Thyssenkrupp Adopts Siemens Industrial Copilot

Competitive pressures and lack of skilled labor are helping to drive industry’s growing interest in generative AI, according to Siemens. As a case in point, the company points to the adoption of its Industrial Copilot technology by thyssenkrupp Automation Engineering, a special machine and plant builder, for battery quality inspections on electric cars.

Siemens added that thyssenkrupp plans to use the genAI-powered assistant at scale for engineering machinery at thyssenkrupp’s global locations starting in 2025. The Industrial Copilot assists thyssenkrupp engineers in creating TIA Portal projects by more quickly developing structured control language (SCL) code for programmable logic controllers (PLCs), intelligently integrating the code into TIA Portal and generating machine visualizations in WinCC Unified. This allows engineering teams to reduce repetitive and monotonous tasks like automating data management and sensor configuration.

To further help prove the viability of the Industrial Copilot technology, Siemens electronics factory in Erlangen, Germany, implemented the Copilot for Operations on its soldering machines. Here, the Industrial Copilot helps Siemens operators and maintenance engineers to understand a machine’s error codes by translating its messages into natural language. It also suggests solutions based on the machine’s details and history by combing through different documents, manuals and spare part lists. Positive results of this Copilot application include reduced machine downtime, faster resolution of bottlenecks and more efficient shift handovers.