with its key value drivers.