Flexible Thinking: Designing Flex Circuits for Dynamic Reliability
Global PCB Connections: Rigid-flex and Flexible PCBs—The Backbone of Modern Electronics
Happy’s Tech Talk #29: Bend-to-Install Semi-flex FR-4
Siemens and IFS announced a strategic partnership to help manufacturers connect engineering intelligence with operational reality - increasing the value of their products and optimizing their production assets across the entire product lifecycle with industrial AI.
The collaboration brings together Siemens' leadership in industrial AI, engineering, automation and manufacturing execution and IFS's strengths in industrial AI, enterprise asset management and field service domains. Together, the two companies aim to help manufacturers close a persistent gap: the disconnect between how factory operations are designed and how they run in reality, where unplanned downtime, disconnected maintenance schedules, siloed production data and supply chain disruption continue to erode throughput, agility, and margin.
A shared mission for manufacturers
Manufacturers are under growing pressure to do more with their existing assets – produce more on the plant floor, protect margins, and extend the value of equipment across its full lifecycle and react to change with greater agility and adaptability. Yet many still operate with production, maintenance planning and supply chain management systems that don't talk to each other, meaning engineering intent, real-world performance, and service strategy remain disconnected.
Industrial AI at the core
Industrial AI is central to the partnership's ambition. Siemens and IFS share the belief that the next era of industrial performance will be defined by bringing the physical and digital worlds together to help manufacturers translate design intent into operational reality and connect that operational reality back into better design to accelerate innovation.
Siemens’ comprehensive Digital Twin brings the engineering, simulation and manufacturing context while IFS brings the service history, asset behavior and operational lifecycle data that show how those products and assets perform in the real world. Together, they plan to create a closed loop Digital Twin grounded in both design intent and field performance that is secure, governed and auditable across design, simulation, service records, factory execution and can be trusted to deploy at industrial scale.
Unlike generic AI models, industrial environments demand accuracy, reliability, regulatory compliance and adaptability to drive optimization and agility, as even small error rates are unacceptable when decisions affect safety, compliance and costly physical assets. The partners’ shared approach to industrial AI is built for this reality.
"Industrial AI only delivers value when it is grounded in both engineering intent and real-world performance," said Tony Hemmelgarn, president and chief executive officer, Siemens Digital Industries Software. "Together with IFS, we are bringing these domains together by connecting design, manufacturing and asset lifecycle data in a secure, contextualized data fabric. By converging our combined strengths in industrial AI, together we will empower our customers with our vision of an executable Digital Twin that will enable them to accelerate innovation with confidence.”
"Manufacturers need their factory floor to behave the way it was designed. This partnership with Siemens brings together two companies that each own a critical piece of the puzzle. Agentic AI is the critical frontier, and industrial leaders need solutions with closed loop models and data, and a rich set of context that will not hallucinate in active operations,” said Mark Moffat, chief executive officer, IFS. “By combining our collective strengths in Industrial AI, we can help manufacturers close the loop between design and reality, and unlock real, measurable performance gains."
