Chapter 1: What is Siemens and what role does it play in automation?
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Chapter 2: How does Siemens view the future of jobs in an automated world?
Doppel, outpacing what's next in social engineering. Learn more at doppel.com. That's D-O-P-P-E-L.com. Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil I. Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today, I'm talking with Roland Busch, the CEO of Siemens.
Now, Siemens is one of those absolutely giant, extremely important, and yet fairly opaque companies that we love to dig into here on Decoder. At a very basic, very reductive level, Siemens makes the hardware and software that lets other companies run and automate their stuff.
You've seen the Siemens logo everywhere, whether it's under the hood of your car, stamped on the control system of a fancy building, or scattered across factory floors. But since it's not really a consumer facing company, it's hard to know what ties all those ideas together and what some 320,000 Siemens employees across the world are actually working on.
Chapter 3: What is Roland Busch's vision for Siemens' automation strategy?
How all of those people are organized and how they all work together is wildly complicated. Roland and I spent some real time just talking through the Siemens corporate structure, which for the true decoder heads out there was incredibly fascinating. Roland and I also spent a lot of time talking about automation broadly.
And what happens is AI brings automation out of the physical world of factories and into the digital world of the front office, the world of accounting and procurement, the things that help decide what the factory should be doing. Roland's vision is for Siemens to automate the entire factory process, upstream and downstream of actually making things.
And you'll hear him describe that outcome as fairly utopian. Smooth, seamless, optimal operation. Very German. But I wanted to press him on how dystopian that sounds to a lot of us. Because in Rowan's vision of pure automation, it seems like there's a lot of people who just don't have jobs anymore.
Chapter 4: How is Siemens structured to support its diverse business operations?
And the ones who do have jobs don't really have a lot of autonomy or fulfillment from them, because they're basically just doing what AI tells them to do. So we talked about that pretty directly.
And if that's not a lot of complicated, heavy decoder ideas already, well, Siemens is also a government and defense contractor on both sides of the Atlantic, and a company whose growth historically has been tied directly to free trade and globalization in the post-war era. There's a lot going on right now that challenges how that world works, especially as tensions keep rising between the U.S.
and Europe. So I asked him directly, has Siemens gamed out what it will do if NATO collapses? Because that's not as far-fetched an idea as it used to be. As you can tell, there's a lot in this one, and Roland was game for it all. I think you'll leave with a lot to think about. Certainly more to think about whenever you see all those Siemens logos all over the place.
Chapter 5: What challenges does Siemens face in the current geopolitical climate?
Okay, Siemens CEO Roland Busch. Here we go. Roland Bush, you are the president and CEO of Siemens. Welcome to Decoder. Thank you, Nelly. Nice to meet you. It's nice to see you. It's nice to meet you as well. There's a lot to talk about. Siemens is a huge company.
Chapter 6: How is Siemens leveraging AI in its automation processes?
It has a long history. You've been in a lot of businesses. You've been out a lot of businesses. You have worked there since the 90s. The world is... very complicated right now, and Siemens is a very big, very complicated multinational operating in that world. I'm curious how you are thinking of all that. Let me just start at the start. Siemens isn't a consumer company.
I think a lot of Decoder listeners have seen the logo, but maybe don't understand the company.
Chapter 7: What are the implications of free trade on Siemens' global operations?
How would you describe Siemens today? What is the company?
And it's indeed not that easy. We came a long way. It's more than 170 years since the company was founded, and we made, I mean, So many changes in our portfolio and our company. Actually, when people talk about it, I say there's one constant in our history, which is that we reinvented ourselves over and over again. And absolutely, we are now in the midst of another revolution.
reinvention or transformation with one difference. This is the fastest and the most fundamental one we ever had because of technology.
Chapter 8: How does Siemens plan to navigate future economic uncertainties?
And then people ask, what is Siemens about? Because you have now Siemens Health Linears, you have Siemens Energy, you have Siemens. So And actually, it's not that easy to describe because Siemens Healthineers has the task in the name. It's about healthcare. Siemens Energy has the task in the name. It's about energy. But Siemens is not that clear. So here is how I explain it.
We transform with our technology the everyday for everyone. Okay, doesn't get you closer, but no. The point is, you have to look behind the curtain and then you see what Siemens technology does. When you see a car passing by, eventually all of them are touched by Siemens technology. Is it either cars are designed by our technology or they are manufactured?
Every third manufacturing line in that world is run by Siemens controls. If you walk through New York, you cannot walk a block without passing by a building which is automated by Siemens technology. I think we are controlling, I mean, something like a little bit less than 50% of electrons are touched by Siemens technologies and our distribution systems, low-voltage systems.
And if you talk about the health scenarios, then, I mean, if you get a scan somewhere in the world, the likelihood that it's a Siemens CT or MR scan is a little bit higher, 50%. And this is what we do. We produce, we have technology which enables others to transform their everyday. And that is what Siemens is about.
I listen to that and I experience Siemens everywhere. I'm the person who pays attention to how is this building automated. I talk to a lot of car CEOs. I hear about Siemens as a supplier to the car industry quite a bit. It sounds like what you are describing basically is... you operate things for people, right? Or you build technologies or products that operate other things for people.
There's a lot of things in the world to operate. How do you organize the company? How do you think about where there's opportunity and where there's growth and investment? And then how do you think about your resources there? Because it seems like we operate things for everyone. That's a pretty wide remit that you could focus down in any number of ways.
Absolutely. And here comes the point, and this is an absolutely valid question because now we are active in so many different industries. I mean, it's industries, manufacturing, process industries, but we also are in buildings and grids, in mobility. So people trains and signaling systems. So the first basis of Siemens is, and this is where our value sits. It's in our technology platform.
Is it our design software? We are one of the largest software companies in the world. If it comes to industrial software, we are the largest. And with our software, you can build the most comprehensive physics-based digital twin of whatever product you do. And we are now expanding into molecules. So another one is automation technology, as talked about.
Is it either for discrete process manufacturing? We also go for software-defined automation, which is kind of a disruption. And in anything, we are the largest automation company. We are automating grids, we are automating buildings, we are automating signaling systems, we are automating trains, we are automating manufacturing. So the underlying technology... Is that what the value is?
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