Information Systems & Operations

The Operations team is a unit of 372,000 people.  They like to say the whole company is there operations team, as everyone has a responsibility of carrying out their operations goals.  Some of their major operation structures are environmental protection, customer service, procurement and logistics, legal, human resources, finance, and quality management.

With the broad range of markets that Siemens hits, they need to use versatile IT systems.  They have created their own clouds and communication systems to solve this problem, and even market these services for use outside of the company.

Some of the main information systems used by Siemens are the Internet of Things,  MindSphere, and industrial communication networks such as White Paper.  The Internet of Things (IoT) is Siemens' personal internet, so that the many departments and sectors can keep in contact with each other and share data across the company. 

MindSphere is a cloud platform that can be used privately and publicly.  It runs off of the Internet of Things, and is marketable for use outside of the company.  For a hands on exploration of how MindSphere works, check out this demo.  Basically, it's a format for not only collecting better data, but also using and analyzing that data properly.  Siemens realized the ongoing issue amongst data collection, how a lot is collected either unnecessarily or incorrectly, and what is good data is not always processed correctly to be able to be used in proper data analytics.  The solution was MindSphere - a way to optimize data collection and management, to not only understand what is happening currently, but also make predictions based on trends for the future. 

White Paper is the program which allows streamlining of data between communicating parties.  It is also available for use outside of Siemens, and is a platform in which the public can take part in completing challenges for developing the next innovation to come out of White Paper.  These competitions also build on public engagement and help Siemens to gauge where the public interest lies. 

Quality management is of utmost importance to Siemens.  When opening up the website, Siemens asks if you'll  complete a survey at the end of your visit.  The survey seems to be targeting how to make a better experience for site users.  Questions revolved around what type of person you are, who/what you are affiliated with, what you are using the site for, and if you found what you were looking for on the site.  All of this data is collected to help make a more user friendly experience.