Siemens recently put into operation its native digital factory in Nanjing of eastern China’s Jiangsu Province. It is the world’s first, according to Shanghai-based media outlet Yicai Global.

Source:Siemens

The factory belongs to Siemens Numerical Control Nanjing, a joint venture with China North Industries Group. As Siemens’ largest research, development and manufacturing center in the field of motion control outside Germany, the joint venture has been increasing its production capacity in China in recent years, reported Yicai Global.

“The digital factory can greatly shorten the time to market products and realize long-term sustainable development,” said Xiao Song, chairman, president and chief executive of Siemens China.

Last year, Siemens launched its ‘accelerate China’ plan. Referring to the strategy, Xiao said the company would “definitely step up the ability of our local R&D and innovation.

“In the field of innovation, we’ll enhance cooperation with Chinese universities and research institutes such as Shanghai Tongji University and the Yangtze River Delta National Technology Innovation Center,” added Xiao, who is also global executive vice president at Siemens.

Speeding up business transformation is also necessary to cope with new uncertainties arising from the pandemic and other issues, he noted. Xiao admitted that this time the pandemic had an impact on the group’s entire industrial and supply chain.

“Even from a global perspective, maintaining supply chain stability is a topic of highest priority for Siemens,” he said. “We minimized the risks to our supply chain by summing up the experience over the past two years.”

He also said that Siemens will strengthen construction and development of local suppliers in the future to increase their proportion. “If we only had one supplier earlier, now we need two or three to lower the risks,” Xiao said.

In addition, Siemens Healthineers announced its localization strategy this month. “Siemens Healthineers will gradually realize localized production of all product lines to promote the transformation and upgrading of local industrial chains,” Siemens Healthineers China President Jerry Wang told Yicai Global.(校对/WM Zhang)